What You Probably Don’t Know About Freelance Writing

To many people, writing professionally is a dream that never seems to come true. Sure, they dream about quitting their day job and writing for a living. They perceive writing as an easy life, but it’s far from it.

Articles on freelance writing often present writing as a glamorous profession. While a few writers achieve celebrity status, most live with the day-to-day struggle of finding work and paying bills. Doesn’t sound very glamorous, does it?

Some people work just to make money and many don’t really enjoy what they do. And while writing can be a more fulfilling occupation than working in an office handling expense reports or working in a fast food restaurant, the writing life can be hard and stressful if you’re not prepared. You’ll have to constantly search for new markets, make deadlines, work through times of little or no work, and manage finances. This last item is what brings down most beginning freelance writers.

Were you good at math in school? At the time, you probably had no idea how math might play a role in your success or failure of your freelance business. As a freelance writer, you’ll have to keep track of your expenses, report taxes, and manage submissions. Unless you’re independently wealthy, you’ll need a budget that allows you to keep a roof over your head, food on the table, and the Internet powered up. That means you’ll need accurate record keeping to stay ahead of your bills. And you’ll have to be able to predict income throughout the year and figure out percentages of income at year’s end.

If you’re imagining being able to do what you want and living the life of Reilly, think again. You’ll need to be organized and disciplined. Record keeping will become a big part of your life. After all, you’ll be in business for yourself. Too many writers don’t see the similarity between what they do and what their dry cleaner or auto mechanic do. Both are owners of small businesses.

You’ll also need to back up information. You never know when you’re computer will unexpectedly die and you’ll lose all your data. You have to plan for fires, floods, and other catastrophes. So you’ll need to keep excellent records that you save in multiple locations.

To be a successful freelancer, you have to take risks. Someone once said that freelance writers should be brave enough to jump off a bridge even though they can’t see the water beneath them. You’ll have to believe that you’ll continue to find work, even though you may only have a handful of projects assigned at any given moment. If you’re waiting for the perfect conditions to become a freelance writer, they’ll never come.

Ask any freelance writer if what they do is worth it, and just about all will tell you—without hesitation---that they wouldn’t do anything else.

Too Good to Be True

“Make a great living while working from home (or from a coffee shop, or poolside, or while you travel) ...YOU decide what you write about and for whom.” Sounds almost too good to be true. In fact, that’s just what it is.

The above blurb, promoting a free webinar and report, recently appeared in a Writer’s Digest Update Email. Look at the phrases used—great living, working from home, coffee shop, poolside, while you travel—all things you’d love to do. And that’s the catch. Each of these phrases causes unsuspecting writer wannabees to start day dreaming about a life they’d love to have, away from the drudgery of the cubicle they inhabit every day.

There are lots of seminars and come-ons out there, enticing beginners. Each plays on the dreams of people like you. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad to dream. But as far as writing is concerned, it pays to add a touch of practicality to your dreams.

Let’s look at each of these phrases.

Make a great living. Yes, you can make a living as a writer—I’ve been doing it for 29 years. But only a handful of lucky writers makes a “great” living. In fact, as I’ve said so many times in this blog, writing is hard work and generally the pay is often in the moderate range. Unless a writer produces a blockbuster bestseller, about the only way to make big bucks is to do corporate writing. And that puts you right back in the cubicle, even if only virtually.

Working from home. In today’s technologically inspired marketplace, you can do a lot of things from home. Computers make that possible. So why writing? You may be passionate about writing. Or perhaps friends have told you that you write well. Or you may look at writing as a way to get people to notice you.

From a coffee shop. Everyone imagines themselves sitting in a Starbucks writing the next great American novel. Have you been to a Starbucks recently? Chances are you won’t find a seat. That’s because so many people use it as their mobile office. It seems everyone in the place has a laptop open to the Internet or is working on a document or spreadsheet. However, if you ignore the caché of Starbucks and try Dunkin Donuts, for example, you’ll usually have the place to yourself.  Isn’t what you’re doing more important than where you’re doing it?

Poolside. The same applies to sitting poolside and working on your laptop. This isn’t the safest place to work, unless you just happen to have your own pool. If that’s the case, you probably don’t need to make a living as a writer in the first place. But if you try this at a public pool or swim club, chances are the kiddies will splash that shiny new laptop of yours and ruin whatever you are working on.

While you travel. Everyone—and I mean nearly everyone—dreams of traveling the world and writing about it. It seems like the ideal glamorous life. However, they see it from a vacation perspective, not a working perspective. Most likely the only travel they’ve done has been on vacation, where time isn’t important and they can do pretty much what they want. But working while traveling is something else. You’ll be constantly living out of a suitcase. Unless you’re independently wealthy, you’ll have to beg someone else to pay for your trip—and travel isn’t cheap these days. And finally, depending on your schedule and the work you need to accomplish, you may not even have time to enjoy the places you visit. And forget about a family life. You won’t have time for it.

So before you get suckered into free webinars or costly seminars that promise to show you the way to writing riches, think carefully the practical side of being a full-time writer.