Three Ways Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone Can Boost Your Freelance Career

You can enhance your freelance career by getting outside your comfort zone and trying new things.

Most of us like to be comfortable. It's only natural. However, the reality is that most growth doesn't take place in your comfort zone. Instead, if you want to grow and improve, you need to get out of your comfort zone. This applies to writing as well as to other areas of your life.

If you want to be a better writer, and improve your freelance career, you need to get out of your comfort zone with your writing. Here are three ways that writing outside you comfort zone can help your freelance career:

1. Learn Something New

I'm very comfortable in the personal finance niche. I ended up specializing in financial topics, and it's been amazing. And, while I know that there's plenty left for me to learn in terms of finances, the truth is that there isn't a whole lot that surprises me in the course of my writing.

Getting out of my writing comfort zone can help me learn something new. The research required when I write something outside my comfortable financial niche practically guarantees that I will learn something new. Not only that, but I think I become a better writer as a result. I might see a different side to something, or find something that allows me to look at personal finances in a new light.

It's more work to research something outside your comfort zone, but it's usually worth it to learn something new. Constant learning improves your ability to adapt, and comes with a number of benefits to your life as well as to your freelance career.

2. Stretch Your Creativity

It really takes me outside my comfort zone to write fiction. Even if I don't share what I write with others, it stretches my creativity to write fiction. I've been thinking about it a little bit more recently, since it's National Novel Writing Month. Even though I'm not participating in NaNoWriMo this year, I've done it in the past, and I'm still using this month to refine some of my fiction writing.

I'm not very creative, but stretching those creative muscles forces me to be a better writer. That creativity can add something to my nonfiction writing, and improve my ability to tell a story. At least, that's what I hope is happening. My ability to write creatively can open up new opportunities in my freelance career, as well as keep me open to new possibilities.

Writing outside your comfort zone forces you to be more creative and that can influence the rest of your writing career for the better.

3. Potential to Find New Clients

You might even land new clients when you write outside your comfort zone. The truth is that I didn't start out writing about finances. My first gigs were mainly science writing, and I tried to write about religion and politics. One day I was asked to write for a money blog. I wasn't entirely sure I could do it, but I said yes, and the rest is history.

Getting outside your comfort zone can encourage you to learn a new style of writing, and it can also introduce you to new markets. Your freelance career can get a boost with the help of your willingness to move beyond what you're wholly comfortable with.

While I think that most of my writing will likely center on the financial niche on into the foreseeable future, keeping my options open can be a good idea, since it helps to maintain diversity so that you aren't relying on any one niche, or even any one product or service. Even though it's out of my comfort zone, I've started offering additional services with my business, from running blogger campaigns to presenting workshops.

When you are willing to step outside your comfort zone, and write what you're not completely comfortable with, you have better chances to enhance your freelance career now, and safeguard an income for the future.