be a freelance writer

Just trying to make my list more manageable for my sanity!!

While I probably will never be a “full time” freelance writer (I don’t think that’s possible when you live in New York City, unless you’re a successful novelist or contractual worker), I make nearly $200 extra dollars each month freelancing, which is great. I think if you can just land one good gig it helps a lot. I have also done a fair amount of work for free to build up clips.

I checked out “Get a Freelance Life” by the mediabistro.com group, and have signed up there. Small steps. Haven’t lost sight of my goal, and am researching places to start.
Bought the book because it answered questions I had. Need to read it again when I’m less caffeinated.

I earned my bachelor’s degree in magazine journalism and now have a full-time job as a copywriter for a non-profit organization. Ever since I graduated in ‘05 I’ve promised myself I’d freelance on the side. I want to keep my interviewing and feature-writing skills sharp and build a good portfolio…I just want to write articles! Besides, there are no bylines in copywriting and I’d love to see my name in print again.

During my last semester in college I had an awesome internship at a trade magazine. I got to interview indie filmmakers and actors. It was fantastic. I keep telling myself and everyone around that I’m going to contact the editor and ask for some freelance work, but for some reason I never do. Why is that?

I’ve been looking around at other people’s blogs and getting advice from who I can. My RSS feed is looking pretty full of advice.

First steps are to get focused about the direction I want to go in and then let the advice guide me.

I have always thought about being a writen. In fact, I have been writing for as long as I can remember, so let me be more specific. I have always thought about having a career as a writer. How cool would it be to get paid for something I love doing? How many people actually find jobs they can say they love? Not many. I began today by enrolling in Penn Foster’s Freelance Writing program. I know I didn’t need to, but I like the though of structured learning to keep me on track and motivated right now. The kids are still young and are perfect excuses for not taking time to pursue this goal…I’ll let you know how it works out!

Like the title says, it’s difficult to pull of if you’re working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. But at the end of it all it’s possible, and can be done if you really put your mind to it.

My experience with being a freelance writer involves freelance copywriting, as well as freelance blogging. The “setup time” for being a freelance copywriter is very tough as you have to solicit your own clients and market yourself. But it pays off in the end as one job will pay at least $500 if you know your worth.

Freelance blogging is easy.. I submitted an article to a very well known freelancing blog, FreelanceSwitch.com And, luckily, it got published. This drove a whoooole bunch of traffic to my site, which was great. And it also lead to someone else offering a paid blogging position for his blog too.

A great resource that I have to mention is FreelanceSwitch’s book, How to be a Rockstar Freelancer. It’s available at Freelanceswitch.com/book

Worth doing if you got the time, energy and resources!

That’s what I’m aiming for.

just putting this on hold. Apparently, I’ve been doing a lot of communicating in the verbal and visual form, versus written. So I will focus on that for right now. :)

Today, I made two steps toward this goal. First, I emailed my mentor about what I want to do and why, and she has responded saying she’s going to give it some thought and give me her feedback on Monday. Second, I submitted a short essay to Brevity, the online journal of very short creative nonfiction.