About once a month a friend or colleague will ask me the very same question: “I have been wanting to take my writing to the next stage. How did you get started in freelance writing?”. Sometimes I’m tempted to say, “Just start.” How do you train for a marathon or big climb? You start running, you start climbing. But I know it isn’t that straight-forward. There are definitely some pointers I wish I had known when I started out – things I had to discover on my own in a fairly long, drawn-out process that continues to this day. So, I often let these curious writers treat me to coffee and I download my knowledge. After some time, though, these conversations became repetitive, and time-consuming for both parties, so I decided to write this article.