© Eric Feldman
When working as a freelance writer, there’s always the issue of balance. The issue between work and play, between home time and work time, between paying the gas bill and not paying the gas bill…
Working from home means that boundaries get blurred and I sometimes discover I’ve inadvertently worked a 12-hour day. Even when there’s no paying work available (which happens more often than I’d like!), there’s always EssentialWriters.com to focus on, or the art book I’m collaborating on, or the novel I’m mid-way through, or the many proposals to send out for the novel I’ve completed.
Oh, and then there are the endless pitching of ideas to magazines and websites, and short stories to write and enter for writing competitions or submit to literary mags, all of which takes time and effort, but in chunks so small that they’re akin to erosion. Before you know it, the entire day is gone and the cliff has collapsed.
But the finest balance to master is that with regards to the features that pay well, and the features with benefits. For example, in the past two weeks I’ve received two commissions, both of which pay but on vastly different scales.
One was on a subject I knew nothing about, which required lots of research and constant communication with specialists in Scandinavia. I knew I’d learn masses through writing it, and the pay was well over £200. I accepted the commission.
The second, however, paid well under £100, but was on a subject I knew well – pampering – and would involve research that included an afternoon at a spa being gently massaged into semi-consciousness. Mwahhh…
So half the money, but also half the effort plus a heavenly afternoon I would never have felt justified in paying for myself. I accepted that commission too.
It’s the same with travel writing. It’s a genre that very rarely pays well, but results in some fabulous trips to places I might never otherwise have seen.
So it’s always about balance and money is only a small part of the equation. Apart, of course, from the opinion of the gasman.