When you work as a freelance writer / blogger, the basic idea is that you are working for yourself since you are an independent contractor who can pick and choose your jobs, your work schedule and so forth. However, the reality is that you are working for clients who will have demands and procedures that you will have to follow to some extent if you are going to continue to do the job well. This differs greatly from being someone who branches out into launching a blog or a web writing service in which the writer sets the terms.
This is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately as I’ve been trying to make the transition from working as a contract writer to working on my own plans for launching a new business. Some of the issues that have come up as I have been dealing with this transition include:
- Money. I do love to write but I also write for pay and so money ends up being a big consideration. The reality is that I can make a whole heck of a lot more money just getting good, steady, high-paying jobs working as a writer for the blogs of other people. The money is much less stable and sure and steady when it comes to trying to formulate my own business plan. Plus, it requires a capital investment which means that I have the potential to actually lose money doing this type of work.
- Creative Fulfillment. Writers do write because they want creative fulfillment and I am no exception. For the past six months I have been putting in long working hours to make a whole lot of money and I’ve had to acknowledge the fact that there’s this constant nagging feeling that I’m missing out on something in life because I don’t love the actual work that I am doing. I am excited about the creative potential in a new business despite the concerns that I have about it.
- Comfort Zones. I am an excellent blogger. I can command high rates, I do my work well and I’m satisfied to know that I get great results for my clients. I’m comfortable in that role. It’s not nearly as comfortable to launch a business and to not know if it’s what I want to be doing.
- Moving Forward. The reality is that I probably don’t want to just write blog posts for other people for the rest of my life, day in and day out with no other forward motion in my career. On top of the fact that this sounds stagnant, I believe that the future will bring changes to the Internet that ultimately make that type of job either obsolete or far less lucrative than it is today. As a result, I’m inclined to start thinking about moving forward with my own business.
These are just some of the ideas that I have been thinking about as I’ve been mulling over my options. Ultimately I’m leaning towards a combination of the two - continuing to do steady work for some clients while branching out on my own. But I think that balance is something that you always have to deal with because you’re always going to have clients on some level which you’ll need to accommodate in some way.
Question of the Day: How can writers balance the need to be creatively fullfilled with the need to please clients in their line of work?
The day is about half over in terms of the work that I will be getting done before I head out of the office. I finished feeding my caffeine addiction hours ago and have already eaten lunch. The afternoon will be spent on tasks that differ greatly from those that I have already completed earlier today. That’s because I seem to have a brain that works incredibly differently in the morning than in the afternoon. I think that a lot of writers experience this.
In the mornings, I feel open to ideas and optimistic about the options that are available to me when playing around with different ideas. I feel more creative and more exploratory about things. By the afternoon, I feel disinterested in playing around with creative ideas. I feel more like taking care of rote tasks that have to be handled than I do in trying to write brilliant articles.
The good thing about the writing business is that there is a time for creativity and there is a time for the tedious tasks. For many months, I was trying to force myself into a pattern of getting up and getting going on the articles that had to be written for the day. However, I’ve started working on doing more creative things in the morning in terms of planning out business changes and working on the articles that are going to be more creative in their content.
After lunch is when I tend to tackle the keyword articles and the accounting that must be done. I like to think that I still manage to insert some creativity into things like link articles but it’s okay if they aren’t quite as thought-filled as my plans for my writing business are, I think. And I think it’s important that writers pay attention to when they work best and allow that to dictate their schedules rather than allowing deadlines to determine everything.
Question of the Day: Is your writing schedule dictated by your own needs or the needs of your clients?
The hiatus that I took from posting on this blog (see post below) ended up taking a lot longer than I had expected that it would take. That’s because I didn’t really have a clear vision of what I wanted for this blog. I thought I’d made a plan but then it didn’t seem right. Rather than doing something I wasn’t really clear about, I decided to take the time to figure out what it is that I am really doing. And now I’m back.
Real Words has returned to it’s original purpose - it’s just a blog where I will share my thoughts on what I’m doing as a web writer and what it’s like to be leading a life in full-time web writing. It’s not going to concern itself with columns or keywords or any other nonsense. It’s just a blog. And it’s back!
