Must-Have Skills for a Freelance Writer (Other than Writing)
Freelancing is arguably the easiest way to start writing for a living. Freelancer platforms certainly make it look appealing, and while you probably don’t need me to tell you most freelancers don’t work at beach or on a lakeside dock, these ads promote a more pervasive misperception, too—that if you can write well, you can be successful as a freelance writer.
The truth is more complicated. Yes, you do need to have a certain level of writing ability to be a freelancer, but you don’t need to be a “great writer” and having that kind of advanced mastery won’t guarantee you success. There are other skills that I’d argue are equally important if you want to turn freelance writing into a sustainable full-time career. Based on my experience, these are the most important.
1. Self-motivation.
It’s not enough to just love writing. Odds are you’ll be taking some projects you’re not exactly passionate about in the course of buiding your freelance career, so you can’t rely on your joy for writing as your sole source of motivation. Freelance jobs aren’t just going to fall in your lap, either, at least not at first. You’ll need to actively seek out those early clients to keep yourself pushing forward. Freelancers who lack that internal motivation often lose steam quickly, getting disheartened by their inability to find clients and giving up.
2. Time management.
One of the great things about freelancing is that there’s nobody telling you when, where, and how much to work. The flip side of this is that you have to figure all of these things out for yourself. Making a full-time living as a freelancer will also usually mean having multiple projects on your to-do list at any given time. It’s up to you to determine how long each task will take, which you need to prioritize, and how to most effectively utilize your time.
Freelancers with poor time management skills will find themselves barely meeting (or missing) deadlines far more often than they should be. Missing deadlines is a good way to lose clients, as is turning in sloppy, rushed work, which is more likely when you’re scrambling toward the finish. You’re also giving yourself a poor work environment when you do this, creating high-stress situations that don’t need to exist.
3. Healthy boundary setting.
While you’ll usually have clients or editors that assign you work, they’re not monitoring your workload the way they would an employee’s—in fact, they probably don’t even know what other projects you have on your plate. It’s up to you to know how much you can handle and say no to assignments that would push you past capacity, even if it’s for a client you really like or a project that you’d love working on.
Setting healthy time boundaries is another critical skill for freelancers. The freedom to work anytime can slide into working all the time, or at least feeling like you do. You need to establish when you’re “on the clock”, when it’s your time, and how you’ll differentiate the two. Knowing and maintaining your own boundaries is the best way to prevent yourself from burning out or working to the point you lose your passion for writing.
4. Basic math and accounting.
Eventually, if you really don’t do numbers, you can hire a CPA. At least at first, though, you’re going to need to take care of the day-to-day bookkeeping and financial tracking yourself. If you get your clients through a freelance marketplace like Fiverr or Upwork, the platform handles some of this work for you (though you’ll pay them a percentage of your earnings for the privilege). In other cases, you’ll need to prepare, send, and follow up on invoices yourself, and if you don’t know how to develop and maintain a system for tracking your earnings, you could end up not getting paid for all of the work you do (or pissing off clients, if you make a mistake the other way).
5. Attention to detail.
This goes beyond being a good self-proofreader (though that’s an important skill, too). Most freelance work is not free-form. You have guidelines to follow for the topic, length, style, structure, and sometimes even specific words or phrases to target. Failing to follow those rules could mean your article is rejected and you don’t get paid, or that you’ll waste time on rewrites and edits, for editors who won’t be happy you had to do the assignment twice and may be less likely to reach out the next time they have a job.
There are a lot of ways to make a career as a writer, and a lot of different roles that can be performed as a freelancer, but I think it’s safe to say all 5 of those skills are needed for all of them in some degree of another. The good news is, they are also all things that can be learned and honed, just like the ability to write. If you’re drawn to the idea of freelancing for a living, take stock of your current skill sets and make a plan to improve in your weaker areas before you start taking on clients. You’ll save yourself a lot of stress and mistakes if you do, and give yourself the best chance of making a consistent, sustainable living as a freelancer.
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