I did a consult the other day with someone who wanted to be a speech writer. He had the usual questions that ran the gamut of how to find clients, whether you needed to have written a lot of speeches to sell yourself as a speech writer, and about how much you could realistically expect to make. These were not unreasonable questions at first glance, but since he was coming from a corporate 9-5 background, he was putting the cart before the horse. He failed to ask the more pertinent questions. What is the day/week/life in the life of a freelance speech writer like? What personality traits should you have to make it?
There is something else more important. If you are thinking of leaving the dark but comfortable side of the corporate world and planning to jump to the freelance side, then you need to look yourself in the mirror and ask "what can I do that I feel truly, madly, deeply about?". If you can't do that you are in for a very rough time.
Freelancing is not for the faint hearted. You may go days on end with no billable hours. You need an understanding partner who has a life of his/her own since, if you are not working in fact, you are working in your head. Finding balance is difficult because you get hooked on the adrenaline of work.
At times you may be scared. But you will never be bored. That's a pretty good deal.
So remember. Truly, madly, deeply. Accept no substitutes.
5 comments:
So how do you figure out what you feel truly, madly, deeply about?
So do you mean we need to feel truly madly deeply about writing itself, because if we freelance, writing is going to be basically our whole waking - even dreaming - life?
Or are you talking about feeling truly madly deeply about WHAT we write about?? And if you are talking about feeling truly madly and deeply about what we write about, what if the topics and genres we truly madly deeply love are not the 'marketable' ones?
Ideally, we would each find our own special niche and write about stuff we are interested in - truly madly deeply interested in! - but HOW? And can we flourish as freelancers if we are not writing about what we are truly madly deeply into??
Or is it that we need to feel truly madly deeply about NOT working at a confining, repetitive, deadening job?!
All of the above. Gee, that helps!
First you will find out you pretty quickly if you have the constitution for the freelance life. If you can get used to not having a regular pay cheque, and don't find the idea of selling yourself repulsive then you are on your way to getting to the Truly Madly Deeply - the TMD feeling.
The next part takes a bit of refining. Finding your own TMD niche. For most writers there are two avenues. Pick a genre of writing you love. For me it is speech writing. I can get the TMD feeling - most of the time - with the idea of putting words in other peoples' mouths. I get to write on all sorts of different subjects. And I can be interested in anything - even boring topics - for the two or three days it takes to write a speech. On the other hand I would rather off myself in the public square than write brochures. So is there a genre you could get that TMD feeling about? Newsletters? Annual Reports? Brochures? You get the idea.
Don't have a genre that you can feel passionate about?
How about a subject? What could you go on and on about? Animals? The environment? Computer stuff? Biotechnology? Find something you would love to talk about for free, then begin to think about clients whose business meets your TMD passion.
The interesting thing about finding a TMD niche - either genre or subject - the narrower the nice the more money you can make. Usually.
Hope that helps.
Yes, that helps sort it out in my head (for what good that is!). I do know what topics I have TMD passion for - that I could talk, read, learn, and write about for 'forever.' The next step is of course to find out whether these topics are ones that I can make a living writing about and for... is the market there, how do I research this market, how do I access this market, how do I start?! I know I have the answers to these questions... I just have to start doing it. Ah, yes! Start actually doing it. So simple!
Love that line about "working in your head." Quite true!
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