A Writer or a Freelancer?

“My life sucks!” I told my boyfriend the other day.

“Shut up,” he said. “Your life does not suck.”

I thought about it for a minute.

“You’re right,” I conceded. “My life doesn’t suck. I suck. I don’t make enough money, I don’t know what I want to do with my life, I spend way too much time at home with my books and my computer, I don’t have any friends because I don’t socialize, and it’s not at all because my life sucks, but because I suck.”

He rolled his eyes, and started pressing buttons on his phone. (We were on video chat.)

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Finding that message you sent me. Here it is: ‘I’m being published by Glamour UK, South Africa, and Mexico.’ And you write for Time, and are a Visiting Scholar at one of the best graduate schools for journalism in the world. Yeah, you totally suck.”

**

I said last week that I’d talk about why some people are not cut out to be freelancers. So let’s talk about it.

I have, by some measure, achieved success in my career. Sure, I’m not a best-selling author, I sometimes struggle with income, and I don’t have the world’s best editors coming and begging me to contribute to their publications. But I do earn a living writing exclusively for consumer publications (no books, no copywriting, no teaching), I travel for work and pleasure whenever I want to, I have a decent lifestyle, good quality of life, and I do get to choose what I will and will not write on a daily basis.

When most people think about becoming freelance writers or journalists, they have a certain image in their mind: they think about the never-ending days in which they’ll get to write all day long about whatever they want, not have to worry about a boss, about co-workers, and about all the little things that plague the full-time journalist world.

But just because you’re a good writer, does not mean that you’ll be a good freelance writer. Because freelancing is a whole different world. And being a good writer has little to do with it.

As a freelancer, you get to do your own marketing (urgh), find your own health insurance (double urgh), take care of accounting (more urgh), and be the one who takes care of the administrative stuff like fixing broken printers, backing up, sending out invoices, chasing dead-beat clients, and being the solution-finder when things go wrong (still with me?).

Does it surprise you when I tell you that most journalists who’ve lost their jobs are NOT looking to become freelancers?

Who said freelancing was easy? It isn’t. That’s not to say it’s tough, because seriously, no matter what anyone says, you still have it easier than most people in the working world. Anyone who says otherwise is an over-dramatic moron and should try being a firefighter.

But you need to have a certain personality type. My brother and I often talk about this, and we both agree that seeing as how we’re so different, I would never survive in the cut-throat corporate environment in which he thrives. But he loves it. The isolation and insecurity of the freelance world would drive him insane.

There are some people who find strength and inspiration when they work in groups or among other people. There is a chance you could be one of those people who are meant to be a full-timer but just got stuck in the wrong job. Just because you hate your job is not a good reason to become a freelancer. If you love writing, there are many jobs that will let you do exactly that.

So what’s a good freelance personality?

1. You work well alone and like having the final say.

2. You dislike schedules and work best in random spurts. Or you’re good at setting schedules and sticking to them.

3. You’re motivated and don’t need someone telling you what to do.

4. You’re prepared to learn how to market yourself.

5. You play well with others. This may seem like a direct contradiction to #1, but it isn’t. Most of the time you’ll be working alone. But you do need to be in constant contact with your editors and sources. Even though you’ll be writing alone, your research and reporting will always revolve around other people (even if you’re a fiction writer).

6. Insecurity doesn’t unhinge you. Let’s be honest here: there will be weeks, maybe months of no paychecks, no acceptances, no nothing. There will be other times when you’ll wonder why people moan about no paychecks. Know now whether or not you can deal with these constant ups-and-downs. (Supportive family members are a bonus.)

7. You don’t give up. Perseverance and dedication are very important traits to have as a freelancer. You’ll be knocked down enough that you’ll have several conversations of the kind I had above. But you need to be able to get up, dust yourself off, and do it all over again.

And the most important one:

8. You need to love what you do. Without that, what’s the point?

Mumbai

Terrifying week, huh?

It’s been an emotional roller-coaster the last couple of days, and I just wanted to show up here because I’ve received a lot of e-mails, and wanted to let everyone know that my family and friends are okay. Well physically, anyway.

Thanks for your concern everyone, and I’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming in another day or so.