Is Your Skin Thick Enough for a Freelance Writing Career?

By Dana Prince

Some people who write for the web do it for money. Some do it for the passion of writing. Most that do it do it for both reasons. Unless you’re writing for yourself in a journal nobody will ever see or on a website that doesn’t allow others to post comments (and you never Google yourself to see if anyone is talking about you), you’re opening yourself up to criticism. Freelance writing requires a thick skin at times.

When someone doesn’t like something you’ve written it can be hard on the ego. Sometimes the client is right. Sometimes, the client is wrong. Sometimes neither of you is wrong. It’s important to realise that this can be a very subjective industry. What you deem as a perfect paragraph just might not resonate with your client. Try not to take it too hard. It happens to Pulitzer Prize winners, too.

Fear of Rejection

Do you hesitate to query for a writing job due to potential rejection? Do you sit on pins and needles, waiting for a reaction on work you’ve done? Very few successful published authors have never had a rejection. Freelance writers are brave. You open yourself up to potential criticism on a daily basis. But, it’s a necessity.

Every time I submit something to a client for their review, there’s a chance that I’ll get a less than delighted reaction. Time teaches you a lot of things and time with clients will teach you about what it is that they deem ideal for their projects.

The first dealings with a new client are a time of risk. Recently I had an assignment come back with a note to look at the document for feedback. The thing had the “track changes” feature of Microsoft word turned on. I cringed. That feature tends to ruffle my feathers at first. At first glance, after opening the Word doc, I saw the right margin filled with arrows and commentary. My heart sunk. The thing looked like a dog’s breakfast after the client had taken their “red pen” to it. I didn’t even closely look at first. Because I could feel my jaw tighten, I decided to give myself a ten minute break. I think I chose to scrub the kitchen counters to within an inch of their lives and then I avoided the document like the plague for about a half an hour. But I was useless at anything else because “it” was waiting for me.

When I forced myself to come back to it, it actually wasn’t all that bad and took just a few minutes to revise. The anticipation of criticism got my back up so much that it was impacting my productivity. I was stressed and apprehensive before I even saw what the criticism was. I think this is was a good lesson to myself.

Working with multiple clients opens you up to dealing with many personality types. That can be good and it can be difficult at times. Some of those clients you’ll gel with and others will make your life temporarily miserable. Some are easy to get along with and others are so anal retentive that it’ll drive you half crazy to deal with them.

Is the Client Always Right?

Sure, there are times when the client is being unreasonable. But they’re the client and they’re paying you to write what they want. If they won’t listen to your side or to your years of expertise on a matter, there’s not much that you can do. As a freelancer you have every right to opt to not deal with someone again after a project that hasn’t gone well. You also have the right to re-price if the rewrites go beyond the scope of your original agreement. Keep in mind that being accommodating (as long as it’s not to a fault. Freelance means freedom, not free writing.) is important in the services business and the first project with a new client is always a time of discovery and risk — — to both of you.

I’ve seen writer forums littered with complaints about clients and editors that shredded a writer’s work to bits. Some writers take it very personally. If you’re the sort who takes everything to heart, you’re probably a passionate person and that can be a really great trait in a writer. But if you don’t want anyone critiquing you, you’re probably not going to be successful at writing for other people. We all love it when we get a rave review but how you handle rejections or negative reactions can actually make or break your success. If you’ve been writing as a career for any length of time, chances are that your reactions now are very different from how you’d have reacted early on in your career.

Learning from Criticism

I try to take each less-than-rave review and learn from it. Criticism can help you be a better writer. Perhaps one small bit of advice could help you take your writing to the next level. I try to learn from criticism, even if at first it ruffles my feathers. It might teach me a new skill, it might teach me patience, or it might help me decide whether or not a client and I are suited to continue working together. Has your writing skin thickened over time?