August 25, 2005
One of the books I'm reading at the moment is "Six Figure Freelancing: the Writer's Guide to Making More Money" by Kelly James-Enger. If you've already read "The Well-Fed Writer" by Peter Bowerman or "Secrets of a Freelance Writer" by Robert Bly, I really don't think James-Enger has all that much new to offer, though I've picked up a nugget or two.

[And just as an aside, I think the Bowerman book is the best of the three. Bowerman focuses on copywriting but is very specific about how to break in. I haven't tried it hard enough, not sure it's my cup of tea, but we'll see how the Visa bill looks next month. Bly's less enthusiastic and less entertaining, but he covers pretty similar ground. James-Enger at least covers magazine writing and book proposals].

Toward the end of the book--okay, I read the last chapter when I got bored with some of her other chapters--her final chapter is about where you want your career to be or go. And I thought it was probably worth reading if you're making a career out of writing. As she comments, you get into writing because you love it, but it can get repetitive and taking aim at something might be a good idea. Is it writing books, fiction or nonfiction? A money aim, say $100,000 a year? Is it copywriting? Technical writing?

I thought her take on that was interesting, and she talks about how there are probably 3 broad phases of a writer's career. First is you write because you love it. You're probably not yet worrying about publication. Phase two is aiming for publication, and she quite honestly and frankly points out that many, many people do not get past this phase. Phase 3 is the career writer who's making a living (like me) and faces a certain number of challenges, burnout being one of them. It all pretty much rang true for me. I can see how you might get burned out as a freelance writer. For one, the ups-and-downs of the income are pretty exasperating. Two, at some point--and I've asked myself this a couple times--you're going to go through a stretch where you're writing about things that you're not really interesting in writing about, ie., Medicare Reform. It might be lucrative to write about it, but somewhere in your head you may be thinking, "Is this what my career's going to be like? Regurgitating this bullshit over and over again?" Of course, those are down days, we all have 'em. Three, sometimes you have to handle certain business issues that can drive you crazy--tracking down money from a slow-paying client or having a client go out of business on you or having one of your good contacts at a particular client move on to another career, leaving you without much in with the client. I've had all three happen to me this year alone, and none of them make for happy occasions.

I suspect there are other phases, and burnout's not exactly rare in any career. I'm not burned out, but I definitely am looking at ways to increase my income in general so the low periods aren't so exasperating, and I think I would be happier overall writing not only novels, but nonfiction books. That may make me more of a marathoner than a sprinter, I guess, or the fact that I like to live with projects--if I enjoy them--for long periods of time. [But a whole book on Medicare Reform? Bleh!] I also like challenges, oddly enough. I'm not sure how happy I would be writing junk mail (er, direct mail) or even certain types of ad copy no matter how lucrative they might be, but it might be worth trying to find out. The problem with taking on lucrative types of work you don't particularly like is that you may find yourself torn because of the money--the I-Hate-This-Crap-But-It-Pays-The-Bills deal. Because, after all, most of us started out in Phase 1 because we loved to write. Turning it into a job and writing stuff you hate seems like a pretty bad Catch-22 way to treat the thing you love.

Best,
Mark Terry