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.

Jen Miller, a New Jersey girl as well as being an author, blogger and freelance writer, deflates these and other popular myths about writers who work for themselves in an excellent post on her blog, Down the Shore with Jen.

Freelance writers are essentially entrepreneurs, and anybody who’s ever worked for themselves knows, when you’re the boss you have to work twice as hard because there’s nobody else there to pick up the slack. When you freelance, there are no paid sick days, vacations or holidays – if you’re not working, you’re not making money.

And just because you make your living writing doesn’t mean you spend all your time putting words on the page. Miller figures she spends 30 percent of her time writing. Other freelancers only spend 15 percent of their time writing. The rest of their time is devoted to researching publications, pitching ideas, doing interviews, chasing invoices, blogging, networking and maybe, just maybe, cleaning the office.

When it comes down to it, freelancing is like any other job. It’s work, and it comes with all the good and bad of any kind of work. But for the independent minded, it’s work where satisfaction is guaranteed.