Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing, and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

Audio Recording

In Episode #6, I talk about why freelance writing isn’t a good fit for everyone and how to figure out if it’s right for you.

 

 

Transcript: Why Freelance Writing Isn’t For Everyone

Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

Today, I want to talk about why freelance writing isn’t for everyone, and how to tell if it’s right for you.

In most of these episodes, I’m focusing on the benefits of freelancing, the benefits of writing, and how accessible the career is. It really is a very accessible career. But at the end of the day, it’s not for everyone. So I wanted to touch on three (of what I would consider) deal-breakers for freelance copywriting—freelance writing, specifically. The first one will apply to writing as a career in general, the second two are more specifically related to freelancing.

If you feel like you qualify on any of these, I’m not the one to say, “Don’t go for it anyway.” If you want to do it, absolutely go for it. This is just my personal opinion, and you’ll see why as we dig into it.

The first reason freelance copywriting might not be for you is if you struggle to communicate via written words… if you struggle to write. And I’m not talking about a specific writing struggle here. I’m saying if you were just to have a thought that you wanted to share to a friend, but you couldn’t talk—for whatever reason, you needed to write a note to pass it to them—would you struggle to translate your thoughts into words?

That’s one of those things that I don’t know how to teach. That doesn’t mean it can’t be taught; there could be people out there who really understand how to teach just the discipline of writing in general, or the practice of translating your thoughts into words. But, from my own experience and talking with other people who have attempted to help students with this, I’ve just come to the point where I don’t necessarily know that it can be taught.

The only advice I would give, if you do struggle to translate your thoughts into words—I’m just talking about at a really basic level here—then the only thing I can suggest is to read a lot.

Most of the people I know who have always considered themselves good writers are also big readers. They tend to do a lot of reading—not any specific type of reading—just a lot of reading. To be honest, I have no clue how the brain works with this. I feel like you tend to emulate the people you talk with—you might find yourself using phrases they use or kind of communicating with a certain cadence that’s similar to the people you’re around. I think in the same way, we tend to mimic what we’re reading. The ways that certain authors express themselves tends to come out when we’re doing our own writing.

I might be completely off base; this is a pretty arbitrary take, but that’s just my thought on how it works; that’s how it seems to work for me.

But again, if just at the basic level, you struggle to write, then freelance writing—writing in general—is probably not the best career choice. That would be a weakness for you. But again, if you feel you have that weakness and you still want to go for it, by all means, more power to you.

The second one is this: If you struggle outside of having explicit instructions given to you, it’s going to be a bit more difficult to be a freelancer. Freelancing is different than any other career in the sense that there’s no one telling you what to do. You have no boss. The funny thing is, when we look at most careers,