Free Advice Friday: Tough Love, Freelance Style

You learn a lot about people by what they say and do.

You learn even more by what they don’t do. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

A friend of mine moderates a writing group. One of the posts in the moderation queue was asking a basic question: Does anyone else know if this a good editing service? The poster wanted to start working for the service, you see, and the rates this writer saw didn’t seem too bad.

My friend clicked on the link included in the post — it led her straight to one of those student term paper sites. Uh, no. No professional freelancer would have anything to do with a place like that. Most would rather not help a student cheat their way to a degree by doing the work for them.

And the thing is, the writer who was asking about it in the first place didn’t realize what it was. They hadn’t gone deeply enough into the website (like say, the front page).

This is no beginner. This is someone who’s been writing for a while.

By no surprise, this writer also admitted to struggling at the career. Couldn’t manage to get beyond the itinerant work they’d been doing — you know, one client for a few years, then scramble to find another, lather, rinse, repeat…

[bctt tweet=”When #freelance writers accept the status quo, it will repeat.” username=”LoriWidmer”]

This writer was accepting the status quo. What was the pattern in their life remained the pattern. Why?

Because it’s familiar.

Anne Wayman shared a fantastic little video with me a few days ago, and that video has so many truths in it, it was tough to choose the best. The 10-minute video, by a Dr. Joe Dispenza, explains exactly how some people get stuck in anger or their habits.

But freelance writers too get stuck in habits. They hang out on forums bitching and moaning about the lack of “real” work in freelancing. They believe that there just isn’t anything out there anymore. They buy into the handy excuses for why they aren’t earning more or doing more with their careers.

In fact, one quote stood out in the video that sums up exactly what’s going on:

They will talk about the past to validate why they’re not creating the life they want.

Dispenza may have been talking generally, but damn if that doesn’t apply to freelancers who can’t quite find their way out of a low-paying rut. Or those who can’t quite get a career going. Or those who justify how making $20 an article is either all there is or the epitome of career success (and they add the wonky math to justify the pathetic pay rate). Or those who say they’ve tried this freelancing thing and realized it’s just too hard.

And yet there are thousands upon thousands of freelancers who have built a successful freelance writing career. Hard? Sure. But not so hard that no one can do it successfully.

That word — Successfully. Focus on that for a minute.

Dispenza had plenty of great little truths in his video, and this one right here is the key to why some freelance writers don’t succeed:

As long as you’re thinking equal to your environment, you keep creating the same life.

Bingo.

You think you’re getting nowhere, so guess where you get? Nowhere. How could you do anything but fulfill the destiny you keep repeating on a loop in your brain? How can you change what others around you are telling you is the way it is? So what freelancers who stay in their environments do is accept. They accept the “wisdom” around them. They push back when someone comes along with advice or leads that could push them out of their comfort zone. That won’t work. I tried it for a minute back in 2009.

It won’t work because they won’t try long enough. They don’t want to get out of that comfort zone for that long. It’s scary out there, and there’s no guarantee that success is coming, whereas staying in this pocket of whatever here, the familiar will at least be better than a question mark, right?

Wrong. The familiar is nothing more than a rut, and we’re too busy decorating and arranging throw pillows to see it for what it is.

Here’s a truth that I’ve found over my freelance writing career:

If you try, good things happen.

I started out making a few bucks at newspapers. Then a few more bucks at regional magazines. Then even more at national magazines. Pretty soon, I was on staff at a magazine and had a title — senior editor. And when that job disappeared, I kept trying. Pretty soon, I was writing for many magazines, and then quite a few corporate clients.

Because I tried.

The timeline is important, too. My first newspaper job was in 1992 (thereabouts). My first magazine article — 1993. My first national magazine — 1994. My first full-time editor job — 2000 (toss in a life-altering divorce around 1997, just to kick up the pressure). By mid-2003, I was freelancing full time. By 2009, I was earning nearly triple what I did at that editor job.

Because I tried.

Hell yes, I screwed up. Plenty. But I kept trying. What if I’d been content writing for local papers? Where would I be now? Making a few bucks a week, and wondering why everyone thinks freelancing is such a great gig. Because that would be my only filter, and without other experience, I’d never see freelancing on any other scale.

But instead, I tried. And yes, it took time. I had plenty going on in my life — single mother, college student, part-time office worker — but I didn’t stop trying.

When I was freelancing, I struggled. But something a friend told me cemented my resolve. It was early in my freelancing, when I was trying like hell to make it more lucrative. I kept falling back into temp jobs to cover the bills. Then she said this:

Treat freelancing like it’s your only option.

Lightbulb moment. That was my turning point. I realized that if I really wanted this to work, I had to find better ways to work at it. I raised my rates. I sought out better clients. I networked with people in my specialty area. I taught myself what I could.

I thought greater than what I had in front of me.

And that’s one of Dispenza’s solutions for getting out of that rut you’re in:

To truly change is to think greater than your environment, to think greater than the circumstances in your life, to think greater than the conditions in your world.

If you’re one of those freelancers who keeps struggling and can’t quite find a way out of your current situation, there are a few things you should be doing:

• Stop blaming outside forces (they’re not the reason you struggle): They’ve always been there, these lousy job offers. They’ll always be there. They’re not your concern.
• Ask yourself what you want: You don’t want those shitty jobs. So from this moment, they’re not in your orbit. They don’t exist.
• Examine your courage: Are you willing to go into unfamiliar territory? Are you ready to fail a few times before you get the hang of it? Are you going to put the work into your career to make it a good one? Are you going to learn how to run a small business? Are you going to turn your back on these low-paying “sure things” and work hard to get a better result?
• Try

If you’re unwilling to do any of the above, it’s time you come to this realization: You will never be successful at freelancing. You will always struggle because internally, you’re clinging to the limitations because it’s safer than the potential for failure. But you’ve already failed — inertia is failure.

Writers, what mistakes are you seeing writers make that are holding them back?
When was your lightbulb moment?