Five Tips For A Successful Freelance Writing Career

February 5, 2008

Anna Goldsmith has this advice to all you aspiring freelance writers:

1. Create a strong division between work and home. This sounds way easier than you think. Your family, friends and creditors are all beating your door down, 24-7. Don’t let them. Make it clear you are on “work time” If all else fails, tuck your lap top under your arm and head to Europa for coffee and free wireless Internet. Bless them.

2. Look the part. S’true, no one cares if you sit at home behind your PC still wearing yesterday’s underpants and smelling like musty towels, but you’ll get a heck of a lot more work done if you shower, shave and get out of your paisley pajamas. You know you must.

3. Maintain the working hours of the common man. This means you start work at 8, talk crap with colleagues for half an hour, go have some tea, catch up on the latest gossip in the canteen, have lunch at 12, answer your emails, have more tea, have a meeting, brainstorm and gossip, make more tea, and then head home at 5. Try and replicate normal hours, your family and friends will like you for this. So no working till 3am and sleeping till 3pm.

4. Make time for social interaction with human beings. Go out to lunch, meet fellow writers and clients. Don’t isolate yourself in your den and grow a three foot beard. That’s just weird and you may be labeled a cultist.

Lastly,

5. Turn off the TV. There’s usually crap on, and you’ll end up watching for hours until something good comes on. You aren’t making during this time and you’ll have to end up moving back in with your parents. This is a fate worse than death, so discipline is your watchword.

Find out more about the person who dispensed this advice, Anna Goldsmith, at The Hired Pens.

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