What Have You Sacrificed To Become A Freelance Writer?

April 27, 2011

One of the benefits I love about freelance writing is that it is such a flexible occupation in every sense.

I’m sure freelancing in other career routes can be particularly flexible, but I can’t imagine any other freelancing job whereby you can actually work when and how you want.

It doesn’t matter if it’s 2am and I’m sat up in bed running through the final draft of a press release or I’m sat in a coffee shop in the middle of town at 3pm putting together a proposal for a potential client — freelance writing is so flexible that as long as I’ve got my laptop with me (or even just a pen and paper), I can work from anywhere, any time I want to.

And from speaking to other writers, it seems that this flexibility is what attracted them to go freelance, too.

The more I chat to other writers and read writing blogs and forums, however, the more it becomes apparent that whilst freelance writers have a substantial amount of flexibility and freedom when it comes to working, the career can be particularly restrictive at first and require for a considerable amount of sacrifices to be made.

Looking at myself as a freelance writer and the sacrifices I’ve made, it’s not until I started to reflect that I saw just how much I’d sacrificed. Some big things, others small, but they were all given up at some point or to some degree.

Most of you know that I work in an employed role as well as being a freelance writer and one of the most obvious sacrifices I’ve made is giving up my annual leave to relax or to take a break from working — there have been numerous occasions where I’ve taken a day or two out from my employed work, using my holidays, to meet with a client or to get a proposal finished.

Then there’s the point of free time in general — it’s only in the last few weeks that I’ve started to not work on a weekend. I still work every evening (thankfully not to gone 1am any more), but for months and months I was pushing 70+ hours of work each week.

Sleeping became less and less of a daily habit — at one point I’d gone from having eight hours sleep a night to under five. I remember on a few occasions wondering if I could function for two full days working solidly without any sleep.

I decided against it in the end — I’ve done it a few times before when going on holiday due to the timing of the flights, but there’s a difference between having to fire on all cylinders without any sleep and being able to do nothing but read a book for hours on end after not sleeping.

And then there’s the point that gave me a kick up the backside — the lack of time I was able to spend with my partner.

Starting out, it was OK, as she understood that I was getting established as a writer and developing myself. When you’re 18 months in and you’re working what seems like every hour of the day, however, it starts to cause a few…”disagreements”.

It works well to a certain degree — she’s a Piano Teacher and teaches primarily on an evening, so I tend to work until around 8.30pm — but having to sacrifice that time with her for months on end was arguably the biggest decision I had to make in terms of my writing career.

Thankfully, I’m in a position where it’s paying off, but for anyone out there with a partner, it’s a struggle not being able to spend your free time with them.

The primary reason why I’m talking about this subject is that I like to play devil’s advocate, hopefully telling new freelance writers not just that a lot of sacrifices need to be made, but that making those sacrifices does pay off in the end.

Becoming a freelance writer isn’t a quick journey and it’s one that most writers are continually on, simply at different points and sacrifices need to be made along the way at all times.

The need to make sacrifices does become less frequent over time, however, generally at the same point that the benefits of being a freelance writer become more and more prominent, as things naturally start to fall into place and your sacrifices begin to pay off.