Are You Passionate About Your Writing Career?

To be a freelance writer, you need to have good writing skills. That’s a given. You also need to be able to follow instructions carefully so that you clients get what they want. Having good communication skills helps you to develop good working relationships. All of these are skills that you can develop and improve on over time, but there is still a piece to the puzzle that is missing….we talk a lot about being “cool” like it’s something we should be striving for, but I wonder why we don’t value being passionate about what we do.

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Power Suits Not Included

by Ellen Goldstein

In Lisa Sonora Beam’s book The Creative Entrepreneur (Quarry Books, 2008), she presents the following journal prompt “Who is in my business advisory circle?” For the beginner freelance writer or editor, this can be a potentially traumatizing question. However, it doesn’t have to be. You don’t need an army of smart-phone-using, business-suited colleagues to have a business advisory circle (although for a few hours it might be nice); just a few people, some of whom you may already know, to give you advice about running a business.

Mine your friends and family.

Just as you have certain friends you talk to about relationships, you should have certain people with whom you can talk about your business. Even if none of your friends are freelance writers, they may still have experience with invoicing, paying taxes, researching lawyers, etc. Did you have a friend from elementary school who outsold everyone in Girl Scout cookies? Is she the marketing manager of some corporation? Call her up, remind her of your Girl Scout days, and ask her for advice.

When I took calculus in college, it was not my computer science friends (you know, the ones who took ordinary differential equations for fun) who helped me pass calculus. It was my French major friend who did not excel at math, but was a little more technical- and number-minded than I am, who got me through. In your advisory search, find someone who is farther along in her career than you, but not so far along that she can’t remember what it is like to be just starting out.

Find a consultant.

Get in touch with other freelancers you know. Offer to take them out for lunch and discuss the nitty gritty details of quarterly tax payments, as well as the more interesting aspects of your field. If you don’t know any freelancers (and even if you do), look into joining freelance and professional unions and associations. With a professional association, such as Editorial Freelance Association, you’ll find meetings, classes, resources, and even job leads. The National Writers Union or the Freelancers Union offer contract assistance and other business advice.

Look beyond traditional business mentoring models and check out local skillshares and barters. Bartering can be either a formal or informal exchange of goods or services, with no money changing hands. Craigslist has a barter section under its “for sale” section. Skillshares are more organized events where people lead workshops to teach other people what they know. Where else can you learn how to write a resume in the morning and fix your bicycle in the afternoon?

Find many consultants.
Maybe your consultant is actually a group. You might have luck finding business support in a group environment, such as a listserv, online forum, or support group. You can usually join a listserv for free, and become a part of valuable discussions, often about the very questions that plague you…or will soon enough. There are listservs for copy editors, science writers, poets, technical writers, and writing teachers, among many others.

Find a freelance support group. Get together with other people who are thinking of taking the freelance plunge or who have been practicing freelancers for years. Meet and discuss your insights, struggles, and coping methods. Set business goals for yourselves and work together to achieve them. Meetings are a great reason to leave the house and hang out with people who can talk shop with you.

And while building community, don’t forget to comment on your favorite blogs or freelance blog networks….

Ellen Goldstein is a freelance editor and poet living in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Do You Treat all Your Clients Equally?

I’ve been doing some reading about whether all clients are created equal, and most of what I have found suggests that they should be divided into categories depending on whether they are likely to give you more work and/or referrals. The idea is that you give better service to the clients that you have decided are most worth your while.

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You Have a Full Plate: Do You Keep Looking for Work?

Marketing should be a regular part of your schedule when you’re a freelance writer, but are there times when you should just focus on what you have in front of you? It’s a judgment call, and most people who work freelance know only too well that there can be times when you are so busy that you don’t know how you will ever get everything done and times when you are scrounging around for work. Ideally, you get to a point where you have steady work and you have a certain level of income every month, but that can change very quickly.

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The Broom Method of Building a Business

Have you ever heard the expression that if you put enough pieces of straw together, eventually you will have a broom? That expression has been floating around in my mind recently, and it led me to think about building a successful freelance writing business.

It is possible to build a business by starting off with small jobs first. When you first start working with a new client, they may start off by giving you a single article or a small assignment. This is a chance for both of you to get to know each other. You can turn it in and if you would prefer not to work with that person again, you don’t need to. (You can always say that you are fully booked if the client gets in touch with you again, if you have to.)

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Some Thoughts About Balance and a Freelance Writing Career

by Jodee Redmond

Some blog posts just beg to be written, and this one has been rolling around in my head all day. I was talking to a client on Skype recently and he was asking about how I balance my work and having a family and stuff. (He has recently taken the plunge and quit working for someone else to work full time for himself.) It made me start thinking about the idea of balance, since it is something that we are told we should be striving for in our lives.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think that it’s possible to have everything perfectly balanced all the time.

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You Can Lead a Horse to Water…One Writer’s Journey

Note from Jodee: Freelance writer Spencer Spellman shares his thoughts about freelance writing and the importance of perseverance and marketing your services. Enjoy!

by Spencer Spellman

It was about 18 months ago when I decided I would dabble into writing. I had recently been laid off from a job and had moved in hopes of finding better work, but instead found myself finding something worse. After months of putting writing off, I was going to write one article, just to get some feedback on it. That one article began a snowball effect that is still building.

I never did get feedback on my article. However, I did get an email from the magazine’s editor, a week after I submitted it, telling me they needed a short biography to include with the article in their next publication. Now just a year and a half later, I’m an editor for an online travel publication, as well as a part-time freelance writer. I don’t tell you this to flaunt my achievements, but to inspire you.

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Freelance Writing: Working Without a Net

by Jodee Redmond

I’ve been asked more than once how I deal with the lack of security that goes along with working as a freelance writer. Since I’ve started freelancing, I’ve come to understand why actors and other creative types are said to be insecure. You are only as good as your last performance (gig), and there are no guarantees that you will get another assignment. Talk about working without a net! At the same time, I feel more secure as a self-employed freelancer than I did when I was working for someone else.

Why? It’s quite simple, really. When I work for myself, then I’m in control of my business. I can decide whether I have enough on my plate or if I need to devote more time to applying for freelance writing jobs or pitching potential clients. I have been in the position of being laid off from an office job due to circumstances that were beyond my control and that had nothing to do with my job performance. I would rather succeed or fail based on my own efforts than work for someone else.

Does that mean I always feel secure? Not at all. But then again, I didn’t feel particularly secure when I worked for someone else. (At one place where I used to work, the woman in charge of Personnel liked to fire people on Friday afternoons, so a lot of us made a point of not answering our phones after lunch that day. The logic was that if she couldn’t find you to summon up to her office, she couldn’t fire you….)

I guess the bottom line here is that we can all control how we feel about who we are and what we do. Security is something that comes from within, even though it can be a struggle to feel that way at times. Just like the lady in the photo here, if we focus on being afraid and think about whether we are going to fall, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Even if we don’t feel particularly secure at any given time, we can project a confident image (which is half the battle) to our clients and potential clients.

Do you feel secure in your freelance career or is that something you struggle with?

Four Tips for Starting your Freelance Life

Note from Jodee: Freelance Writer Meaghan Campbell has contributed today’s post. I know you will enjoy reading it.

by Meaghan Campbell

After two years of technical writing I was itching for more creative work. To escape creative annihilation, I started The Word Boutique, my very own freelance business. These best-practice tips I’ve learned will help any freelancer along the way.

1. Build your network, whenever you can.

No writer stands alone. I didn’t have a leg to stand on when I started freelancing, but I built my network wherever I could. I asked former classmates to critique my samples. I joined list serves and commented on every blog and freelance networking group I could. Sometimes my networking was accidental. When I emailed an old colleague to find talent to create my website, he offered to do it for free.

Lesson learned: The key to networking isn’t knowing CEO’s, presidents, or editor’s-in-chiefs. It’s about knowing people who can help you without breaking your budget. Tell everyone you know about your freelance business, even if they’re not in your field. You never know when you might need a web developer or graphic artist, or when a fellow freelancer might need your creative mind. Just remember to pay it forward – when that software developer needs someone to write his web copy, return the favour.

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Focus on Substance, Not Style

by Jodee Redmond

“Cos we all just wanna be big rock stars….” (Rock Star, Nickelback)

The term “rock star” is thrown around a lot more lately than it ever used to be. I’ve even seen ads in my online travels for job leads where a client actually mentions in the ad that they want to hire a rock star when they are looking for a writer.

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to hire (or be) a person who rocks whatever it is they are working on. Taking pride in your work and doing your best never go out of style. They may be considered old fashioned values, but they are an important part of your success as a freelance writer.

By all means, get out there and rock it, but don’t confuse style with substance. You can create a brand for yourself and have all kinds of online buzz happening, but if you don’t have a solid foundation to back it up, you aren’t going to last very long. Real rock stars may live life on the edge (at least they did back in the day), but there was a foundation of talent and hard work there, too.

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