What Keeps You Writing?

A lot of the advice about freelance writing focuses on how to get started. You find out about creating a portfolio, getting published and promoting yourself. What you don’t hear as much about are the times when the shine goes off the writing life.

We’re all human, and freelance writers can have bad days too. Those are the days when you wonder if you can bear to write another article with impossible keywords; the days when you wonder if this was why you became a writer. Some people I know give up at this point, realizing that for them the dream of writing does not match the reality.

The reality of writing is that although it is creative and can be fulfilling, it is also hard work. If you freelance, you may be fitting your writing around responsibilities in the home, so you may work even longer hours than you would as an employee. In addition, you have to manage the business of writing as well as the pleasure, looking after invoicing, paying taxes and taking care of health insurance. I’m willing to bet that those tasks weren’t top of the list when you became a writer. They certainly weren’t for me.

Despite the negatives, those of us who love writing keep at it. For some it’s because they can’t imagine doing anything else. Writing is as essential to life as breathing. They are full of ideas, and the only problem is finding the time to write them all down and develop them.

For others, it’s the sheer joy of being able to string words and sentences together in a way that moves people or makes them think. It’s not really a power trip, but a feeling of power.

There are also those who start out by looking for a way to make money at home, write a couple of articles, and discover that they have a talent that they had never explored. Writing for them is about continuing the journey of self exploration.

For me, the first and second explanations are closest to the truth. What keeps you writing?