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I got an email the other day from a freelancer who asks:
"I am a freelance writer who is still in that 'trying to work full-time while finding time to write' phase. I'd love it if you could share a little insight on how you handled both before you left corporate America to write full-time."
I moonlighted for about two years before quitting full-time work. To be honest, I was very motivated to carve out time to freelance--at the time, it was the only thing that made me feel good about my professional life. But I was also lucky in certain respects. I didn't have kids. I didn't have a family to cook for or clean up after. When I came home from work, my time was more or less mine.
Still, it's not easy to freelance while you're working full-time. I definitely came home drained and had days when I didn't want to work. Here are a few pointers for people still stuck in wage slavery and doing their best to get a business going.
Set reasonable goals. It's important not to get discouraged. And if you set the bar too high, you might do just that. It's crucial to set goals--make contact with twenty new businesses per week, for example. But if twenty is too much, don't throw up your hands in despair and quit. Lower the bar. Try for ten instead. As long as you're doing something, you'll be moving ahead.
Carve out some time. You'll need some quiet time to write--and your family will need to honor that. Make sure everyone in the family knows that when you're in your writing room or writing space, you're still at work. Maybe for you that quiet time is right after work, or in the morning before work, or on your lunch break, or at night before bed. But make sure you choose a time that matches your temperament. If it's a struggle for you to get up early enough to write, you won't stick with it over time.
Keep phone contact to a minimum. Clients may or may not care whether or not you're moonlighting. But you do want to give the appearance of being professional and experienced and successful--and some clients, when they find out you don't do this full time, may assume the worst. Try to keep in touch with your clients primarily by email. If someone wants to talk to you on the phone, schedule some time where you won't be trying to talk to them at work. Your full-time job may not appreciate you devoting "company time" to your business.
Know your limits. Don't assume you need to take a million projects on every week to keep going. As you go, you'll learn how long it takes to do different types of projects. While you always have to be careful with time management as a freelancer, you have to be extra careful when you're fitting your freelancing around a full-time job. Quantity of work at this point isn't as important as collecting great samples, making contacts and impressing the hell out of the clients you have. This will keep the business coming when you leave your full-time job.
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Comments
08.21.08
To me the key is to just sit down and do it. Once you actually start writing, the number of distractions starts to decline.
08.21.08
Finding time is critcal, especially if you have young children.
08.21.08
John is right on. The best way to cure writer's block is to just start writing.
Another tip that works for many people is to write in your head throughout the day. This can be while commuting, exercising, eating or whenever. That way when it comes time to put the words down on paper, you've got a major head-start.
The late great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (one of the most incredible authors in history) actually memorized huge portions of writing because he was not allowed to keep a diary when forced into the Soviet gulags. When he finally got out he was able to take the writing from his mind and convert it to ink. It might be a little tough at first, but you definitely get the hand of it relatively quickly.
08.22.08
I still fantasize about quitting to work part-time at Starbucks so I can get health insurance and still make time to write. I know I won't do it though. The smell of coffee is vile to me.
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