Writing and Stuff by Anthony Chatfield

I may not be the best person on the Internet to give you diet and exercise advice, but I can say this – it definitely helps. I have something of a forced incentive on this one. I have a gluten intolerance which means I cannot eat most junk food and have to cook most of my own meals. At first, this was a big chore. As time went on, I realized that I think much clearer when I am not eating McDonald’s and Doritos every day. Which of course lead to the big revelation (get ready for it)…. a healthy diet helps you think clearer.

Yeah, I know – I should have my own TV show, right? Seriously though, if you haven’t yet, give this a shot, because the effects are even more than I would have imagined. You know that fuzzy headed, cotton-ball feeling you get between your ears when you try to think of a word and it just wont’ come? It turns out that when you get all the vitamins and minerals you need every day and cut out all the processed junk, that feeling almost completely disappears.

So, what do I recommend? I’m not going to give you a diet plan to follow, because I’m not a nutritionist or a doctor. However, I can tell you what I’ve done. First, I eat breakfast bright and early every day. Not just a pop tart on my way out the door – it’s a bowl of fruit, a big glass of water, and some yogurt – occasionally with a bit of gluten free toast for substance. Next, I’m a vegetarian. It wasn’t some super-discovery on my part about how meat is raised (though since I became a vegetarian, I’ve read some horrible stories about farming practices and the hormones in meat and dairy). It was simply how much easier it is to not eat meat, and by proxy most dairy products. Finally, I don’t drink caffeine – at all. The only caffeine I’ve had in the last five years is when I take a red eye flight across the country and need to stay awake for another 12 hours.

The result is that I sleep better, wake up much better, and can think clearly throughout the day – not just when I’ve had my coffee. Now, when you top all that off with a round of exercise every day – at least 30 minutes of stretches and some form of aerobics – the impact on your mental clarity is ridiculous. Plus, it makes you feel good. Your body is pleased that it’s getting what it needs, so when you sit down to write, it hums with energy.

That’s my public service announcement for the day – exercise and proper diet are good for your mind. I know it sounds cliche, but it’s incredibly true. Don’t think of it as something to help you in the future; think of it as a way to boost your productivity right now and start living the dream of being a full time writer. That’s when things really start to kick into gear.

Freelance Lifestyle exercise, freelance writing, good diet, make money online, thinking clearly, writing

A lot of newcomers to freelance writing have asked me whether the article spinning projects are a good idea. They are easy to get and they generally represent ongoing work – or at least that’s the argument.

And to be honest, I completely understand the attraction. When you’ve been writing for a few weeks and cannot get enough work to feed your family, let alone pay the bills, anything starts to look attractive. But, before you honestly consider taking on “rewrites” or “spinning” projects, consider a few things.

1. Your Time Investment – The argument most clients use here is that rewriting takes less time than original content. This is sometimes true, especially if it’s a research heavy topic. But, a good rewrite still takes a lot of effort. You cannot simply rewrite every line and call it new. It won’t flow, nor will it provide anything useful to the reader.
2. Who Owns that Article – Then there is the legal issue of who actually owns that article. If the article is not owned by your client, rewriting it is copyright infringement – a serious legal issue. Never rewrite content unless your client owns the original copy and you’re confident you can create an original piece of work.
3. Can You Really Live Off that Much? – This is the big one. Sure, it’s steady work, but can you live off $2 an article. Most people can’t. I don’t care if your cost of living is a quarter of someone who lives in the big city, you need to make at least minimum wage doing what you do, and $2 isn’t going to get the job done.

Of course, I know the realities of this business. When you first get started, it takes samples and practice to get anyone who will pay for original content interested in your work. I’ve talked about how Micropay can help, and I’ve also talked about how to start raising your rates when you get underway, but those first few weeks are brutal.

But, for your own sake and for the sake of the content quality on the Internet, avoid rewrites as much as possible. They are generally used for spamming or keyword stuffing, may present a copyright issue, and don’t pay very well. Plus, having them in your portfolio rarely looks good.

Do what you need to get started (within reason), but once you’re started, seek out work you can be proud of. It may make things tougher for a short while, but the pride you feel in what you write will counteract that nicely.

Freelancing freelance writing, getting work, make money online, online job, rewriting content

Facebook is an interesting thing for me. I was never one of those people who decided early on “never” to be a part of social networking. I had a Facebook account from the start – when it was available to college students across the US. But, I’ll be honest in that I almost never used the site. Sure, I would approve requests, reply to messages, and occasionally say “happy birthday”, but I would almost never actually use Facebook for anything.

That is until now. These days, it’s different. As a 26 year old guy with friends scattered across the country, Facebook lets me keep tabs on people, which I sometimes do. But, as an entrepreneur with a new business, it lets me do so much more – accessing prospective clients and other business owners across the globe.

And that’s why I actually use it, and why you should be on there too.

Facebook is entirely too powerful to ignore if you have a brand on the Internet. It might be a blog, your business, a short story you wrote – whatever it is, Facebook is the way to stay in touch with people who like you and like what you do. If you’re not using it, you’re wasting a tremendous opportunity.

To top things off, Facebook is super easy to use. You can hook it up to your Twitter account or your blog and have automated posts uploaded every day. You can then have comments and wall posts forwarded to your phone for quick, on the go replies. I might spend a grand total of 15 minutes a day (at the most) on Facebook, and that’s on a busy day.

I think my answer to the title question is pretty obvious. Should you be on Facebook? Absolutely. Should you spend hours of your time on Facebook? That’s a whole different question – one that usually ends with a no.

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When you’re just getting started as a freelancer, which I know a lot of you are doing, there don’t seem to be many options. You can either work for $0.50 an article on Elance or roll the dice on Craigslist and hope someone accepts your email out of hundreds they’ll get for that single post. It’s a tough road.

I, on the other hand, kind of stumbled into it by working on so-called “micropay” sites like Associated Content and Helium where I generated my own topics, wrote at my own pace and got paid only if the content I wrote was useful to the site. Of course, that was also in 2007 when Associated Content’s stringent guidelines were not quite so hard to get around and you could get the occasional $20 offer for an article.

And to round out the story of my flirt with Micropay, it only lasted the better part of 6 weeks. I got up to about 20 articles a week with Associated Content and promptly realized that Elance was a far better place to test my talents – quickly obtaining a far greater supply of work per month than I would have been physically capable of writing on the Micropays.

So, Does it Work?

I will say yes. It might not be the most exciting thing in the world, but over the course of the first few weeks as a freelancer, you need something to do. You might spend 2+ hours a day carving out a name for yourself on forums, on your blog, or at Elance with bid after bid, but if you don’t actually sit down and write an article or two, you’ll never gain the experience you need to succeed.

It’s hard to be good at this job. You must not only be a good writer, you must be a fast writer – capable of adapting to numerous styles and tones instantly while shifting between dozens of topics. Only practice will give you the skillset needed to succeed.

So, where does that leave us? If you need a jump start to your career and some practice writing content that will help you hone your skills, get on the micropay sites. Until you actually get a real paying job on Elance or Odesk, it’s your best bet for getting some experience, feedback and much needed pay.

Don’t Forget Blogging

Regardless of your decision on micropay, though, don’t forget the value of a good blog. If you haven’t done so yet, get a blog started on Blogger.com or WordPress.com. You may not get a single reader, but the chance to sit down and write something that is dear to you and send it to the world is as good a way to build confidence as any. Just take a look at how many posts on this blog are from 2007 when I first got started. Whether you’re getting paid or not, you have to be writing, so stop reading and start writing.

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When I got started in this business, one of the biggest perks I saw was being able to sit back and relax on the beach with a laptop, because I had the freedom to travel where I wanted and when I wanted.

It’s been a few years since then, and I’ve learned a few things about travel. Yes, it’s possible to go somewhere whenever you want, but even more so than when you have a job you need to plan EVERYTHING out perfectly if you actually want to enjoy your trip.

1. Lost Pay Adds Up

First up, you need to save up money for a trip. When you only go on vacation once every year or two, it’s not a big deal. You have a fund in a jar on top of the fridge and everyone knows you don’t go until it’s full. When you’re a freelancer with itchy feet, you want to get out there as much as possible, but you still need to pay for the trip.

To top things off, you don’t get vacation pay. It seems obvious enough, but too many people neglect his little detail. Sure, you can go away whenever you want, but if you do, you don’t get paid because you’re not working. And if you plan on working while you’re gone, trust me – it’s not going to happen.

2. Juggling Clients During Vacation

Another toughie is figuring out how to juggling existing, ongoing, or new clients while away. I’ve learned, over time, to tell my clients about my vacation at least 1 month before I go away…then I remind them weekly in subtle ways so they don’t forget.

The first trip I took, I spent three hours a day in the hotel room replying to emails and editing documents. The second trip, I forgot my laptop at home and came back to a dozen irate emails. By the third trip, I had a system in place where I worked my butt off for 10 days before I left to get EVERYTHING done early.

However you do it, make sure your clients A) know you’ll be gone and B) have a lot of time to unload whatever they need on you beforehand. If they don’t, it becomes their problem, which 99% of them will recognize.

3. Having Work to Come Back To

Here’s why I don’t try to get everything done before I leave, and actually build the trip into my schedules. It’s because, when you get back you don’t have anything to do. I’ve been in this trap twice before – once after a 2 week trip to New York City in 2008 and last year after I got married.

Both times, I took extended leaves of absence (two weeks and three weeks), having planned ahead to cover the lost time and get everything done early. Unfortunately, when I got back, I had nothing to do – no edits, no projects, no responses from those clients.

They hadn’t moved on – they’d just taken a break themselves and I lost another whole week finding work on Elance. The lesson here is to always bid out in advance of leaving and try to convince your regular clients to have stuff waiting for you when you get back.

Ideally, you’ll eventually have regular monthly projects that you can use to fill these gaps, but for now, a good bit of pre-bidding or even a day or two mid-vacation spent bidding, can help stave off the lost week.

4. Enjoying Your Trip Properly

Enjoying your trip is important. What good is all that travel if you’re miserably thinking of your email the whole time. If you’re traveling with family, it can be even worse as you drag down your spouse and kids with you.

So, instead of worrying constantly, be realistic and set aside at least 1 hour a day to check email, hash out work details and make sure everything is okay. The rest of the day, leave your phone at the hotel. A blinking BlackBerry can be the death of a good vacation and your clients should already know you’re away.

If it’s important, they’ll leave a message and you’ll have your hour at the end of the day to deal with whatever comes up.

5. The Best Time to Get Away

So, with no boundaries on when you travel (unless you have kids), when is the best time to get away? I don’t have any preferred times, but I have been very lucky in offseason traveling. For sure, consider taking a trip in December. It’s the slowest month of the year for most freelancers and offers tons of opportunities for cheap travel if you go in the first two weeks.

September-October and April-May are also great times because of the pre and post seasons discounts at resorts in areas that are still quite nice. Avoid mid-summer travel like the plague if you can get away with it, and keep a close eye on nice weekends in the later winter and early spring.

My wife and I had a fantastic weekend in the Redwoods two years ago in April. No one was there but the weather hit a balmy 75 degrees. Last year we did the same thing in Vancouver, Canada in February. If you can time it right, you can get the entire destination to yourself.

The key to successful travel as a freelancer is to cut out as much of your work life as possible. I made the mistake on this one more than once and it can be extremely frustrating. Do it right, though, and trust me – you’ll have a blast and your friends will be super jealous (which is always fun).

Freelance Lifestyle freelance writing, home business, make money online, traveling, working on the road

I try to be at least a little modest every now and then, but there are some topics I know pretty well, based pretty heavily on the experience I’ve racked up in recent years. One of those things is how to write an eBook, so I thought I’d bring that knowledge to bear here for a short course on how to do just that.

The next few parts in this series will cover exactly how to brainstorm, outline, and write an eBook that can be sold as an informational product or used to promote something else you’re trying to sell. Despite what some of my colleagues would say, I always like to think that the content comes first, so I take this process very seriously and alway pour a good bit of energy into creating well written, highly focused eBooks that are actually valuable to their readers. That’s what we’re going to work on.

As a note, this is a guide for those interested in informational eBooks for distribution on the Internet – not for digital novels or non-fiction books. However, most of the tips in these guides will probably work just as well for those types of books if that’s your goal.

For the first message, I thought I’d keep things pretty simple and focus on how you’re going to choose the topic for your eBook. It’s probably one of the hardest parts of the process and for many marketers, if it’s done poorly, it results in a whole lot of work for not much gain.

What Do You Know?

Simple question. Probably lots of answers too. The first thing you should ask yourself is what you know about. If that fails, what are you willing to learn about. This has less to do with your innate knowledge (because god knows that research on the Internet is easier than ever) and more to do with your interest level and motivation. If you choose a topic you know nothing about, the odds are that you don’t care all that much about the niche in the first place. That may not be true, but it tends to hold course for most topics.

On the other hand, if you choose a topic that you know a LOT about, even if you don’t like that niche, the writing process should be smooth. You won’t need to rely on research alone to make it happen. Plus, when you’re an expert in a field, it tends to be much easier to find a unique angle from which to write the book – when you can tap into that unique angle, you will save a tremendous amount of time and energy and probably capture more attention.

What’s the Book For?

Before you can go any further, you need to know what the book is for. Are you selling it? Are you giving it away? Are you writing for the sake of writing? It doesn’t really matter what your purpose is in terms of how you write it, but when it comes to selling it, you had better be sure that the topic you’ve chosen is going to be marketable.

Can You Sell It?

This is the biggie. Can your topic be sold. I refuse to tell anyone that an idea cannot be sold, but I will sometimes hold my tongue as I wonder just how it is going to be done. The key here is to know exactly what kind of market you have. Are there people out there buying guides like yours already and if so, how many of them are there. How many people are in your niche and what kind of opportunities are there for growth?

An easy way to do some quick research, if you plan to sell your guide, is to look on Clickbank’s Marketplace. Here, you’ll find many of the top selling eBooks on the Internet. The higher the gravity, the more people are selling that book and the larger its niche probably is. I don’t recommend copying anything out right – but you may as well see how your niche is represented.

Case in point – I had a client who wanted a new guide written about how to create your own energy, like all the big Energy4Earth style guides out there right now. They asked whether I thought the guide would sell or not. I said, sure thing, but you’d better market it well because competition is fierce right now. I recommended a similar guide, but one that focused more on how to make a house’s existing systems more energy efficient. There were a couple of guides like that but none of them were all that good. Turns out, he did fantastic with that topic, just by finding a slightly different angle than what everyone else was using.

He still got the niche he enjoyed working in, but he managed to get a guide that stuck its landing well within a hungry niche that was interested in what had to be said.

A Short List of Topics

That’s about as far as I can take you in specifically getting you a topic for you book, but just to get you a head start, here is a list of popular niches that tend to remain popular regardless of things like the economy or the time of year. If you write a book that is different and interesting in one of these niches, you stand a good chance of creating something profitable:

(note: Click on any keyword below to do a Google search for it)

• Muscle Building
• Solar Panels
• Wind Power
• Acne Care
• Vegan Foods
• College Guides
• Skin Care
• Weddings
• Dog Care
• Golf
• Learning Languages
• Stress Management
• Anxiety
• Anti-Aging
• Weight Loss
• Divorce
• Time Management
• Quitting Smoking
• Yoga
• Satellite TV
• Vacation Homes
• Getting Employment
• Insurance
• Massage
• Dating
• Small Business Building
• Gardening
• Organic Cooking
• MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs)
• Self Coaching
• Making Money from Home
• Home Décor
• Pregnancy
• Home Security
• Stopping Identity Theft
• Car Repair
• Yoga
• Real Estate
• Cruises

This is by no means a complete list, but it can help you get started with your new eBook if you’re looking for ideas.

Some Websites to Check Out

Want to do a little more research on your own while you’re at it? Here is a list of websites I use for niche research when I need new ideas to get an eBook started:

• EzineArticles.com – A huge article directory filled with topics and content that you can start brainstorming with.
• Amazon.com – The world’s largest online store. Use Amazon to see what people are buying and what you might be able to help them with.
• WordTracker.com – A paid keyword research tool that helps you look up related topics to your niche. Make sure to sign up for the free trial first.
• Google Keywords Tool – Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool. This is completely free but doesn’t offer quite as much info as the paid ones. It can be very helpful for basic research though.
• SpyFu.com – Provides details about current ads for a given keyword. Lets you see how competitive your niche might be with costs per click, recent data, and more.
• Quantcast.com – Demographic information for specific websites and keywords. See who is interested in which topics and how many of them are out there.
• PayDotCom.com – Information publishing and payment service like Clickbank. Look through their marketplace for ideas.
• Clickbank.com – As mentioned above, a great tool to help research what is hot right now and what topics you can get in on or find new angles to work with.

This is just a smattering of tools out there. You can also look on blogs, research local news and headlines, read up on the current trends on forums and much more. Don’t hold yourself back. Do your research and find ways to get the best topics out there.

Next Time

Hopefully this post has been helpful in preparing you for writing your eBook. Next time we’ll talk about how to outline your book before writing to minimize writer’s block and to be sure you don’t miss any important topics in the content.

Writing Guides ebook writing, how to write, make money online, writing a book, writing courses, writing for money

One of the number one things I get asked by people wondering how I got involved in the copywriting field is what I studied in College to get here. To be fair, I’ll admit up front that I was a Creative Writing Major with a focus in fiction and exposition. I wrote a lot and I have a degree to back it all up. It doesn’t really support my argument that you don’t need any formal training to do what I’m doing, but let’s just forget for a moment that degree and take a closer look at the things you really need to be effective as a copywriter. These are only a few of the things that go into writing. I have a few more that I’ll add in future posts. 

A Keen Eye for Language

While I won’t say that you need any kind of formal training to be a writer online, I will say that you need a keen eye for what makes language work and how an English sentence is formed. If you don’t read very often, haven’t written anything since high school and often have a hard time writing the memos on your checks, this job might be a bit hard for you.

But, even then don’t let it get you down. To develop a keen eye for the language, you need only to spend a bit of time understanding how sentences work, how words flow together and what is attractive to the human eye. It might not seem like it, but words are just as visually pleasing as a picture of the sunset or the vase your nephew made for you.

One of the number one things I tell people to do when they start writing for the first time is to read their first couple of articles out loud. This was an exercise I learned in Middle School and it quickly taught me to listen for things as I write. If you practice enough, you don’t have to read outloud anymore and your brain will start recognizing patterns that are effective without having to hear them. We’ll go into a bit more detail on how online copy needs to be structured for the Internet reader later, but things like cadence, white space, sentence length, word choice, and use of punctuation are all vital aspects of the flow of language that you’ll need to master.

Typing Skills

This is just plain simple and is something that anyone can improve upon very quickly. But, no matter how you look at it, you need to be able to type quickly. Not only must you type quickly, you must type accurately, and consistently. In any given day, I might type between 8,000 and 15,000 words. That amount of text will take me between two and a half and six hours of hard typing. It might seem like a lot, but you’ll build up to it over time. When I first started, I might be lucky to write up 4,000 words in a day and 1,500 words an hour.

Not only do your fingers learn to start keeping pace, your brain will start learning how to develop thoughts and put them into position as you write. I’ll discuss this more later but it all comes down to practice, practice, practice. Most of what you learn and become better at in this job is intangible. But, trust me when I say that if you practice you will get better.

Ability to Focus and Self Motivate

If you want to work at home and write for a living, you need to be able to focus on what you are doing and above and beyond anything else, you need to be able to self motivate yourself. You cannot be effective at writing for a living if you spend your time watching the Simpsons or walking your dog, or doing chores around the house during your allotted work hours.

It’s hard to hear that because half of the allure of working at home is having the freedom to take breaks, adjust your schedule and move around at will rather than being stuck in an office for 8 hours a day every day. But, especially when you get started, you need to be able to maintain a steady schedule. The easier you make it for yourself to slack off, the harder it will be to get up to a point where you’re doing a job and not trying out a new hobby.

For the first six months I always recommend setting aside incrementally larger amounts of time every day. This is vital because if you start out trying to work 8 hours a day, you’ll burn out quickly, especially when learning. However, if you start out with 2 or 3 hours a day in the first week and build up to 8 hours a day by the fifth or sixth week, your mind and your body will be working full time before you know it.

Ultimately, this is the kind of job that you can do for 4-5 hours a day, 4-5 days a week and make $40,000 a year doing, but it is going to take anywhere up to a year to get to that point. It takes time to get higher paying jobs; it takes time to build up your stamina in typing (and thinking that much) and it takes time to build up your resolve enough to spend that much time working in your own home every day. 

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A blog is a great tool for prospective online writers because it is free, easy, and great practice. The number one thing you can do for yourself when attempting to get into a freelancing career is write regularly. That means you need to find something to write about (or someone to pay you).

Since thinking of things to write out of thin air is not the easiest thing in the world and because you’re not going to be able to get people to pay you just yet (we’re still assuming you have no references), blogging is your best bet. Here are a few things that blogging does for a prospective writer:

Builds a Portfolio

When you first start out, you have absolutely nothing to work with. You won’t have any work to draw upon except for some old high school or college papers and if you’re older, you may not have written anything in years. A blog addresses these things by providing you with an outlet to build a portfolio. For this reason, you need to watch what you write about (no profanity and always write with the idea that a potential client might read it someday), and make sure to write constantly – if you write a post a day for three months you’ll have 90 posts to draw from for inspiration and samples later on.

Creates an Audience

When you blog regularly, people will eventually start to read what you write. They will stumble upon your blog through search engines, blog databases, and readers and will either be intrigued or bored by what you say. Either way, their feedback will help you develop your writing style and engage an active audience about your writing.

Develops a Style

If you have not been writing for a few years, blogging can be an invaluable tool to help reestablish your writing style. Many people don’t spend much time writing in their careers and if they do it’s too dry to count as a style. Writing blog posts and articles will require a certain flare and style that will become uniquely yours.

Fine Tunes Grammar and Spelling

If you haven’t been writing or even if you have and haven’t had to sell or submit anything for review, fine tuning your fundamentals is an essential part of the process. Learning the ins and outs of grammar and spelling will save you a ton of time and energy when you start submitting your work for money.

Develops Contacts

Having connections is a huge part of being a successful freelance writer. Clients will recommend you to other clients, give you repeat work and help you find new clients if you develop a working relationship with them early. Start taking down email addresses, developing contacts and getting to know people online through your blog – you never know when those contacts will come in handy.

Builds Up Typing Speed and Efficiency

By getting yourself to type a certain amount of text every day you will quickly build up a more efficient, higher quality typing speed and efficiency that will allow you to make more money, turn around projects faster and maintain higher quality that will make clients happier. Less edits and fast turnaround equals lots of repeat business and the ability to ask for higher rates.

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I’ve had a few people ask me in the last few months about self-promotion and networking. Well, most people ask me about networking, but I tend to see it all as the same basic process – you need people to find you, you need them to want you to do their work, and you need to be the one they see instead of someone else. That’s not networking; that’s self promotion. 

I’ll probably post a few of these little posts about the idea behind self promotion in a Web 2.0 world – meaning that you can basically do it all yourself. Whether it’s printing your own books, making your own videos, recording your own podcasts, or building your own website, you can pretty much do it all alone these days if you know what you are doing.

One of my favorites though has been the influx of self promoting videos in recent years. To be perfectly honest, I have never made a self promotional video for myself – sure, I’ve fooled around a bit on YouTube and even used it to promote some products for clients, but I’ve never done anything as direct as a structured video for my business or anything like that.

But, I’ve seen them work – over and over again. It’s pretty simple really. You make something other people might want to see, ensure it’s entertaining and then you add something to make sure they see your product, your face, your website – whatever it is you’re promoting – and boom, you’ve got ongoing publicity for a good long time. It’s pretty simple.

Viral marketing works for a lot of things really, and while I’m whole heartedly behind it and have written my fair share of scripts for those videos, you’re probably wondering how any of this has to do with you and your freelancing. Well, it’s all about thinking creatively. While it doesn’t have to be a viral video or even a video clip, the idea is the same. Promotion today is not just about telling people what you write about and asking them to visit your website. You need to entertain them and draw them to you.

This means you need you create a viral interest in what you’ve produced – and then twist that interest into a targeted approach to your site. Video is the best example of how this works. You might produce a web comic or animation about what you do, video blog your exploits, or simply create a short sitcom or clip show and then mention your website at the end. Whatever you end with, it’s going to work if you manage to gather attention, regardless of why you gathered that attention.

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I have wanted to be a writer for a while now. Not “since I was a little kid” while, but a good long time nonetheless. Of course, when I had these visions of literary wonder, I was going to be sitting around a massive house with a few hundred words a day to write for a major magazine, newspaper, or novel. Of course, it’s not the same thing as what I’m actually doing – that is being a pen for hire, the guy who does all the dirty work for websites across the globe. 

I’m not complaining about my job of course – being a freelance writer is probably the best job I’ve ever had or will ever have and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. That said, there ends up being a huge difference between writing because you love it and writing because you have to do it to pay your rent and keep the Simpsons DVDs up to date. 

When I wrote in college, I wrote because I loved it. That’s about all you get out of it when you’re paying thousands of dollars for someone to “teach” you how to produce a short story. Right now, I write because it pays the bills – all sorts of bills by the way; more than I ever thought would be possible. This isn’t a new realization by any means. I have seen the effects of work in action many times before. When I was a kid, there was nothing I wanted more than to ride the lawnmower around the yard – I’ll bet you can guess how that turned out. 

And in the last two years or so, I’ve had plenty of jobs that I thought would be a lot of fun, but the longer I worked on them, the less fun they became. Writing guides for video games? That should be awesome right? Turns out that when you start looking at everything in a game as a sequence in a technical manual, it’s pretty dull. Eating out and writing reviews? Well, it could be fun if A) the food was good everytime or B) you didn’t have to think of new and exciting ways to describe the word “spicy”. 

Again, I’m not complaining. My job is great and if you’re getting into freelance writing, I can guarantee that you’ll be happy with your new lifestyle. But, if you’re getting into it for the love of writing, you’re going to be pretty crestfallen pretty quickly. 

My advice – get a really relaxing, mindless hobby. It helps to balance out how much you use your brain when writing all day and allows you to clear the slate so you can work on private projects – things like short stories or that great american novel. I like to read cheesy fantasy novels and play guitar hero. My brain gets to shut down for an hour or two and I don’t feel like writing more is only another chore when it is really something I dream about doing most every day. 

You’re going to have enough trouble already separating your personal life from your work if you start working freelance – create barriers and good ways to wind down and you can avoid feeling like the writing you do for the love of writing is the same as all that other stuff you scribble out to pay your gas bill.

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