Do freelance writers (academic area) need to learn and expand their knowledge?

I do a small school projects on writers (who work in the academic research fields). I was wondering about how professional freelance writers expand their knowledge and skills; do they continue learning while working at the same time? Or they just become freelancers and don't need to learn anything any more? My idea is that the majority of writers actually stopped learning at school and they only learn something new when they work on specific assignments. They don't need to expand their skills once they learned different referencing styles or after they have completed their first dissertation (and followed the structure of a dissertation, ie. dissertation chapters). And that they spend a lot of time reading for pleasure but not for knowledge (that is they read only when they have to but they aren't interested in expanding their knowledge beyond what is required in the assignment). In other words, they are like crafts people and do the minimum to make their customers happy. Nothing surprising about that. What's your position on the topic?

And now, a commercial break...

You're a real professional editor, editor? Could you shade some light on your editing experience (if you work as a freelance editor)? Thank you.

I am mostly a writer and academic editor.

That's fine - so do you learn continuously or your education has ended when you finished your college/PhD degree?

Does it seem natural to you that one would stop learning? Is that what you plan on doing when your school lessons are done?

I think it's natural to forget about school after you finished your degrees; school is boring and stressful so why go back to it? And my thesis statement could be that even professional writers don't like learning and do only what's required to finish their job in a satisfactory way rather than to excel in it.

I think you are biased because you want to confirm your own attitude, but good luck.

I actually now know that my bias was right. I reviewed your posts and it clearly shows you don't care about anything but money and profit. You are like a day labourer with little integrity and even if you are a good writer you don't care about the outcome of your job; plus you don't educate yourself to be a better writer. You are not proud of your job and would never discuss in detail what you do with people who may ask you about what you do for a living. Perhaps I'm wrong but your replies strongly indicate my opinion about you. My friends would never hire a writer with such an unprofessional attitude, not to mention paying them.

Well, since you already know everything, there's not much I can tell you, is there? Next time, try not to shoot the messenger... or yourself in the foot. Have a nice day!

If you were a real writer then you'd have the word Writer by your nickname, but you must be a troll.

So my thesis statement is going to be:

Freelance writers working in the academic research field don't find their job pleasurable, don't improve their knowledge, and become freelancers because they cannot be hired by reputable organizations.

Sounds great so far. Make sure to post a copy when you're done.

It's true that most freelance writers don't care to expand their knowledge and 'skills' (some of them don't have to and most of them don't like to ;). Still, learning and expanding knowledge is inevitable when working on an academic writing assignment (regardless whether it's editing, proofreading, or custom writing). Regarding your thesis statement, it's quite interesting..

That will be fairly difficult.

During my time as an academic writer, I found that I continued to further my higher education through the papers I wrote. Of course I needed to have some sort of background or at least an interest in the topic that I was assigned to write. So doing the paper was just adding to my already existing knowledge on that topic. While others may do the minimum of work in order to complete a paper, I would often continue to grow my knowledge in that field after writing the paper so that I could qualify for the more complicated papers based on the same topic or field of interest. Over time, I found that my reading interests were beginning to spin off into other areas as well and I enjoyed learning about those things. So I ended up unintentionally expanding my knowledge across various areas. It wasn't because I needed it for work, but rather, I enjoyed reading on the topic. This practice also led me to widen my circle of friends to those with varied intellectual interests as well because the exchange of knowledge helped keep me abreast of the various discussions behind certain topics. So my answer to your question is, yes, writers need to continue to expand their knowledge not only for profession related purposes, but for personal intellectual growth as well.

I think not just us, the academic writers, but anyone working in any area/field needs to update their knowledge and skills as the world moves on through new research and trial and error. There's this informal education that comes handy while we work on different projects. However, getting enrolled to a specific program or degree is not a bad idea either. Depends on personal preferences and the availability of time and resources. I have always tried to go for both, and it has been positive for me. I am sure other writers are investing in their personal and professional growth as well. It keeps you feeling alive and kicking! 🙄

Re: "Do freelance writers (academic area) need to learn and expand their knowledge?"

This can't be a legitimate question,admin. Jeez. Is the Sun hot? Is rain wet? Is that piece of string long enough? What are your measures? Expand your knowledge? That takes a lifetime ... and I'm still working on it 64 years plus. I intend on learning Latin on my deathbed, and I would recommend similar goals for others.

If a writer wishes to earn better either as a freelancer or a company affiliated writer, then yes, he has to learn and expand his knowledge in order to be able to write more complex papers such as a masters thesis or a dissertation. These sorts of papers requires the writer to have a specialty or field of academic expertise so that he can write the paper in an academic and well informed manner. It all boils down to the charge per page. A highly trained writer can charge thousands of dollars for the completion of a simple research paper in relation to an advanced academic degree. A writer who only has college level writing skills will be limited in writing scope and abilities.

Don't get me wrong, a writer doesn't need to enroll in university again to be able to become an expert in the field. Merely making sure that his knowledge is constantly updated through reading materials and developing his advanced studies writing skills will help him stay afloat in the game. Just like in any job, if you want a promotion and a chance at a higher salary, you need to improve your skills and prove you can do the job properly. It's the same thing for academic writers.

If you write well enough to do this for a living in the first place, you can write about almost any topic about which you don't mind reading and you don't need any additional formal education to produce very good work in almost any subject area. That doesn't necessarily mean that I can take every project in every field with confidence; but one doesn't need the same substantive knowledge about any academic area just to fulfill the requirements of most typical writing projects, especially in most undergraduate academic courses. Ordinarily, the projects we write are either about a specific topic that represents only a very narrow slice of everything taught in that course or they're about the client's choice of some course-related topic. By the time I've finished reading whatever I need to read for the project, I'd probably do better on a spontaneous test given by the client's professor on that particular topic; but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'd pass the rest of the test about any other parts of the same course.

The vast majority of undergraduate projects don't even require the same substantive knowledge about the subject matter as the client's; and very few college students really know enough about the material in any of their classes to pass a spontaneous final exam given on it without the opportunity for intensive studying for that exam, first. We're not exactly taking closed-book timed exams on entire courses here; we're just using the same types of authoritative materials that are available to our clients and we're applying the information gleaned from those materials to the discussion of the essay topic. If you're a writer, that's, essentially, your job description in the first place, unless you're writing fiction books. If a project requires discussing broader elements of the whole course, clients usually provide the whole textbook or whichever chapters would naturally be required for that type of assignment. Once we do the necessary reading, we probably know the material as well as our clients, because the only real difference is that we haven't actually attended the classes; and, as everybody knows, skipping classes and doing less than the amount of reading assigned (at least during the term before exams) is hardly a rare thing for college students, which means by the time we do the reading for the project, there's a very good chance we know more about the topic (or course material) than many of our clients.

Sometimes, with higher-level projects, the client may, indeed, be something of a subject-matter expert (at least compared to a writer who doesn't happen to know much about that field). In those instances, clients can often bring us up to speed by providing well-chosen background materials and ideas for the direction of their arguments, such as in detailed outlines of their projects. In fact, some of the most fulfilling feedback I've ever received doing this for a living might be from clients whose very successful theses and dissertations I've written in academic areas in which I never took a single college class, such as Nursing, Education, or Religion, and in academic areas in which my only formal education was one or two undergraduate courses 30 years ago, such as Political Science or Business Administration. Whatever I learn tends to come as an unintentional consequence or byproduct of researching projects in new areas as necessary to write those projects rather than as a function of any conscious need or deliberate effort to learn something as a prerequisite to being able to write about it intelligently.

It would certainly depend upon the complexity level of the paper. While there are ones that do not require a writer to be flexible and versatile (ie. simpler essays), oftentimes these essays require that writers have at least a background on the topic. Without said background, a writer would have to go back to square one just to provide a five-page paper, resulting to him spending more time than he would organically do in a topic that he already knows about. This is precisely why there are companies that ask writers what they specialize or are willing to write about.

In response to the thread topic: Do freelance writers (academic area) need to learn and expand their knowledge?...

I believe one should never stop trying to learn regardless of their career path or industry. The more we know, the better we can be at the work we do, in how we interact and understand others, and so forth. As they say, knowledge is power. We all need varied levels of power in all facets of life and the more we can learn, the more we can exceed in our personal and professional roles.

I view academic writing as similar to the occupation of a doctor. A doctor is constantly learning and honing his craft so that he can continuously get better at his craft and stay int he loop when it comes to the latest medical trends. In the case of a writer, it is important that he stay abreast of the current events in relation to possible future topics. A writer's knowledge has to be constantly expanding because the academic improvements in terms of teaching and information given to students will always be marching forward. The last thing a writer, who values his career, wants to do is to be left behind. That is why I encourage my writers, based on my own writing experiences, to continuously educate themselves. They do not need to attend formal studies to do that. Simply reading the news and bearing in mind the information received from these sources, will allow them to perform their task well. Mostly because they receive a foundation for possible essay topics as submitted by the students.

As I suggested earlier in this thread, I really don't think that writers need to continue substantive learning to be able to do this job extremely well. I've written (literally) thousands of really good essays on topics about which I knew almost nothing (or that I'd never even heard of) before those particular projects came up. It isn't as though we're writing these projects off the tops of our heads from our own independent knowledge of the subject matter. Reading extensively might help you become more comfortable taking on projects in some new areas and it helps you when projects require you to propose a topic; but that's really about it. If I need to write a project tomorrow about some disease (or, more broadly, about some issue in any field that I handle) that I've never heard of before tonight, that's no problem whatsoever and it really wouldn't matter whether or not I've ever read anything about it previously.