At the start of 2013, I quit my project management job in New York and hauled butt back to Manila. The reason I gave to coworkers and friends at the time was so that I could become an entrepreneur—an idea that would be lol-inducing now, if it weren’t still a cringeworthy memory. My general reason for leaving was so that I could break free from the shackles of the agency-employee lifestyle and pursue a more fulfilling calling. Like what, you ask?
Like…freelance writing!
If you were to surmise that these months bore the rumblings of my impending quarter-life crisis, you’d be correct. But that’s another story.
After a brief detour into magazine editing, I decided that there was no better time to try and become a freelance writer. As a career option, it was a no-brainer: had I not moved halfway across the world for a less restrictive, more creative job? Could I not write, and write fairly well? Was I not living in the rent-free comfort of my parents’ house, with my cellphone bill as my biggest financial concern? Then there was the loud voice in my head that held all the insistence and persuasiveness of an As Seen on TV informercial: I would get paid to write!!
To top it all off, in my spare time I could work on my own writing. Hello, flawless dream life!
As a new freelance writer I had the perfect setup. I had the time, the means, and the seeds of a small network in place. I put the word out that I was looking for projects, and through connections managed to net some relatively consistent jobs. I interviewed Filipino celebrities, wrote profiles on whoever or whatever happened to be in the spotlight, and chirpily converted what few life experiences I had into features for women’s magazines (as you do). I outlined the history of beauty trends and wrote a ridiculous amount of words on the Korean skincare routine. (Think it’s impossible to write 2,600 words on eyebrows? Try me, bruh.) Behind the scenes and without a byline, I wrote press releases, edited brochures, and wrote social media posts.
In a matter of weeks, I was earning more with freelancing than I was with my magazine job. Which was still a tiny fraction of what I was earning in the States, but hey—at least I wasn’t being woken up at 5AM by site crashes or writing passive aggressive work emails or being asked to cancel once-in-a-lifetime opportunities so I could come in for no overtime, amirite?
Then freelancing started to feel less like a calling and more like a chore. To paraphrase from everyone’s favourite The Fault In Our Stars quote: it happened slowly, then all at once. I was writing about the same things for too long. I would close my eyes and the phrase “pop of color” would twirl through my brain, taunting me with its recurring presence. I found it increasingly difficult to detach my personal feelings from the job at hand.
One day I Googled the phrase, “What if I don’t want to freelance anymore” and got 0 relevant results, which convinced me that I must be crazy. Was I the only one in the world not happy with freelancing? Who wouldn’t want the ability to set their own schedule, to get paid to write and then work on personal projects on the side? Don’t we admire and respect people who work for themselves?
If you are in search of a creative and fulfilling life, sometimes freelance writing is not the answer. Or rather: freelance writing is not the only answer. If you are a certain type of person, then freelance writing is definitely not the answer. After about a year, I was becoming more aware about what type of person I was. But let’s weight out both sides:
When Freelance Writing is Not the Answer
Freelancing is for you if:
- You are highly self-motivated. Being a freelancer means taking a lot of initiative. To be in it long-term, you have to be prepared to: make several pitches, talk yourself up, put in your work hours every day, and find new projects. When you have a job, someone else is keeping tabs on you. As a freelancer, the only motivation you can count on is your own willpower. And perhaps a dwindling bank account/a family to feed.
- You can roll with an unsteady income. Magazines are notorious for paying months after a piece has run. I’ve been fortunate to have worked with magazines and websites that paid promptly, but you can’t always count on that. Because of this, you might have good months and lean months. “Sweldo weekend” or “Pay day” doesn’t really exist when you’re a freelancer, so you need to manage finances accordingly. Can you handle not knowing where your next paycheque will come from?
- You can accommodate your clients’ needs. As I mentioned in my piece about cover stories, clients hire you do to a specific job. Every client is different: some might be strict, while others give you free rein. Nevertheless, they all have expectations and you need to be prepared to fill them, even if you disagree with their direction. Of course there are limits to how much crap you can take from a client, but it’s your job as a freelancer to set those terms as early in the project as possible.
- You are good with deadlines. If you love finishing work as soon as you receive it, you should definitely be a freelancer. Deadlines are incredibly important. Meeting them tells people that you take your job seriously and you are dependable. Clients will remember timely and reliable writers—and hopefully pass on the good word to others.
- You can separate your personal self from your work self. When you’re an employee, it’s easy to contextualise your work as something apart from you, because you do it in the name of someone else. Freelancing requires a more conscious effort to distance yourself from the work. For example, it was hard for me to write like Korean sheet masks were the key to eternal youth when I didn’t necessarily believe it. Other people are not afraid to do what it takes—and write countless takes—to get it right, with their souls remaining intact.
What to consider as a freelancer:
- Your network matters. Most of my jobs came from my existing network of previous employers, friends, and family. It can be easier to tap your network than cold pitch a complete stranger, so let people know what you do and what you’re looking for. You have to be vocal about your profession because you don’t know who in your network is listening—and who will remember you when a job pops up.
- It may take time away from creative writing. Or time in general. If you want to be a full-time freelancer, be prepared to put in a lot of time writing words for other people. Sure, you might be writing personal essays or nonfiction, but editors expect you to write about certain topics that will speak to their readers. After a day of professional writing, you might not have the time or energy to work on your novel–but isn’t this why you started freelancing in the first place?
- It’s not just about writing; you are running a business. To be successful at freelancing you have to treat writing like it’s your job. Because it is your job. Depending on your resources, you might wear many hats in order to grow your business: accountant, marketer, web developer, designer. Just because you’re not in a traditional workplace, it doesn’t mean you are exempt from picking up workplace skills!
- You can’t always be picky. There is a lot of competition for writing projects (which is why your network matters, as clients may favour writers they already know). In lean times, you may have to take on an undesirable job (writing for content farms; writing lazy students’ term papers) to make ends meet.
- Is the money from freelancing writing enough? Do the benefits of a freelance writing lifestyle outweigh the risks of an unstable income? Are you in a position where the income you get from freelancing is enough for your purposes? The question of “enough” is a relative one, one that depends on social status, geographic location, and whether or not you have dependants. Unless you have many years of experienced, or are famous or well-connected, it is hard to guarantee “enough” from freelancing alone.
Freelancing is not for you if:
- You see it as an escape from a 9 to 5 job. I saw freelance writing as the antithesis to my project management job. In some ways it was, but you can’t run away forever. That reasoning could only last so long, and the moment I had to think about freelance writing for the long-term, I realised it was not something I could do given the projects I was working on then.
- You can only write when you feel like it. This was a big problem of mine. We are not good friends, deadlines and I. I would pull all-nighters to get my pieces in. That might have been possible during my college days, but in my mid-20s? Hell no. Of course, you need discipline as a writer no matter what, but if someone is paying you to write something you don’t have the luxury of waiting until the right moment.
- You do not equate monetary value with creative value. The monetary value of your work loosely equates to the number of hours/words you have committed to provide multiplied by your given rate. However, I could not for the life of me commit to the hours I had given. I would always go over. I wanted the articles to be better than expected. I would decline paying jobs I already knew how to do in order to write more challenging/liberating pieces for free. To me, value was abstract and associated with personal fulfilment. It was admittedly a very privileged position from which I viewed my work, but on the downside: I did not make great business decisions.
- You don’t want to deal with the competition. If you want to freelance, you have to hustle. A lot of people want to be freelance writers.
- You want to write your own stories, not someone else’s. This is the biggest realisation I had while freelancing. I was happiest when writing my own stories. Though they weren’t financially rewarding, they were the only kind of writing I wanted to do.
What to consider as a non-freelancer:
- You might not make any money from your writing. When you take a stand on something, you have to acknowledge what you’re giving up. Once I had committed to the idea that writing might be a purely creative endeavour for myself, I had to adjust my expectations about earning a living as a writer. I am prepared for the possibility that I will have to earn money another way in order to keep writing for the love of it.
- Consider other ways to subsidise your passion. Freelance writing is not the only way to move into a more flexible or creative lifestyle. Another option is to work a low-stress, steady job that will still give you the time and funds to write. To make this more of a possibility, I’m working on losing my attachment to material expenses: beauty products, clothing, high-end restaurants. These are bad habits I acquired over the years. I still slip up, but I hope to get to a place where I can work a simpler job that supports a simpler lifestyle, one that includes time for writing.
- What does creative independence mean to you? It means something different to everyone. To me, at this time (for these things can change) creative independence means having the ability to choose what I write, whether or not I’m paid for it. For someone else, creative independence might mean being commissioned by an editor to write about anything at all. For a movie director, creative independence might mean free reign on a nearly unlimited budget.
If there’s one element these interpretations of creative independence have in common, it’s that money–more specifically, the absence of worrying about money–is not a priority. While there is no doubt that creative writing and money are inextricably linked in complicated and uncomfortable ways, in this case it’s quite simple: if you can’t think about money when you think about writing, then maybe freelance writing is not the answer.
