Today, I’m giving you three tips for starting or amping up a part- or full-time freelance writing career. Tomorrow, you get three more.
There aren’t many careers that allow you to follow your passion while earning a living. And there aren’t many people who can establish the balance one needs in order to create a business around their passion.
Would you like to establish a career as a freelance writer? Do you dream of writing full-time? Follow the suggestions below and your dream could become a reality.
1: Spend time writing whether it is convenient to do so or not. Perhaps you have a full life—you work eight or ten hours a day outside the home, you do a lot of charity work and/or you enjoy an active social life. We each establish lifestyles that suit our needs and desires. Our routines are important to us. In fact, it represents our comfort zone. To step outside of this zone, even to pursue something we think we want to do, often causes some discomfort. What to do? You have choices. You can give up your dream of writing or try easing into the writing realm. When people say, “I want to write, but I just don’t have time,” what they mean is, “Writing is not one of my priorities right now.”
Make writing a priority and you will find the time.
2: Make time to write. Usually this means making some sacrifices. What are you willing to give up in order to write? Sleep, TV, Internet surfing or perhaps overtime at work? If your life is filled during all of your waking hours with specific activities and rituals, then something will have to change in order to accommodate your desire to write. And the change won’t occur just by wishing or hoping. It will take your concerted effort.
Get up an hour earlier or stay up an hour later and spend this time writing. Turn off the TV more often—much more often. Say “no” to every other social invitation. What may feel like a sacrifice at first, will become part of your new writing routine. If writing is your passion, you will soon feel blessed to have the time to write rather than feeling deprived of time in front of the TV.
3: Be realistic about your writing choices. Perhaps your true dream is to support yourself by writing stories for your favorite romance magazines. Or maybe you’d like to become a novelist. It is extremely difficult to break in as a career writer of fiction. If fiction is your writing bag, I strongly urge you to set that dream aside for now and pursue a mode of writing that is more likely to produce the monetary results you are seeking. If you’re planning to earn a living through writing, nonfiction is easier to sell and a more reasonable medium to engage in. Establish yourself as a nonfiction writer, first—start the flow of work and the flow of money. Then, add to your writing repertoire in order to facilitate your love of fiction.
Here’s what I recommend: start writing articles for magazines, seek freelance writing work in corporate offices or on the Internet or produce some how-to booklets on topics related to your expertise, for example.
Now there’s a creative and viable idea. Whether you give horseback riding lessons, make beaded jewelry, are a whiz at finances, raise poodles, do nails or grow herbs, create booklets on various aspects of your knowledge and distribute them for sale to clients, appropriate specialty stores, from your Web site and so forth.
Let’s take the subject of manicures as an example. You could write booklets on the care of your nails, cuticle health, how to give yourself and others a professional quality pedicure, manicure styles over the years, what your nail color choice reveals about your personality, how to decorate your nails for the holidays, recommended products or old-wives tales about nails. And you can submit articles on these topics to magazines at the same time.
There are a gazillion things to write about and even more ways to present each of them. And there are 24 hours in each and every day. Clear space on your daily agenda and start writing about some of those ideas and you could start the flow of paychecks before Christmas.