One of the main benefits of freelancing is the ability to set your own schedule.
You work when the hours work for you, you choose what to work on, and you manage your own commitments. With this setup comes a lot of freedom, but it can also be challenging – especially if you aren’t accustomed to this much autonomy.
Rejection is a big part of the freelance writing world, especially when you’re first starting out and trying to establish yourself.
As writers, having our work rejected is a lot like someone telling us our baby is ugly. It’s our word art, arranged just so, and it’s hard not to take it personally.
Though I’ve been a writer for several years, I’ve only now just started to try and make a living from it. So I am in the thick of rejection, as I try to hone my writing skills and find my place.
The writer’s notebook.
It’s in every writer’s advice book. Until about two years ago, I thought it seemed nerdy and even a bit self-indulgent.
I could never see myself carrying around this spiral of ideas and randomly busting it out mid-conversation. But, when agents rejected my novel because I wasn’t successful enough, I decided to develop habits for greater success.
Isolation is common when you’re freelancing – no more coworkers, no more water-cooler, no more guaranteed daily interaction with others. For some, it’s fine. For others, it’s torture.
Even if you’re more introverted or you tend not to need a ton of social interaction to feel ok, you do need some interaction with the outside world if you’re going to stay mentally balanced. And don’t think that the people (and animals?) living under the same roof will give you “enough” interaction, day in and day out.
When you are new to freelance writing, we tend to go a little overboard – reading 400 blog articles and countless eBooks about becoming a freelance content writer. It’s enough for your brain to go into system overload.
Conducting research is important when transitioning into a new field, but when is enough, enough?
Since every personal situation and professional goal is different, I can’t tell you when to stop conducting research, but I can tell you how I recovered from information overload and began building my writer site.
Let me just come right out and say that gaining confidence is an ongoing process I’m sure many other freelance writers are constantly going through.
It’s a work in progress just like everything else in life. Having confidence is also an important if you want to be a successful freelance writer because it affects your writing.
There two schools of thought on writer’s block: writers who believe it exists and writers who believe it doesn’t. I belong to the first group because I keep suffering from it time and time again.
But most posts on beating writer’s block usually assume you’re stuck trying to find a fresh idea angle. However in my experience, writer’s block doesn’t discriminate according to the stage of your project.
The business side of freelancing involves a lot of moving pieces, which can become overwhelming and confusing if you don’t know how to juggle everything.
Your currency is time, so by saving time you’re able to make more money, and thus become a more successful freelance writer.
