Update About How My Freelance Writing Is Going

It’s been awhile since I’ve made any mention about how my freelance writing is going. (I think the last update I made about it was in this post. And here’s where I talked about the genesis behind this new career of mine.)

It’s been more than a year now that I’ve been freelance writing, and I’ve published a dozen or so pieces in print and online outlets. Most of them have all been for the design magazine I used to work for, which notably included my favorite assignment to date which was getting to interview the designers at Etsy and write about their creative approach to business and design. That article is only available in the print issue, but you can read an online exclusive I wrote as a companion piece to that story here.

At first, when I started out pursuing the freelancing gig, I was pitching myself left and right, brainstorming ideas, scouting new magazines, looking up magazine’s pitch guidelines—basically getting gung-ho to take this thing seriously.

It started off well enough but there weren’t many magazines that were biting the stories I was pitching to them. It seemed like a lot of work for little return, which was admittedly disappointing.

Then we bought a house and I didn’t have time to keep up the steady pace of pitching and pursuing, so I let that aspect slide and just took on new assignments with the couple of magazines that I’ve been working with. And even though we’ve been in our house for almost six months now, I still don’t seem ready to go back to that feverish pace.

There’s still plenty to do around the house, which keeps me busy enough. And then, when there is downtime, I like to spend it on the kind of writing I like best, which is writing for this blog.

Fortunately, my husband is fully on board for me to do what freelance writing comes my way but not feeling the need to be chasing down every lead and forcing the freelance thing. We’ve set our finances to live off of his salary alone, so that takes a lot of the pressure off me and makes it so that when I do get a paid assignment, it’s all extra, which has been great for financing some of our, uh, extras of late.

Even though I had high hopes for my freelancing career, which never took off quite as I’d hoped, I’m actually enjoying this season and the slower pace that’s come with it. In fact, I think that’s just what I needed after all.

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