After moving to a different state, I discovered that I could no longer be in the profession I had been trained for unless I was willing to pay thousands of dollars for advanced schooling. Since I was not willing nor did I have the money to go back to school, I decided that now was the time when I needed to look at a career change. Having successfully dabbled in freelance writing several years ago, and having gained a fair degree of knowledge of the resources available on the web, I decided that I would put both my writing skills, love of research, and knowledge of the web to work in an effort to create jobs for myself.

My first order of priority was to read all I could about writing as a profession so I could find out the most current things freelance writers needed to know about their profession. The web site I found most helpful for this purpose was; Inkspot Resource For Writers.

I used Inkspot as a launching pad, and found many other resources for writers on the web. Among them, was a monthly newsletter that contained information on various writers' markets as well as writing tips, and resources. This free newsletter can either be seen on the web or delivered in E-mail. The web site where it can be seen is; Inklings.

After learning all I could about freelancing as a profession, I felt confident enough in my abilities to apply for a writing job. The job that I got was writing for community newspapers. I knew nothing about journalism, and wanted to do a good job. So I joined an on-line writers workshop. I developed my writing skills through having my work critiqued and critiquing other peoples' writing. In addition to the workshop, there was a writers' mailing list, which gave me the benefit of networking with other writers. The mailing list has its own homepage located at; Writers Workshop.

I find that doing research on the web saves me time so I can produce an article more quickly than I would had I done the same research in a library. I'm happy to report that I've not had to use the library once I found two web sites that fit my needs for research tools. I use these links;

• Writers Free Reference
• Search Page

I've found that there are editors who are looking for freelancers, and they advertise on the web. I've utilized the various marketing sites to my advantage. The links to these sites are;

• Freelance Jobs On-Line
• Writers Classfieds