Freelance writers are nervous by nature. There’s so much that has to go right for us to make money. Editors have to like our pitches and manuscripts. Articles have to run. Accounting departments have to issue us checks and checks have to clear.
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.
The problem is that many freelance writers try to make it as a writer full-time but aren’t willing to dedicate the time it takes to build a pipeline of work. Two months after I went full-time as a freelance writer, I was making more money than I did working for other companies. Enough money to pay all of my bills and live a comfortable life.
This did not come easy.
It meant sitting down every day and pouring over websites and responding to project ads, along with keeping up with the writing work I had on my plate. Now, even though I have a base of clients, that keep me steadily busy (sometimes swamped), I still sit down a couple of days a week and submit a few proposals online. This is how I add new clients to my pool. Referrals are the way my pool of clients has grown.
Freelancing (no matter whether it’s writing, designing, or life coaching) requires that you market your services to attract clients. It’s more than the writing. It’s the total package that is going to mean success.
I’m not saying that it isn’t OK to take another job if freelancing isn’t working out. What I’m saying is that you have to do everything you can to make it work, or it is doomed to fail.