Now you’re writing for the big names like Forbes, Mashable, NYTimes, and others. You’re bringing in six-figures, living the dream, traveling the world, and meeting powerful influencers. Or maybe that’s still the goal, but you’re closer to getting there.

What was your most profound moment? Was it the day that your article made its way to the homepage of a popular online magazine? Was it the day that clients started coming to you?

Freelancing is hard work — moments of scarce work and unemployment definitely aren’t for the faint of heart. But then there’s the good stuff that constantly reminds you why you started writing in the first place.

That Day When You Became an Expert

Writer Brian Honigman lives dual lives — by day, he’s the digital marketing executive at Marc Ecko Enterprises, and by night, he’s a social media specialist, SEO expert, startup adviser, and freelance writer. The top moment of his freelance career was when these two worlds converged.

“I write for a few publications, one of which being AllFacebook,” he said. “I wrote an article for the publication about how four apparel brands were making shopping cool on Facebook. I mentioned the tactics that the clothing brand Ecko Unltd was using on Facebook in the article.”

That story landed him what many marketers would call a dream job.

“A few days later, someone from Ecko’s marketing team contacted me,” Honigman said. “After a few discussions over the following months, I was hired at Marc Ecko Enterprises as pat of the marketing team.”

“It’s really amazing the type of conversations and connections that writing can help create.”

Connections are the heart of freelance writing — no matter who you’re writing for or about, you’re bound to make amazing connections.

“Freelance writing is a beneficial way of connecting with the world and helping share valuable insights on what writers know best from their personal experiences,” Honigman said. “It’s really amazing the type of conversations and connections that writing can help create.”

The Day that Set You Free

Since childhood, Justin P. Lambert had one lifelong dream — to become a writer.

“I remember finally getting permission to use my mom’s old grey typewriter one summer when I was probably 8 or 9 years old, and it was as if my words suddenly had legitimacy,” he wrote in his personal blog.

Then real life happened, and Lambert did what most Americans do — he got a job. And then he got another.

“My top moment as a freelance writer was — without a doubt — the day I quit my full-time desk job for good and removed ‘moonlighting’ from my elevator speech forever,” Lambert said. “I’ve been a recovered office drone for 18 months now, and I’ve never been happier with my career.”

“There have been plenty of bumps and bruises along the way.”

Don’t be fooled by illusions of glamour, however. It’s no secret that the freelancer’s life is rough.

“There have been plenty of bumps and bruises along the way,” he said. “But I wouldn’t trade the freedom and satisfaction that comes with supporting my family with my mind — not for all the steady paychecks and cubicle shackles in the world.”

Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday

As an award-winning copywriter, blogger, social media strategist, and content creator, Kathryn Aragon has spent 25 years helping marketing teams succeed.

Her top moment? All of them.

“Every time I hit a goal or take my business to the next level, I find myself celebrating as if it were my first and only successes,” she said. “It’s hard for me to select just one high point in my freelance career.”

It’s that energy that fuels her inspiration.

“Every day I wake up to a new challenge — and there’s no limit to the number or size of them,” she said. “I reach for the stars and party like crazy when I touch one.”

Image courtesy of Kutlayev Dmitry/shutterstock

The Freelance Strategist is a daily publication for and by freelance creative workers navigating today's changing employment landscape. Brought to you by Contently.

“You can’t get by anymore just writing about one thing,” said lifestyle writer Jenna Birch. “If you try to do that, you are closing yourself off to a host of publications. You need to adapt to new topics by cultivating clips and expert topics.”

According to freelance writer Connie K. Ho, there’s a balance that needs to be achieved — there’s more to the business of writing than simply having or not having a niche.

“I believe that having a niche can be useful, as you can show that you’re an expert in the topic and you develop a network of people to use as sources,” Ho said. “However, it’s also good to be able to write about other topics to expand your range and writing opportunities. Like everything else in life, it’s a balancing act in terms of writing articles in your niche but also writing about other topics as well.”

Be economical

Birch, who regularly works with Mom.me, Women’s Health, and Men’s Health emphasizes that specialties are different from niches — you can be a subject matter expert without narrowing down your value.

“I read something once that said you should have two kinds of writing going on at once: the projects that you love and the projects that pay the bills,” she said. “Honestly, I think having a true niche and sticking just to that niche will harm you.”

Birch suggests that writers need to develop the ability to expand beyond just one specific kind of assignment to build a true career.

“You have to spread your wings,” she said. “I like this approach: always having something in the works that you really, really love crafting – maybe an essay or investigative piece – and then bread-and-butter work, which for me covers topics from parenting to health. That way, it’s constantly fresh.”

Value in a personal brand

Every writer needs an elevator pitch, and in this respect, a niche may seem helpful. As Birch explains, however, there’s more substance to it.

“Since I had no clips when I started, I spent 12-hour days scouring online job boards for work – places like NYC/LA Craigslist and ed2010 – figuring eventually I’d stumble upon someone willing to give an unproven writer a shot,” Birch said. “I focused on what I knew best, especially related to the publications I read most, and targeted fashion-writing jobs.”

“I think having a true niche and sticking just to that niche will harm you.”

Specialization was Birch’s entry into the field, but was far from her ultimate goal. From day one, she committed to growing her brand.

“I focused on fashion initially but never wanted to box myself into that,” she said. “I never considered myself a ‘fashion writer’ or anything like that. I always kept all options available and was so open-minded about opportunities.”

Where a niche can help you is in the ability to develop a network of contacts.

“I could my focus on health topics as I was working at a health clinic, and I felt I could bring my experience in the healthcare industry to my writing as well as to build off of my contacts,” Ho said.

It comes down to confidence & credibility

Ambition, tenacity, and determination are Birch’s key driving forces.

“If a new site or assignment came along, I’d think: Can I do this? Do I know enough about it? Can I handle this job? The answer was always yes,” she said. “I am perpetually curious and endlessly inquisitive, so I think I’ve always gone into assignments knowing at least a little about the topic. If I don’t know enough? I research.”

Birch’s words of wisdom — don’t jump into a niche just because you’re scared, and quit making excuses. Fear and self-doubt will only hold you back.

“With all the resources you have available to gather information, fear is just an excuse and a scapegoat,” she said. “In terms of qualities that helped me develop a reputation, I think it all boils down to one thing: never saying no. Be that writer. Be up for any assignment, able to find any source, willing to tackle any edits. I will pitch if the editor wants more ideas, I will turn things around quickly, I will find a way to produce a high-quality, polished piece every time.”

Ho emphasizes that it’s important to focus on your credibility beyond your specialty.

“In the beginning, it was difficult because I hadn’t established relationships or credibility with other publications,” Ho said. “However, once I started writing, turning in articles in a timely manner, and following up with editors, I believe it showed the organizations that I was someone who could be trusted and depended on.”

And When Things Aren’t Perfect?

So what.

“There’s always temptation to put something off, say no, or raise the white flag if something isn’t going your way,” Birch said. “Don’t do it. Things are going to go wrong; do everything in your power to turn things around, and make them go right.”

Don’t let your niche hold you back.

Image courtesy of fdecomite/flickr

The Freelance Strategist is a daily publication for and by freelance creative workers navigating today's changing employment landscape. Brought to you by Contently.

I find it remarkable that someone with plebian talents can actually make a sort of living doing this. That’s good, because at this stage of my life I am fit for little else.

I start every day the same way, brewing tea for my bride of 36 years and myself. I work on a laptop that I store near the bed at night so that I can start writing as we sip our tea. I split my work between custom blogging and article writing.

My background in finance gets me a few cold inquiries each week, which when coupled with topical articles lets me eke out a reasonable living. Certainly there is enough work to keep me busy all my waking hours, and it is sometimes tempting to slip in just one more article. This always results in a headache.

If you’d like to pay the bills by writing, please dive in. Write like crazy and then write some more.

My route to writing started with computers. What can I say, I love keyboards. Over the years, I collected a couple of graduate degrees and a lot experience analyzing systems and then businesses. For those of you who function well in an office environment, I send you my sincere admiration. It wasn’t my employers’ fault, I am simply temperamentally unfit for the corporate life. Only took about 30 years to figure out.

Bank’s home work space

Which is to say that I cannot tell you how much fun it is to work my own hours, pick my topics, and make the local coffeehouse my de facto office. Perhaps from insecurity, I spend way too much time on each piece I write, and yet I wince when I come across one on the Internet. Every flaw, every piece of sloppy grammar or misplaced comma keeps me humble. Very humble.

Blogging is a roller-coaster. When I blog for myself, I say exactly what I think and sometimes its coherent. My blogs cover finance, hedge fund crime, typography, content writing and the occasional personal incident. These, of course, are signed. My commercial blogging is about 50 percent published under my name; the other half is anonymous or is my client’s name. That’s all fine with me as long as the client is pleased. The topics skew towards finance and science, but I have done regular blogs about San Diego real estate, which I’m sure is lovely, alternative treatments for allergies, automobile repair, solar devices and student loans, among others.

I cannot tell you how much fun it is to work my own hours, pick my topics, and make the local coffeehouse my de facto office.

Until recently, a large chunk of time was devoted to single topic pages for customers, posted to boost their Google search results. If you cut up an encyclopedia into a million scraps, you’d have an idea of the range of topics for the pages. The takeaway lesson is that most of your freelance writing will not stem from expertise, but rather from research. I don’t mean Wikipedia, which I love but is often wrong. Research takes half of my time. Any more and I wouldn’t be able to publish my quota. Any less and my quota wouldn’t be worth publishing.

If you’d like to pay the bills by writing, please dive in. Write like crazy and then write some more. Pick a topic or two to specialize in, tempered by the knowledge of what’s in demand what is impossible to give away. Read blogs and join forums. Pay attention to your editors. Be grateful. Enjoy.

The Freelance Strategist is a daily publication for and by freelance creative workers navigating today's changing employment landscape. Brought to you by Contently.

—Scott Nearing, letter to Helen Nearing, circa 1928

 1.

Not everyone has the problem of too much time. Some people are in medical school. Me, I am a freelance writer, which means that every day stretches out in front of me like a wide sheet of butcher paper. On bad days, blank is the best word for it; after all, blank is just a neutral version of oblivion, one emotional inflection away from utter despair. The desert, the moon, Antarctica: these aren’t places anyone lingers long, if they can help it. Too often, you end up with a stitched-together creature of a day, the long hours an unmarked landscape in which you’re chased around by a monster of your own making.

These days, I’m not the only one in the coffee shop with a haunted look, a complicated relationship with my watch. But it’s not that we don’t have anything to do. It’s just that absent babies and/or a full-time job, the days feel loose and baggy around us. We work from home, or we moved back in with our parents. We’re on food stamps; we’re part-time at Starbucks for the health care; we’re hiding out in grad school, getting a master’s degree that will actually make us less employable (experimental theater!); we’re home for a few weeks before we go out on tour again; we have half a job, or three tenuous quarter jobs; we’re twenty-eight-year-old interns; we’re our more successful friend’s personal assistant.

These days, I’m not the only one in the coffee shop with a haunted look, a complicated relationship with my watch. But it’s not that we don’t have anything to do.

And we are always on the computer. It used to be that staring intently at a screen meant that you were busy and important, but the person who fills up her own days knows better. For us, the Internet is a sneaky marketplace where we exchange perfectly good hours for stupid facts (did you know Michael Crichton was six foot nine?) and come away feeling like we’ve made a bad bargain. If you had to conceive of the exact opposite of a harmonious unity, the Internet would do nicely.

2.

This mood makes me thirsty for memoirs, for the comfort of the inevitable through-line of a life. Reading Scott and Helen Nearing’s Living the Good Life, their self-mythologized account of their time as New England homesteaders in the 1930s and beyond, with its purposeful chapters on terraced gardening and stone-wall building and dealing with ornery neighbors, you get a sense of two lives organized by fate, pushed forward by smart decisions. Whether this brings you comfort or despair depends on your personality, and what you’ve gotten done today, perhaps.

If it helps, consider the pre-Scott Helen. In 1921, when she was seventeen, Helen Knothe went to theosophist summer camp in Holland. All the young Practical Idealists were in a tizzy about a handsome young man from India. Jiddu Krishnamurti had been plucked from the slums of Madras by prominent theosophists who sensed that he might be the next corporeal vessel for the coming World Teacher. At the camp, surrounded by fervent theosophists, Krishnamurti was an awkward, overwhelmed celebrity. Helen was cute, strange, given to mystical daydreams. Krishnamurti watched her win a footrace, and she asked him to sign her autograph book. At the end of the week, they sat together in the sand dunes surrounding the camp. The maybe-messiah put his handkerchief over his face so he’d be less nervous. He told Helen that she’d “joined the trinity of his loves” (along with his brother, his adopted mother, and his British patron). He promised to write.

Whether this brings you comfort or despair depends on your personality, and what you’ve gotten done today, perhaps.

At first, Krishnamurti sent letters all the time. His tone vacillated between ardent (“I love you with all my heart & soul & shall always do so. Bless you”) and instructive (“You must keep your body as clean & as pure as your conscience… Take exercise every morning for about 20 minutes. Never be influenced by anybody, not even by your dearest friend. All your friends must be pure in mind & body”). Over the objections of her family, Helen joined Krishnamurti in Europe, and spent the next few years traveling through India and Australia with him and the theosophical elite.

In 1923, when Krishnamurti started suffering inexplicable spells of excruciating pain, Helen was the one he asked for. She would lie in his bed, squeezed between him and his brother, caressing him and whispering calming words. Sometimes he seemed to confuse her with his mother. Other times, not so much: “What a dirty astral body I must have,” Helen wrote in her diary one night. Everyone agreed that the agony must be part of his preparing to become the vessel for the coming messiah.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, Krishnamurti grew distant from her, and eventually from theosophy in general. In 1929, he renounced his own messiah-hood, and denounced the concept of saviors in general (which, of course, only made some people more devoted). Helen moved back to her parents’ house in suburban Ridgewood, New Jersey, and theosophy moved on without her. When she saw Krishnamurti again, decades later, he seemed not to remember who she was.

(A)

For a little while, I was hanging out regularly with two teenage girls in a small town an hour south of Marrakech. After we’d made the day’s bread and swept the courtyard, there wasn’t much else to do. We’d go on long walks to the grazing fields on a hill above town, and sit there for a few hours, watching the cows chew. Or we’d re-watch the four-hour DVD of their cousin’s wedding.

What I mean is: time is a problem everywhere, even if it isn’t the only problem.

These girls weren’t an exceptional case, either. The Moroccan government had been pushing hard for equal education for girls, and Fatima-Zohra and Amel had been (along with their brothers) the first in their family to finish high school. But Morocco hadn’t figured out what to do with these rural, educated girls once high school was over.

There weren’t any jobs, even for the men; university was expensive and far away; neither of them was quite ready to be married yet. It’s not that they weren’t allowed to leave the house, but random wandering around town was frowned upon for good girls, which they were. Sometimes Fatima-Zohra embroidered things that she’d try to sell later. Over the several months that I knew them, it was clear that they were quietly going crazy. Amel started having fainting spells; one day it was so bad that they rushed her to the doctor. She was on anti-anxiety medicine the rest of the time I knew her. What I mean is: time is a problem everywhere, even if it isn’t the only problem.

(B)

The phrase time management implies that time can’t be trusted, that unless kept to a tight schedule it’ll run from us like a loose dog. When, of course, what really can’t be trusted is us. Without a plan, we spend the day feeling bad about ourselves; we could do anything, or nothing, and so instead we have a panic attack.

Wouldn’t it be better if we could go back to the literal meaning of productivity?

Ben Franklin liked to look at his hours all mapped out on the page (his schedule for 5 to 8 a.m.: “Rise, wash, and address Powerful Goodness! Contrive day’s business, and take the resolute of the day; prosecute the present study, and breakfast”). With such enlightenment baggage bred into us, how could we help becoming an anxious nation, fond of our day-planners and Google Calendars?

Wouldn’t it be better if we could go back to the literal meaning of productivity? We could all produce things. At the end of the day, we would each have a small pile of objects to point at with pride. We would sleep deeply and have useful dreams that we wouldn’t remember in the morning, except for the lingering sense of accomplishment they left us with. No wonder so many of us have started farming, or canning, or fermenting wine. Or, on our most helpless and indoor days, reading memoirs by people who did these things.

3.

Judging from the letters Helen included in her memoir of their fifty-plus-year marriage (Loving and Leaving the Good Life), Scott Nearing could be passionate, but mostly he wasn’t. He starts his love letters with “I wish you well” and ends with “Life’s best to you always.” When he’s upset with her, he writes in outline form (“II. Certain applications of these theoretical points”).

This is how a letter about the business of life becomes distinctly romantic.

When he and Helen met, in 1928, Scott was forty-five, divorced, so obstinately principled that he couldn’t keep a job, too extreme for the socialists, and not deferential enough for the communists. Helen was twenty-four, fresh from the Krishnamurti debacle. They drove upstate and talked about pacifism, vegetarianism, and fairies. They went for an evening walk: “The deep-woods, grassed-over road we had followed wound up a hill lined with flaming maples,” Helen writes.  When they reached a crossroads, she impulsively kissed him.

Without a job that counts, without a baby, a reasonable person, or a person from the past, might try instead for a husband. Extra points for one who’s older, and didactic, and very good at chopping wood. Someone with decided opinions about what a proper day should look like. This is how a letter about the business of life becomes distinctly romantic.

To Scott Nearing, the urban, moneymaking world was “shattered, purposeless, functionless, ineffective, unworkable.” And so if you, a person in that world, ended up feeling shattered, purposeless, functionless, ineffective, and/or unworkable, that made sense. Scott encouraged Helen to become “free of Ridgewood,” both geographically and metaphorically, spurring her to leave her family home for a rented room in New York. “In order to experience life in the raw,” as she put it later, she worked at a paper mill, a box factory, and a candy-packing plant. Each week, she earned around fourteen dollars, and paid eleven dollars in rent; she survived on grapefruit, Triscuits, and chocolates that had fallen off the conveyor belt.

After that winter of labor, “Scott made the further suggestion that I might think of going back to my fancy European friends for a while to see which way of life I wanted to live, with him (the low life) or with them (the high life),” Helen wrote. Scott’s plan almost backfired. Helen wrote him that she was busy “skyshouting” and “racing around”; instead of rationally planned days devoted to labor in the service of rectifying the world’s economic and political wrongs, she took off “for an all day sun-bath, in company with four devoted and amusing swains.”

The telegram Scott sent to win her back characteristically leaves out love in favor of a higher virtue: “Enough cash granted to begin work on my book War. Will you come back and help?”

4.

It’s gray out, and someone keeps throwing handfuls of birds across the sky. In this kind of weather, people younger than me are bare-legged, but older people wear overcoats. Lately, when I plan to see my friends, we call it “a meeting,” and I write it on my Google Cal as such: “12 p.m., Caroline meeting.” Mornings, I feed my proxy-children (my cats, my sourdough starter). Some days I have the kind of work with a boss and the need to wear real-person clothes, but mostly I don’t. So during the long, blank spaces between meetings, I read the Nearings’ opinions on the best system for boiling maple syrup, on the ideal dimensional lumber for the frame of a stone house. “Pine is lighter, but expands more when it is wet. Spruce is tougher and expands less than pine.” Sentences like that can give me a full ten minutes of pleasure and vicarious purpose.

But when you outsource the meaning and management of your own life, the price you pay is a flattening of yourself, of your contributions to the world.

But purpose-by-proxy is a dangerous thing. Seductive, too: “Anybody can have a husband, but to few is it given to have a sage, and the combination of both is as rare as it is useful,” wrote the anonymous author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Helen Nearing: “To live with an older, wiser man who could answer all my questions was a continual delight; it was school and holiday all in one.” Dorothea, in Middlemarch: “The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.”

But when you outsource the meaning and management of your own life, the price you pay is a flattening of yourself, of your contributions to the world. In the only memoir she wrote without Scott (because he was dead), Loving and Leaving the Good Life, Helen is both fun and infuriatingly self-effacing. She wanted to be remembered, she told an interviewer, “as Scott’s attachment. I enjoyed more being ‘Helen and.’ I don’t regard myself with high esteem.” These are classic female mistakes, ones we’re not supposed to make anymore. With all my unclaimed hours, I should be teaching myself Hebrew.

I don’t, of course, and the hours pass anyway. Recently, I’ve been wondering if it’s just as much of a trap to rely on yourself for all the meaning in the world, to be self-sustaining and self-improving and self-motivated and self-employed. How exhausting! A baby, a husband, a farm, a philosophy, a career, even: is it so wrong to long for something worthier than your single self?

And so, on the longest unmarked mornings, I read Scott Nearing’s best love letter, but pretend that it was written by the world instead of Helen Nearing’s brilliant, certain, overbearing husband: “I am convinced that there are several important things we must do together,” the world tells me. “Let’s inquire till we find out what they are and then let’s set about the tasks. It is such a great joy to look forward to work with you.”

This article was first published in The Believer. It is republished here with permission of the author.

Images courtesy of Elenamiv/Shutterstock, Phaitoon Sutunyawatchai/Shutterstock

The Freelance Strategist is a daily publication for and by freelance creative workers navigating today's changing employment landscape. Brought to you by Contently.

Layoffs at Time Inc.

The New York Times reports that Time Inc. will be laying off about 480 of its 8,000 employees worldwide, which equates to 6 percent of the company.

Half of the cuts will be made to the Time Inc. staff in New York, and buyouts were sent to staffers at People and Time.

Firing a Writing Client

For freelancers, firing clients they work for is part of the job. A post on Success Works highlights how to do this.

Writers need to ask themselves what the problem is, whether there is a personality conflict, pay issue, or a question of ethics. Before making the leap, writers need to fulfill all the work on active contracts, try to replace the client, and remain professional.

Beating Writer’s Block

It’s a curse, but it can be broken. The English Web’s Caimin Jones says that to beat writer’s block, one must not be afraid to write badly.

A writer should sit down and work at the same time every day, and read an inspiring author to “remind you of why you became one yourself.” Having an outline helps narrow down choices, and setting a deadline will ensure that goals are reached.

The Freelance Strategist is a daily publication for and by freelance creative workers navigating today's changing employment landscape. Brought to you by Contently.

Good stories are oftentimes more than what people are able to share at face value. The most core human experiences happen under the covers, when doors are closed, and in private. Can anonymity bridge the gap?

Consider the case of The 3F’s, an up and coming blog that’s committed to some of the pleasures of life — fashion, food, and sex. The editor’s key editorial ingredient? Distance.

“My pseudonym is Clara Kurtis, and my professional area of expertise is clinical psychology. I’m currently in graduate school working toward a doctorate, seeing patients, and working towards my dissertation,” the site’s editor said. ”As a clinical psychologist who sees patients regularly, it’s essential that my work and my blog have unique places in my life — I need to have some control over how they overlap.”

Affirming Boundaries

Identity is a complex topic in writing with boundaries being the core of the issue.

“Therapists have varying opinions about how ‘blank slate’ we’re supposed to be with our patients, but I didn’t want to hold back on the site for fear of revealing too much about myself in a place so accessible by my patients (the Internet),” Kurtis said.

It was Kurtis’s goal to showcase the writing and not herself.

“I did this anonymously because I didn’t want the website to be about me,” she said. ”I wanted it to be about The 3Fs.”

Over the past few months, Kurtis has assembled a robust teams of contributors including fellow clinical psychologists, prominent photographers, and Top Chef contestant Fabio Viviani. Like Kurtis, not everyone feels comfortable writing publicly.

“Most of my contributors who have chosen to remain anonymous are also in the field of psychology, and have chosen to remain nameless for the same reason that I have,” she said. “It’s important in our field to have some semblance of control over what personal information is out there about us, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have personal things to say.”

The Value of Anonymity

There’s value in writing under a name, but distance from identity can be just as important.

“I can understand why some people want to match a name and a face with their writing, but I think my anonymity allows me to be completely myself in a way I would have to temper if my name was attached to it,” Kurtis said.

But there are clear ethical standards to maintain.

“It’s complicated because people have the right to express their opinions while maintaining their privacy,” Kurtis said. “The Internet is a permanent forum — once something exists on the Internet, it can never be completely rescinded. However, a problem arises when people hide behind anonymity and use it as a way to be aggressive, cruel, insensitive, etc. without consequence. My general feeling, though, is that the best changes result from controversy and someone being willing to address something that others just won’t touch. It needs to happen publicly or privately  — the value is the same.”

Write for the Right Reasons

To Kurtis, blogging is not about fame or recognition — it’s about making her mark on the world through content.

“The best advice I can give is not to blog in hopes of recognition,” she said. “If you don’t love what you’re putting out there, you’ll be disappointed very quickly. I would also say, as cheesy as it is, don’t give up. Blogs don’t take off right away, and you really have to stick with it if you want to go somewhere. I love the idea of people waking up and seeing something delicious/beautiful/sexy before heading off to whatever job they’ll be doing that day.”

Write from the heart, and the mask won’t matter.

The Freelance Strategist is a daily publication for and by freelance creative workers navigating today's changing employment landscape. Brought to you by Contently.

I’m sure that when Charles Dickens wrote that line, he didn’t realize it could apply to the life of a freelance writer. And I’m sure that unless you’re new to the freelancing game, you probably read those words with a wry grin and thought, “Oh boy, you said it.”

I’m supposed to write about a day in my life, or some aspect of my job. But what’s interesting about that? I wake up early, write plenty, and have the usual eccentricities we writers tend to share.

It’s far more interesting to talk about why I write, n’est pas?

I fell into this successful career by accident. I never planned on becoming a professional writer, a leading writing coach or the owner of a major blog. Here I am nonetheless, writing about my life as exactly that.

So how’d I fall into writing as my career choice? Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and I was broke. Flat broke, with two kids to feed. I’d heard somewhere on the internet people would pay me to write, and hey – I made $8 my first week of freelancing.

What wasn’t to love?

But there was a problem: how the heck did you do this freelancing thing in the first place? Back in those days (which makes me sound ancient even though it was less than a decade ago), there weren’t many great resources about setting up shop or being a successful writer, unless you wrote fiction.

Oh sure, there was a blog or two on copywriting, a few bad books with even worse advice that left me feeling scammed, but that was about it.

I remember wishing that there was someone I could ask for help, someone who’d been there and who was willing to guide me in my new career with sound, trustworthy advice.

But there was no one.

So I learned everything I know today through plenty of trial and error, taking hard knocks and bouncing back as best I could. And each and every time I earned a new bruise along the way, I thought to myself, “No one should have to go through this.”

That thought became my personal mission and the foundation of everything I do today: to share my experience and knowledge with others so they don’t ever have to go through what I went through just to earn a decent living.

I wanted to help people feed their families and pay their rent and get out of debt and succeed in their small businesses — faster, better, and while avoiding all the hard knocks.

That’s why I write.

That’s why Men with Pens grew into the leading resource it’s become today. That’s why I spent several years creating writing courses. That’s why I wrote ebooks packed with tips. That’s why I blogged and guest posted all over the place.

That’s why I still do what I do today.

That’s the gift of writing: It gives each of us the power to reach out and touch people immediately. With just a few words, we can encourage and empathize with someone having a rough patch. We can help someone who is feeling stuck. We can support, and guide, and teach people what they need to know — with direct, immediate and positive impact.

And I love that my words achieve that.

Why do you write?

James Chartrand is the pen name of the founder/owner of Men with Pens and Damn Fine Words, an innovative writing course for business owners. She’s a leading copywriter, blogger, business expert, published author and online entrepreneur from Montreal, Canada. 

The Freelance Strategist is a daily publication for and by freelance creative workers navigating today's changing employment landscape. Brought to you by Contently.

Whoever said that most people get their best work done in the morning doesn’t know me. I am more of a mid-day kind of writer. My mind doesn’t really start focusing until I’ve had breakfast and a diet soda.

With that in mind, what’s the best way for a freelance writer to start their day?

I’d say that it depends on the writer. If you’re the sort that wakes up ready to go full steam ahead, then by all means, that is exactly what you should do.

If you’re not that kind of writer, you might be wondering how to make mornings productive. I do think it’s important to have a daily writing process. Without one, it’s just too easy to put off getting started. Before you know it, you are missing deadlines.

Here’s a writing process that works for me:

1. Start with Breakfast

Mine is complete with diet soda (for the caffeine). While I’m eating, I take part in social media.

Spencer’s writing desk with a view

Like most freelance writers, I maintain a social media presence on several platforms (Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn). It’s easy enough to read, share, and comment on other people’s writing while I’m waking up.

2. Check Email

Fortunately, I’ve whittled my email down to two main accounts – one for business email and one for personal email.

If I need to respond to anything I find in my email inbox, I do so now. (I usually ignore email messages while I’m writing to minimize the number of interruptions.)

3. Look for Possible Freelance Writing Projects

I do this in the morning, because I’ve found that the earlier that I respond to any projects that I am interested in, the more likely I am to get the work.

I have several places (now including Contently), that I check for work regularly.

4. Start Writing

By now, it’s mid-morning, no later than 10 a.m. That’s okay, because that’s the time of day when I actually do my best writing.

I take a look at my to-do list (created the night before) to determine which writing project to tackle first.

5. Tackle Routine and Business Tasks

I feel less creative at the end of day, so for me this is the right time to do routine work. This is also when I update my to-do list for the next day.

I do make a deliberate effort to end my workday between 5 and 6 p.m. (and sometimes I’m even successful).

Will this system of work be effective for every single freelance writer? Of course not. But it will work for some.

Some takeaways for all freelance writers who wish to develop their own writing process are:

1. Know when your best writing time is and devise a process for writing that takes advantage of that.
2. Make sure that your writing system includes all key tasks. It may take several tries to get it right.

The Freelance Strategist is a daily publication for and by freelance creative workers navigating today's changing employment landscape. Brought to you by Contently.

If you’ve been waiting for your independent moment — moving from traditional full-time employment to supporting yourself via independent/freelance writing – maybe the time is actually now.

The knowing is the battle, isn’t it? How can you possibly be certain that you’ve got the skills, the portfolio, and the potential client base to make the shift — and skirt the wide-open pit of disaster that seems to loom at center of the stretch?

Well, here’s the bad news. This article cannot solve that problem for you, and in many cases, you’ll never know for certain. But here’s the good news: Many independent writers have figured out how to make their own leaps. You can, too.

Evaluating the Independent Moment

You’re working hard, writing what and when you can, and wishing you could start somewhere — make a business of your words from the ground up. And then there’s a moment when a window opens onto that reality.

There are some indicators to look for, but they vary from person to person, from moment to moment. Picking out some of the commonalities, though, here are three models:

1. Side-work to Main Gig

Take the example of Khaleelah Jones, who now runs a successful self-employed copywriting office in London. Her independent moment wasn’t an overnight transformation but a stepping-stone process.

“I was lucky in that I was able to take a ‘test run’,” says Jones. “I started freelancing on the side as a way to generate extra income, then took the leap when I left my job to go back to school for a master’s degree.”

Granted, this kind of doubling-up on the workload — think of it as a Venn diagram in which you nudge the overlap further and further toward independence — is going to mean (a lot) more work in the short term.

But it’s also going to mean that you can measure the rightness of your independent moment by the bottom line: sufficient cash flow. When you’re making enough to support rent and utilities from freelance work, you’re ready to grab that opportunity.

2. The Unexpected Subsidy

Traditional work can play a role in recognizing the independent moment in another way as well. If you worked as a writer, particularly as a journalist, in the latter half of the 2000s you may have encountered just this impact.

It’s called a layoff.

The hidden advantage of the unexpectedly out of work writer is the subsequent appearance of an unexpected subsidy.

Unemployment benefits. Likely to be just about one-third of your usual take-home, that’s a few hundred bucks a week.

Add one or two small assignments to the mix and you’re working the Venn diagram again. It’s just that the clock is ticking, now, whereas in the preceding model it is not.

And note that this model is, at the start, almost entirely reliant upon a multi-income household. Could be roommates splitting costs, could be that your spouse has got your back, but you’re probably going to need somebody on your side.

(On a personal note, this is precisely how I made my leap, in 2008. With months of checks in front of me, and my freelancing client-base only large enough for part-time work anyway, I saw the chance to help support my household and still grow my profile and income. Seventy-hour weeks, to be sure, but when I came out of the chute I was fully fledged and indie — still am.

Be aware that there are limits to how much you can earn before a state will shut off the unemployment-insurance spigot, and be sure to talk to an accountant about how to handle unemployment benefits and taxes.)

3. The Crucible Model

Imagine being an independent writer and not even knowing it. This is a large part of the story of Mridu Khullar Relph, of New Delhi, India, starting in 2004.

“On Christmas Eve, I was broke.” says Relph. “Utterly, completely broke.”

She was out one missing check from her full-time employer, and she had no freelance checks incoming (Relph was already working on model no. 1, you see). No word from her boss over the holidays. No money to spend.

“And then, just like in the movies, something absolutely amazing happened,” she says. “On Christmas morning, when I opened up my computer to check my e-mail — okay, bank balance — there it was. An e-mail from an editor at a top national magazine, who was interested in an idea I had pitched. Here I was, dead broke, wondering where the next paycheck would come from, and there I was, halfway to a $1-per-word assignment.”

Every writer probably dreams of a moment such as this one. For Relph, it prompted her to think very seriously about where her career was going. All the elements — full-time work, freelancing, the future — ended up in that crucible.

When the check from the full-time gig finally arrived on Jan. 2, Relph ran her numbers. Turns out she’d already been making more at part-time freelancing than at traditional gig, anyway. Her independent moment was upon her. It simply took the sudden wake-up call for her to realize it.

Lesson: run your numbers often!

“I have now officially quit my job and am a full-time writer,” Relph says. “The bills are taken care of, the loans mostly paid off, and queries are flying all over the place. Life is good. That e-mail on Christmas morning is a gift I won’t forget. It got me started on my journey as a full-time freelancer.”

The Back and Forth of the Moment

Finally, it doesn’t have to work out perfectly, the first time.

The independent moment is a make or break deal, but in most cases it’s not a one-time deal. If you take your stab at it, but end up back in traditional full-time work, that probably just means that this independent moment eluded you.

That’s the story of Kathryn Hough, of Portland, Ore. She started out as a part-time freelancer writing copy, went full-time, then decided that the freelance life was the better of the two (she also recently started a company with her husband, in 2012). Money often drives these fallback motivations.

“I did have a few hiccups,” Hough says. “I thought that all clients would pay on time, and they never do! I over drafted my checking account twice before I had saved enough to cover the gap. Now, I have many clients, and my income is higher.”

In my experience, I leveraged the unexpected subsidy moment, but then backtracked briefly to a traditional-employment editing job — because of money.  I was worried about what would happen when the first assignments ended.  Later, I realized that I needed to get back to the independent opportunity before it slipped away.

This may happen to you. It’s normal. Think about the models, look for the indicators that suggest a second, third, fourth (whatever) chance to go full-time independent, and keep writing.

Images courtesy of Igor Petrov/shutterstock, Lo-Random/shutterstock

The Freelance Strategist is a daily publication for and by freelance creative workers navigating today's changing employment landscape. Brought to you by Contently.

Many people discouraged the career because of the lonely and starving penniless writer misconception. Yes, if a devoted individual says they are quitting their day job to write a novel, I’d be worried for them. The only way living as a freelance writer is possible is to think of it as fee-lance writing. If it’s not making money, don’t write it.

Through obsessive time management, I make certain that a portion of my daily writing time earns a certain figure, that I have time to myself (even if it’s only ten minutes reading a book for fun), and that I devote time to each client and article (which could be as little as 15 minutes of keyword research for a blog or finding a source for a magazine feature). Most days start at 6 a.m. and end close to midnight.

Different niches that pay: Technical and medical writing, creating search engine-optimized (SEO) content, blogging, consumer and trade magazines, and marketing copy.

There is one thing I tell anyone who asks me about starting their own writing career:

Do it now.

“I use a French antique writing desk as a docking station, a little mix of old and new,” Groth says.

The only way to discover your lucrative writing skills is to start right away. Start in high school, start in college, start on your lunch break. Start charging.

Be aware that writing for a living is a daily battle. Through my own blog, Write Naked, I occasionally post a “Day in a Writer’s Life.” A realistic day: two hours writing blogs for a dentist, write a press release for a builder, spend four hours writing blogs and engaging content for an attorney’s Facebook page, visit the post office, write a poem to read at an open mic, then spend an hour of workshop prep for one of the North Carolina writing groups I organize.

Another day may involve hours trying to find a quiet and affordable writing workshop space to host my next event, then starting the promotion. I have also spent entire days driving from appointment to appointment, meeting with business owners who found my website and need someone to write their blogs.

There is no formal education requirement. There are no necessary credentials. The only essentials are writing skill, dedication, accountability and professionalism.

The reality? You will never be done. My writing business has evolved. I focused heavily on magazine features three years ago, but now the bread and butter of my business are blogs. In the past year alone I have written over 600 blogs and got paid for each. I made it through the desert and the mirage wasn’t a mirage at all. I’ve met interesting people through my articles (like farmers starting camel dairies) and I type away from home every morning. Like I’m doing now, helping your writing business grow. (And mine too.)

Groth is hosting a New York seminar on freelancing:

Business of Being a Writer — Free Seminar

Saturday, Dec. 8, noon – 1 p.m.

Jefferson Market Library, 425 6th Avenue at 10th Street (Greenwich Village)

Learn how to manage marketing yourself as an author, organize your finances as a business and establish your professional career as a writer. Free resources to help grow your presence as a writer, author marketing tips, and the first steps in turning your writing abilities into profitable assets. This is a 30-minute seminar followed by a 30-minute Q&A.

The event is free, but seating is limited — RSVP required. www.taralynnegroth.com or http://www.facebook.com/events/379827862105866/

Tara Lynne Groth is a freelance writer and blogger in Raleigh, N.C., with approximately 10 years of marketing experience. Her articles have appeared in places such as AirTran Airways’ GO, Blue Ridge Outdoors and Draft. She virtually collaborates with businesses around the world in their PR and marketing efforts through the composition of SEO content, blogs and press releases. In addition to blogging and journalism, she hosts creative writing workshops and teaches classes on how to become a freelance writer. Groth is a member of the Freelancers Union and the Vice President of Marketing for the Atlanta Writers Club. She holds a B.A. in cultural studies from SUNY Stony Brook. www.taralynnegroth.com

The Freelance Strategist is a daily publication for and by freelance creative workers navigating today's changing employment landscape. Brought to you by Contently.