Action Step: Developing a Plan

Whether you’re just starting out as a freelancer or you’ve been in the biz for a long time, you need a plan. And a somewhat long-term plan at that.

While these days it can be difficult to look ahead when you’re really focused on what payments are coming today, this week or this month, looking even just 12 months into the future can give you a better feeling of security and the knowledge that you know where you’re going and what you’re working toward.

Planning in the Early Days

When you’re newish to freelancing, particularly if you are still working a day job full time or part time, it’s important to have a plan of how you’re going to build your business and when you want to leave your day job if that’s something you’re interested in.

My original plan when I started freelancing was to be in a place where I could quit my day job and make at least as much money as I was before within five years. It actually happened a little faster than that (my first paid clip was in late 2003 and I quit my job in the summer of 2007), but at least that gave me something to shoot for.

I knew that I wanted to focus more on repeat work assignments rather than one-off magazine articles, even though magazines can pay really well for those one-time articles. So I focused my attention on companies that needed a lot of keyword-rich articles (and actually paid decently for them), as well as blogging opportunities that would bring in regular money and, ultimately, getting in at About.com, which provides somewhat steady income at a level I’m happy with and lets me write about a topic I enjoy from all possible angles.

Those might not be your priorities, but the point is you need to know what your priorities are in order to know what sort of work will move you toward those goals and what projects don’t serve you as well.

Planning Later in the Freelance Career

There’s still plenty of room for planning once you’re more established as a freelancer. Are you happy with the direction your career has taken? Would you like to get into a different niche? Start your own website? Write a book? All these things are possible, but you need to take the time to realize you want to do them to start making them a reality.

You should never be just coasting in your career, dealing with the day-to-day things without really thinking about the future. I have lately been playing a “what if” game with myself to get me thinking about other options for my business.

What if one of your steady clients disappeared? What if your spouse lost his or her job or started freelancing as well? What if you got sick, had a baby or for some other reason weren’t able to work as much?

What would you do then? It’s good to have answers to these questions and keep your eyes open for opportunities you might want to take advantage of even if a calamity doesn’t strike.

For my part I’m looking at some different long-term and shorter-term projects I could work on for publications, sending out more magazine queries and thinking about book projects. I’m also trying to get myself organized and paring down my business to the essentials so I can get more done in less time.

Understanding for yourself what your future needs might be can help you put a renewed focus (and perhaps renewed enthusiasm as well) on your career that will only improve your outlook and your situation.

A Creative Boost in Hard Times

We all know that things are tough, and as people who make a living (or are trying to make a living) from our creativity, we know that it can be difficult to get clients to embrace new projects or to sell creative works these days.

But there was a really nice, inspiring article in the New York Times today about how some people are enjoying newfound creativity in these times, finally able to work on projects they haven’t been able to do before or to focus on their art in ways they weren’t able to when they were supporting themselves with multiple part-time jobs or projects that might have paid the bills but didn’t really fulfill them.

The paper asked artists and other creative types to let them know how the recession was affecting them, and while most of the respondents clearly are making less money than they used to, and some are clearly having problems with that, others are invigorated by having the freedom to do what they want to do and learn new creative ways to survive.

“It is making me want to pursue my career as an artist more forcefully than ever,” wrote Cadine Navarro, an artist living in New York and Amsterdam. “I feel that artists are well equipped to deal creatively with such situations and with a bit of persistence and optimism, can turn this recession into a point of strength.”

All in the Attitude

Of course not everyone was so cheery, and it’s hard to be optimistic when you’re having trouble paying your bills and don’t know where the next rent check is going to come from. But there is a real benefit to viewing your situation — whatever it is — from that more positive side if you can.

The artists in this article who talk about their art with passion and excitement are the one who are going to make it, no matter the economic situation. They know they may have to go without or take a non-artistic job in order to be able to buy supplies and keep their artistic side going, but they’re also willing to do that.

Believing that you will be successful goes a long way toward ensuring that you really are. Of course beliefs have to be backed by action, forward motion, progress, creation, marketing, putting yourself out there, taking jobs you might not love in the pursuit of the ones you will love.

Writing in the Recession

I’m not saying that we should all go get day jobs to ride through the hard times, or that you shouldn’t quit your day job if you’re ready and financially stable enough right now to do so. You need to follow the path that’s right for you, as do I (and I have plenty of business right now, and I’m sure I’m not the only thriving freelancer out there).

But maybe you need to be a little more creative in where you look for freelance work. Maybe you should consider professional blogging, because it’s quick and provides steady money. Maybe you should visit the job boards more often instead of focusing all your energy on magazine queries. Maybe you should look for writing opportunities in your local community that you might have passed up before.

The point is you need to have a plan. I have this exercise I go through occasionally to make myself feel better about my current situation and anything that might happen in the future. I play the “what if” game.

What if one of my major clients disappeared? What if I just wanted to stop working for one of them? What if my husband lost his job?

What would I do then?

What would you do?

If you have an answer to that question (I have several, and will probably share them with you in another post) you’ll likely feel a lot more secure about the situation and able to create more freely than you would otherwise.

Are You Living a Life of Weisure?

Building a freelance career while working a day job often means spending a lot more time working than you spend playing or in whatever kind of downtime you enjoy. It’s admittedly a lot of work, and it isn’t always fun, but there is an extent to which it’s empowering, knowing that you are taking your destiny in your hands and doing the work you most want to do.

But once you’ve gotten out of that crazy business building time, it can be really hard to scale back to a point where you have some kind of balance between working time and not working time.

I really struggled with this — and to some extent still do — because when I finally quit my day job I had enough freelancing work with regular clients that I was basically working a full-time freelancing job from the beginning (also, I was writing a book with an insane deadline, so it was almost like going from having two jobs to having two different jobs).

Things have calmed down these days, thanks to some strategic no saying and a limiting of extra projects, but I still feel like there are a lot of times when work and play mix.

That’s always going to be the case for someone like me with a creative job. Since I somewhat knit for a living, that’s work, but it’s also fun.

Other people combine work and not-work in other ways, like catching up with Facebook friends during work conference calls or checking e-mail on vacation. This way of working and living has become so common the term weisure (combo of work and leisure) has been coined to describe it.

Is Weisure a Good Thing?

This way of living is probably unavoidable for some people: because you can be reached anywhere at anytime, your employer is going to take advantage of that. But I wonder if a lot of the rest of us feel the need to be available all the time not because it’s necessary to our work but because we like the validation of feeling indispensable.

At the same time we might not want to give ourselves uninterrupted play time because we don’t really know what to do with ourselves when there’s not a project hanging over our heads (particularly true for freelancers and work-at-homers). We wouldn’t know how to relax, enjoy ourselves and really spend time with our families even if we wanted to.

Striving for Better Balance

There are probably people out there who really enjoy their mixed-up work-play lives. When you love your work it all feels like fun, and that’s great. But there still needs to be some turned-off time, when you abandon the computer, leave the cell phone behind and really connect with the part of your life that doesn’t have to do with work.

Being fully the you that you are when you’re not working makes you a better person. It sets a great example for your kids, if you have them, on how to set priorities and live in the moment. And it can even refresh you and make you more creative when you go back to work, so it’s a win all around.

What can you do today or this weekend to bring a little more play into your life?

What Twitter Downtime Can Teach Us About Productivity

I have to admit I’m a little bit addicted to Twitter. I love getting a peek into other people’s lives, especially people who I know also work from home doing what they love. It gives us a daily chance to affirm our and each other’s choices, and a sort of water cooler that no longer exists when you work in the quiet of your own home all day.

As I write this, Twitter is experiencing scheduled maintenance. It was kind of funny to see people wondering what they were going to do for the hour or so that the site was down.

I’ll admit I felt a twinge of disconnectedness, too. But then I remembered that sometimes disconnecting is a very good thing.

A World of Distractions

The trouble with Twitter, Facebook, other social networking sites, news feeders, even e-mail, is that they take our attention away from whatever it is we’d otherwise be focused on. It’s great if you can use quick visits to these sites as a reward or a break at the end of a steady hour of work, but most people can’t (or don’t) use them that way.

I for one leave my Gmail account open all the time and pretty much always check to see what the new messages are within five minutes or so of seeing that I have new messages. I check Twitter probably three or four times an hour, and it’s open all the time, too.

I know that this is a bad habit. Every time you turn your attention away from what you were working on, it’s said to take between 10 and 30 minutes to really get focused again.

Taking an e-mail break twice an hour means you’re almost never completely focused on your work. That’s not good for you and it’s not good for your clients.

How to Disconnect

During the current Twitter downtime I’ve managed to write an article, edit two more, send some e-mails and write this blog, and there are still 15 minutes to go. This hour has probably been more productive than the entire rest of my day.

Of course, that’s my problem, not Twitter’s. But it does remind me — as I hope it reminds you as well — that working without interruption is a really good way to go sometimes. The focus and attention you bring to your work when you’re really dedicated to it means you’ll work faster and produce better quality work than you could do if you were writing between Twitter refreshes every quarter hour.

This downtime reminds me that I need more time disconnected — from Twitter, e-mail and random web browsing — and more time when I’m truly focused on my work. I enjoy my work, so it’s not like it’s a burden to actually work.

I think I’ll find myself getting more done in less time, which is always a benefit, and producing better quality work as well.

What do you think? Could you go a day without Twitter? Or an afternoon once a week to see if your productivity improved? Could you turn off the e-mail? Silence the ringers on the phones? Go to a dark corner of the library or a coffeeshop without Wi-Fi and just write for a couple of hours on a project that really excites you?

Try it. Sometime before the end of this month, turn off the distractions, turn up the work and the passion and see what happens. If you try it, I’d love to hear about it.

Action Step: Write Locally

This week I’m starting a new feature that I hope I’ll be able to do weekly that will inspire you or get you thinking about something you can do in support of your writing career.

This is one I actually got from a course I took long ago about getting your freelancing career off the ground. It suggested that in order to get the thrill of seeing your name in print (assuming you’re a brand new writer) as well as a bit of experience, you should write a letter to the editor.

Check out a newspaper (it would be lovely if you’d actually go buy one instead of reading it online), find a story you’re interested in and write up a quick note to the editor about it. Small papers are good about publishing everything they get, so this really is a quick and easy way to get published, even if it doesn’t really give you a clip you can share with other editors.

One thing you can try instead is writing to the editor and suggesting that you write a guest commentary about a particular subject. I’ve done this a couple times for one of my local papers and have another idea in process for them. Unfortunately it doesn’t pay, but it is a way to get my name out as a writer locally and provides me with decent clips I can use if I want to apply for blogging jobs that involve commentary.

I know this comes dangerously close to suggesting your write for free. But I get other things out of this sort of writing besides money. It’s fun, for one thing, and I get to write about things I really care about. And right now, I feel like it’s a way to support my newspaper rather than turning my back just because they don’t feel like they can pay me.

So that’s the challenge for this week. Delve into your local or regional paper, find out what’s going on in your corner of the world and write a letter to the editor about a topic that interests you. If you want, try pitching a guest column or even a more regular commentary gig if you think they’d be interested, with the knowledge that they might not be willing or able to pay you right now.

You might also think about checking out local magazines, special interest publications, even websites devoted to local news. Some of these might be in a better position to pay right now, and writing a letter to the editor can be a good way to introduce yourself and get your foot in the door.

Do You Think of Yourself as an Entrepreneur?

If you’re new to freelancing as a career or are still just thinking about it, you might not consider yourself a business person or an entrepreneur.

You might be thinking that you don’t have any big innovative ideas that are going to change the world. You aren’t out to build a huge business, you just want to be able to do some work from home and make a decent living at it.

But the truth is, everyone who works for themselves must have a bit of the entrepreneurial spirit within them in order to succeed. You have to be willing to go it alone, to see opportunities where other people do not, put yourself out there in the face of rejection again and again, and keep going toward what you want even when you’re not supported or the people in your life don’t understand what you’re doing.

If you’re having trouble deciding if this kind of life is the right one for you, or you’ve hit a bumpy patch in your business and aren’t sure you want to go forward, check out this video and see if it changes things for you (thanks to HARO, another great resource you need to know about, for pointing us to this one):

If you know you have something to say and you just aren’t going to feel like you’re truly being yourself if you don’t take the steps you need to take to tell the world, then you’ve got the entrepreneur’s spirit. Congratulations. Now get out there and show the world what you’ve got.

The Working Lunch

When I was trying to build my freelancing career, I did freelance work almost every day during lunch while sitting at my desk. On days when work was slow or nonexistent, or when my boss was away, I’d often spend a lot of time doing freelance work on the clock.

I’m not at all suggesting that as a good idea, but it is one way to make more time to build your freelancing career without also working every waking moment outside of your day job. But there are certainly problems with doing freelance work at the day job you’ll want to consider:

• What if your boss/coworkers catch you? How will you explain what you’re doing?
• What if you get a freelance related call during working hours?
• Are you able to focus on day-job work when it’s there? Are you still giving your all to day-job assignments?
• Have you signed a contract that indicates that the company you work for owns all work you produce? That’s a sticky legal situation if you’re working for someone else on their time.
• Can you manage your time and energy properly so that no part of your work suffers?
• Are you doing similar work as a freelancer to what you’re doing in your day job? That too could pose problems.

I was lucky enough to have a boss who also freelanced (though usually not at work, he would take freelance-related calls at the office) and understood what I was trying to do, and at least pretended to look the other way if he caught me working on my lunch break.

If I were doing it again today, and if I didn’t work for someone so understanding, I think I’d pack a lunch and a notebook (the kind with paper) and find a quiet place away from the office to eat and work on my lunch break. It’s not as efficient as doing work on the computer directly, but it’s also a lot less likely to get you into trouble.