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.

Thanksgiving Break

I’m taking a little break from blogging this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, which I’ll be celebrating by having people over, cooking (yeah, I know– who would have thought I could?), and being lazy. Because that’s what Thanksgiving is all about, isn’t it? (No? Well it is in this household!)

I’ll return on Monday with why I believe some people are just not cut out to be freelance writers (or writers in general), why advice about saving a year’s worth of wages before going freelance full-time is a load of bullshit, and why even though a lot of work is being thrown at freelancers in this economic climate (some writers are reporting more work than ever before), it’s probably not a good idea to take most of it without a background check.

In the meantime, here are the promised pictures from the Women’s Conference 2008.

More Reasons To Love This Writing Life

* You get to meet cool people and ask them all sorts of stupid questions. Sometimes, you get to e-mail them and tell them that you were completely star struck and hence need a second appointment, just so that you can practice not being star struck this time. (Oh yes, I did.)

* You get all sorts of free stuff (books and movies for me), for merely saying the words “writer” or “journalist.”

* Reading a novel in the middle of the day is “studying technique.” Learning how to go to school in Second Life is research.

* You can get out of pretty much anything with the excuse, “I have a deadline.”

* People think you’re smart and sophisticated, even if you’re secretly an unshowered, geeky hermit.

* You can show up at any event, flash a press pass, and more times than not, be granted entry. And usually, a backstage interview.

The Hard Sell

I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow, but today, right now, I hate query letters. Truly detest them.

I like thinking up brilliant ideas, I like discussing their potential with friends and editors, I love engaging in stimulating conversation about why they may or may not not work. I do not like thinking about their marketability. I do not like thinking about why they’re important now. I do not like having to sell them to people. I like them to stand out on their own.

Distilling down an important story to one sentence about its marketability is, in my opinion, a completely ridiculous concept. Writers should be allowed to play and experiment with ideas that interest them.

Unfortunately, real life doesn’t work that way.

Tonight, I get to figure out why a story I’m writing about a certain food trend needs to be told now. Or at all.

I have a feeling it will be a tough question to answer.

What I’m Doing This Weekend

I currently have three assignments on my plate:

(1) an ongoing how-to gig that I’ve been ignoring for way too long, but which could prove instrumental in paying the bills over the next couple of months,

(2) a research-intensive piece that needs me to put together a list of small things people can do to make the world a better place, and

(3) an article on Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophies on life.

I’m also designing a website and working on four distinct ideas. Without giving them away, I’ll tell you that one is about a food trend in the San Francisco Bay Area, another is about the contrasts between the thought process of Indian communities in the West to those in India, my favorite is about certain communities in American prisons, and the final one is about overseas banking.

I’m going to spend the morning shooting emails to people who can help me get these ideas together, my evening will involve lots of tea and research.

Tomorrow, I get to do the fun part. Write.