Three Reasons Why Freelance Writing Rocks

Believe it or not, this started as a tweet, after a particularly good day. I was having one of those moments when I was in love with the freelance writing life, and I started thinking about what made it special. Putting that into 140 characters didn’t seem quite enough, so I decided to expand on it here. Here are three of the best parts of my freelance writing career.

Writing

The most important part is the writing itself. That’s what got me into this in the first place. Some days I just enjoy the flexibility of being able to work on a range of different projects. I love digging into sources, extracting nuggets of information and putting them together in an interesting and readable way. I love the wierd and interesting things that I find out as a result of writing for a living. Because of my writing, I have also met lots of interesting people online, and that’s another plus of having a writing career. Freelance writing allows me to combine that slightly pedantic side of my nature (can anyone say word nerd?) with creativity and inspiration to create something that people will enjoy.

Invoicing

It’s not so much the invoicing itself, but the fact of being able to invoice that I like. I enjoy looking at my cash flow figures and knowing that I will get those sums as a result of my own efforts. This ia a key part of a writing career and it’s one that you can’t neglect. Because I am generally more interested in doing the writing than doing the books, I may sometimes lag a little in sending an invoice. The other day I realised that the reason a client hadn’t paid promptly is because I had forgotten to send the invoice on time. Don’t follow my bad example. Invoice when you complete a job because the sooner you do it, the sooner you will get paid.

Getting Paid

If freelance writing is really a career, then getting paid to write makes it a great career choice. Getting paid for doing what you love makes it a great career choice, too. Some projects are so much fun that you would have done them anyway for free, but getting a paycheck makes it even more fun. On a more practical note, making an income from your writing means that you can eat, feed your family, go on holiday, enjoy your leisure time and keep on doing what you love. What’s not to like?