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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
gmku's whole means of subsistence is freelance writing, and I think !@#$% does some too.
They say it involves a lot of cupping hairy balls and swallowing their "pride"
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Yes, it's how I've made a living, full-time, for the past 18 months or so. Somehow I've made it work. I was fortunate to start with a lot of connections in the area I wanted to write in (they were editors of university research magazines around the country, mainly, whom I'd gotten to know over the years through my work at Iowa). I had some lucky breaks, too. In the first year, I easily surpassed what I'd made as a full-time editor at Iowa.
So I'll say this: You can do it, but you really need those connections if you expect to work full-time. If you don't have them yet, you'll probably spend some time establishing those before you get much work.
Second, you had better have some kind of experience, a body of work, published samples, that you can show editors. Editors are very skittish about hiring unknown entities.
Third, be prepared for the isolation of working by yourself. Many people warned me about this, and I didn't think much of it at the time, but I can honestly say, after 18 months of mostly working in a room by myself, that it gets a bit lonely. I've gone back to work half-time (see below), and I can sincerely say that I enjoy being part of an office work staff again.
And a big thing--be prepared to handle the stress of not always knowing where the next job is coming from, or when the client's check will arrive, and for ups and downs in monthly salary, and that kind of thing. There's seldom any such thing as a regular paycheck in this business.
As I said, I recently had to start working for the man again, as many places, universities included, have slashed their publication budgets, and the first thing to go seems to be the freelance budget. I personally think it's a very tough time to venture out as a freelancer, and even, as my case illustrates, to continue as a freelancer. But if you're really determined, you can do it. It takes a lot of hard work, especially in the beginning when you need to establish a client base.