When the economy goes south, we worry even more than usual, especially this go round when on top of a recession that’s getting worse by the month the very nature of the publishing industry is changing and many markets that were historically good to freelancers are drying up.

Some writers I know are battening down the hatches, sticking with tried and true markets, going after corporate work or devoting time they normally would have spent sending letters of introduction or queries to volunteer work, exercising or brushing up on their German.

Then there are those who decide that if they can’t earn what they need from writing alone they’ll take another job.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. When it comes to paying the mortgage and putting food on the table, sometimes you have to do what you have to do. And you’d be in good company.  Anton Chekhov considered himself a doctor who wrote on the side. Stephen King was still a high-school teacher when he wrote his first novel. Joseph Wambaugh continued working in the Los Angeles Police Department’s detective unit even after his first books were published. If it worked for them, it can definitely work for us too.

In the last year I have writer acquaintances who have taken full or part-time jobs as:

* A researcher/investigator for private investigator agency
* A chamber of commerce marketing and communications director
* A university professor
* A university communications representative
* A retail sales associate – that would be Caitlin Kelly, who wrote a fantastic essay about the experience in the Feb. 15 New York Times.

Another freelance acquaintance has her name in for a job managing a sports complex. She’s been told that if she gets the job she could even do freelance work from her office when business is slow. But she wonders about how it would look.

At a time when the country’s losing hundreds of thousands of jobs, we should be beyond caring how to looks. It’s a job, and that’s huge. And since we freelancers are good at turning anything and everything we see or experience into fodder for stories, think how much new material having a job in a different industry will provide when things turn around and magazines and Websites start buying stories again.

Bottom line: you don’t need a degree to get work as a writer.

Even if you have no professional journalism experience, j-school isn’t the only answer.

I’ve been there. In college I was editor of the student newspaper but my degree was in English literature, so I went to journalism grad school because I thought I needed “real” training. After a year, I realized a masters in journalism was for people who had absolutely no previous experience writing or wanted to be an academic.

I was neither – and struggling to support myself. So after a year I quit and got a job at as a trade magazine writer and editor (there was a recession, entry-level newspaper jobs were non-existent). Many years later, after I’d worked as a weekly and then daily newspaper reporter and then as a freelance writer, I went back to grad school – as the professor. I taught online newswriting to grad students. My only qualifications were those years I’d spent practicing the craft.

So if you’re contemplating going back to school to give your writing career a kick in the pants, there are other ways:

If you’re already writing, stick with it. Find some regular gigs – it is possible in this economy. If you have very little experience, you may need to start small and work your way up – and in these days of Craigslist writing jobs and Web content producers, there are lots of opportunities for starting small.

Blog. There’s no substitute for writing day in and day out. If you don’t want to maintain your own blog, find one on a subject you’re interested in and pitch a few blog posts. I don’t ordinarily advocate writing for free, but if you’re just starting out, you’ve gotta prove to somebody you can do the work – but then move on. And if you’re already established, hunt for paid gigs, they’re out there.

If you’re worried about your skills being out of date, there’s an abundance of non-degree track classes on using multimedia in journalism you can take online or in person. Organizations like the Knight Digital Media Center and News University offer scholarships or cover part of the expense. Take lots of them, and while you’re at it, do a lot of networking so you meet people who could potentially open doors for you.

Find someone with the job you’d like to have some day. Follow them on Twitter. Invite them to connect with you on LinkedIn. If they live in the same town you do, invite them to lunch. Ask them to mentor you. Don’t become a stalker. Do soak up as much knowledge as they’re willing to impart – then when you’ve got your writing business up and running pay it forward to some other acolyte.

Yes, getting a master’s degree could give you some official validation in the profession, and not having that might bug you in some deep down part of your being, a lot like the way that it still bothers me. But you don’t need it. Just go do it.

Today’s reruns: how writers can beat the recession.

Top 10 digital media trends of 2008

Make money writing about the financial crisis

Freelancers find creative ways to save, grow during bad times

The WordCount bad economy survival kit

Going freelance in a down economy

Freelancers’ strategies for prospering in bad times

There’s nothing you can do about the Wall Street financial crisis or the $700 billion bail out package that Congress is debating as I write this. You can’t control the economy, or the price of gas or who’s going to win the presidential election in November.

In the face of so uncertainty, it’s easy to feel helpless. Especially when you’re an independently employed writer whose livelihood depends on the circumstances of others.

But between the choices of doing nothing and feeling helpless and doing something, I vote for doing something. So here are 10 things a freelance writer can do today to feel better about the economy and your place in it:

1. Update your resume. Ideally, it’s on your Website so the changes are easy and immediate.

2. Update your online presence. Make sure your latest clips are on your Website or blog. Revamp your profile on LinkedIn. Sign up with Facebook or Plaxo. Be sure to list any clients you’ve started writing for recently, writing groups or associations you’ve joined or classes you’ve taken to update your skills.

3. Submit expense receipts. Everybody’s got at least a few expenses that have been sitting around way too long. If you write for publications that reimburse expenses, that’s money in your pocket. What are you waiting for?

4. Send invoices. It’s easy to get consumed with the minutia of getting stories done and out the door. Just don’t forget to send an invoice along with them. And once those checks come in, bank them ASAP.

5. Send out a query. It doesn’t have to be the world’s best, or the world’s longest. The point is to send something and get the process going.

6. Go through your contacts. Look at your Rolodex, Outlook, LinkedIn connections or Facebook friends. Reach out to any who’ve taken a new job or moved to a different company to say hi or reconnect. Not every communication has to be specifically about work, but you never know when a simple “How’s it going?” could open the door to an opportunity.

7. Email every editor you’ve worked with in the past six months. Ask if they’ve got assignments that don’t have writers attached to them yet. Ask if they’re taking pitches. Ask if they know of other editors at their publication who are. In other words, ask for work.

8. Brainstorm. Read through old story notes or pitches from PR agencies for a nugget or conversation thread that you could turn into a query. Take a shower, go for a long walk or a bike ride – whatever activity you use to get the creative juices flowing. Bring a notepad along in case you’re inspired.

9. Clean your office. Go through files and throw away things you don’t use any more or don’t need to keep. Flipping through old papers might flip the old idea switch. Even if it doesn’t, a clean office is like a fresh start.

10. Commiserate. You might work alone, but you’re not going through this alone. There’s a world of freelancers out there in the same position. Talk to them. Share suggestions. Why reinvent the wheel when you can borrow great ideas from people just like you.

What suggestions do other writers have for things to do right now to feel better about the economy?

SWOT is the name of a career assessment technique espoused by Grant Plowman, owner of Interactive Media Publishing, a digital media publishing company in southern Oregon. I mentioned Plowman earlier this year in a post about how freelance writers can cope with bad times.

According to Plowman, freelancers can use SWOT, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, to pinpoint where they are in their careers and what they could be doing better. The exercise entails analyzing your strengths, evaluating weaknesses, examining opportunities with present or potential clients and looking at threats to existing client relationships and whether the services you provide represent a value that exceeds its cost. The entire exercise could be done over a weekend, Plowman says.

Here’s how it works:

Strengths- Write down all your strengths. Include everything you’re good at, whether you’re currently “selling” it or not. “Be bold, confident and put all those things on the matrix that you are comfortable providing,” Plowman says. “Be expansive, but honest – this is not a time for self doubt.” One way to find what you’re good is to ask friends, peers and previous supervisors for their input. It “may lead to new insights about your strengths,” Plowman says.

After creating your list of strengths, use it to re-do your marketing brochure, standard letter of introduction, Website and profile on LinkedIn or Facebook. Stress your strengths and the benefits you could bring to an organization you work with. Refresh recommendations and testimonials by re-contacting people. At the same time, ask them about possible writing opportunities. Use the opportunity to build your contacts list.

Weaknesses – Next, create a list of your weaknesses. Be candid and complete. This isn’t meant to be a downer, but to help determine where you cannot compete well, Plowman says.

Opportunities – Next, explore opportunities. Define which of your strengths represents the best opportunity. Build a contribution index, a cross reference between your strengths and how they apply to both short-term and long-term business opportunities.

Look at your existing clients. If you can, find out about their short-term and long-term plans. Look at your present work and consider how it applies to those plans. Explore what they see happening in their business in the near future. “Remember your contact’s position may limit their perspective,” Plowman says. “Develop new contacts through introductions from existing contacts. This is an intricate, delicate dance, be cautious not to step on any toes. Do not destroy or harm existing relationships in attempting to build new ones.”

Contact previous and potential clients as well. Inquire about possibilities for work. Remember to share your strengths and how they could benefit the company.

Threats – Finally, examine the work you’re currently doing and whether it represents a value to your clients that exceeds their cost. “You may not have all the information you need to assess the situation,” Plowman says. In that case, use your analytical skills to guestimate. Take a top-down perspective of your current relationships and look for weaknesses.

Have you done any kind of analysis of your current freelance writing business. If so, what was the result?

At least that’s what Susan Johnston is hoping. Johnston is a Boston writer and creator of The Urban Muse blog, which I’ve mentioned here before. Though Johnston has freelanced for some time, she recently left a steady job to pursue it full time. She’s agreed to talk about what led to her decision and how she’s making it work in this WordCount guest post. Here’s her story:

I’ve been freelancing for several years, but I finally made the leap to full time freelancing a little less than a month ago. Most of the people in my life were supportive but a few practical people wondered, “Are you sure this is the right time? Why not wait until the economy bounces back?”

I concluded that there is never a “perfect” time to make a major life change, so I trusted my gut and jumped in. Here’s how I did it.

1. Minimize spending. Even though I had a bit of cushion when I quit my job, I also know that editors and clients can take a long time to process payment. In the case of one website, it took over a year for me to get paid – needless to say I don’t write for them anymore. Fortunately, I’m a saver by nature and several of my clients do pay promptly, but working from home has made it even easier to curb my spending. I can go to the movie matinee instead of paying full price. Plus, I’m not buying as many convenience foods and I don’t have to pay for dry cleaning or commuting costs anymore. Which makes me wonder why I didn’t leave my job sooner.

2. Diversify. I’d love to spend all my time writing magazine features, but with advertising dollars down, many of my editors just aren’t handing out as many assignments as they used to. Fortunately, I also do copywriting, which offers a decent hourly rate and steady work while I send out queries. I also picked up some extra cash proofreading marketing materials and writing for a local guidebook. Though I haven’t had to rely on it yet, I also contacted some creative staffing firms about picking up extra work through them. Other writers tell me this is a great way to fill the gaps between assignments.

3. Use those contacts. When I told my boss I was going full time freelance, I softened the blow by offering to complete some projects remotely and train my successor. He gladly accepted my offer, so now my old company is one of my new clients. I also ran into a friend of a friend at a networking event and mentioned that I’d just gone full time freelance. She publishes a local guidebook I mentioned above and invited me to contribute. Give people examples of the type of work you do and they might know someone needs you.

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Here are other WordCount posts on freelancing in a down economy:
Freelancers strategies for prospering in bad times
Taking my own advice for beating bad times
Marketing your freelance writing in bad times
What me worry? Magazine startups venture into an uncertain economy