Taking a Hiatus from Writing to... Write?

I'm on a hiatus from freelancing.

It was pretty much inevitable due to how my clients slowly dwindled throughout last year, and since my horse was sick, I had no time to market to find replacements.  I was down to one regular client, but I had an issue with the freelance platform, so I've been essentially client-less for just over a month now.

I've toyed with the idea of using this as an opportunity to change the focus of my writing business.  I've also been using the time for other projects, like working on my novel and updating a doll stringing ebook that I sell.

But.

But I've been surprised by how much I want to write.  I'm getting random cravings to write something, anything.  I think it's because this is actually the least writing I've done since starting my career.

I started freelancing almost exactly 18 years ago.  It was in about March of 2005 that I wrote my first article for my first client.  And I'd already been working as a technical writer since December of 2004.

This is the first time in all that time that I haven't had at least one client.

Having time to write for myself, wanting to write for myself, is something I'm unaccustomed to, and I'm liking how it feels.  I've enjoyed working on my ebook project, which I sometime get sucked into for hours at a time.  I'm updating the writing as well as the visual layout, and it's addicting to get everything looking and sounding just right.

It's very different from my freelance work, though, which was 1) primarily very short projects and 2) always on deadline.  I'm not sure if I should set myself a deadline (or if I'd even respect one set by myself), or if I should just make a goal to work on the ebook for X amount of hours a day or week.

It's also complicated by the fact that I have a lot else going on: babysitting, my doll repair/resale business, my doll room overhaul project, a ton of project dolls and other things to get caught up on, my volunteer work at the local doll museum, my horses to take care of, and other normal daily human adulting things like helping my parents.

Sometimes (often) I fall into the common habit of feeling like I'm lazy because I don't get everything done.  Then I look at a list like that one and realize that actually I just have a lot on my plate, so it's no wonder I don't always get to everything I want to do.

So maybe it's just as well that I am not freelancing right now.  With any luck, it'll give me a chance to work on these various personal writing projects that I haven't had time for in a very long time.

Setting boundaries

I don't know why, but setting boundaries has always been one of the toughest things for me.  Over the years I've gotten better about it in my personal life, yet I still have trouble with it in a professional aspect.  I often overburden myself because I have a hard time saying, "No, I can't," or even just, "No," when someone says they need me.

I've been trying to remain aware of when I'm letting myself be taken advantage of or overworked, however, and recently I had what I consider a pretty major victory.

Rough week

This has been a rough week.  I agreed to babysit for one of my families while their school was closed, and quickly regretted agreeing to so many hours.  It basically meant a 12+ hour day yesterday, including my barn chores, and only a slightly less long day today.  When you add in the fact that I got home last night to cat puke on my bed, a long evening of doing laundry, and only three hours' sleep...  Well, suffice it to say that I'll be glad to put this crazy week behind me.

My first few weeks of freelancing again

It's been a few whirlwind weeks.  A couple days into my fourth week of freelancing full-time again, I'm finally taking a breather to update my blog and do a few other tasks.

I guess I needn't have worried about finding enough work, because I've been busy.  In fact, I should have been worried about balancing all the other things I wanted to do -- like blogging and writing fiction and reading and riding my horses.  I've been having a hard time carving out time for everything.

New beginnings: Change #2

I recently blogged about some significant changes in my life and freelancing career, and then I announced one of the bigger changes, that I'll soon be leaving my part-time nanny job.

The other change isn't entirely a change for me, but will come as a surprise to many of my readers.  Although I never announced it (aside from some vague mentions of changes), I've been separated for nearly two years now, and have been going through a divorce since summer.  We're in the home stretch now, though, and the divorce should soon be final.  Although living on my own won't be a change, the divorced status will be, and there are some other, related changes, too.

New beginnings: Change #1

I announced in my last post, when I returned to blogging a week ago, that I am undergoing some major changes.  Both will have a significant impact on my freelance career, although in vastly different ways.

Change the First: In another week, I will be ending the chapter of my life that I began over four years ago, when I started working part-time as a nanny for V. and A.

Back to life as normal

I'm back on my fall schedule, as of yesterday.

Yesterday was lovely.  I stayed home until it was time to pick up the kids from school.  I got caught up on dishes, cleaned up my kitchen, did laundry, and -- of course -- worked on freelance work.  After a couple hours with the kids in the afternoon, I ate dinner at home, and then headed out to the barn to do chores.  It did mean a late evening, but since it was a fairly relaxing morning, that was okay.

Today will be a little different.

Plans for freelancing this fall

I got through this past week without getting sick, having a meltdown, or some other disaster, helped along somewhat by the fact that I've had a reduced freelance workload this week.  The stars aligned to help me out, I guess.

One week down.  Two to go.  Then I get my normal school-year schedule back.

A contract isn't slavery

Someone I know was venting this weekend about the real estate agent who listed her house taking Sundays off.  I was appalled at the seemingly automatic expectation that the agent should be at her beck and call, no matter what she wanted or when.  (All she wanted was an update on her house's listing... and it had only just been listed this week.)

I felt a little defensive for the real estate agent's sake, and I realized it was because I've encountered that attitude in clients myself: the notion that just because they hired me to do a certain job, it means that they own all of my time.  One client, for instance, wanted me to be on chat all day long, so that I was at his beck and call any time he wanted.  And he was paying me for a fairly small contract, not anything close to a full-time job.

A contract is not slavery.  It does not give you the right to make unlimited demands on my time.

So let's talk about what you can expect from a contract.

Clients don't last forever

One of the most challenging things as a freelancer is understanding that your business is always changing, so you can't ever stop really looking for work.

It's easy to become complacent, especially when you have a good group of regular clients.  But this morning I was served a timely reminder that I shouldn't become too dependent on them, no matter how awesome they are.

The freelance writer's resume

I think freelancer writers have to think about their resume more than most people.  When someone gets a regular job, they might stay in that job for years or just months, but either way they still don't have to think about their resume for a little while.  Freelancers, on the other hand, submit a resume every time they apply for a contract job, so their resumes are constantly trading hands -- and as a result, have to be constantly evolving.

So I found this article particularly pertinent for freelancers:

For A Resume, Type Font Matters

If your professors told you in college to always use Times New Roman, it turns out they were actually wrong.  According to typography experts, Times New Roman is wearing out its welcome.  It's old news, tired and overused.

Why freelancers aren't their own bosses

I saw a bumper sticker on a cab the other morning stating, "Be your own boss!" with the cab company's number.  While I do love the independence of being self-employed, I've always thought that "Be your own boss" was a bit untrue.

Although in some respects a freelancer has much less oversight than a full-time worker in an office, in other respects there is actually more.

Balancing goals and freelancing

Tracking my progress on my goals this year has had an interesting effect on my freelancing:  I'm not anymore.

A freelance writer's occupational hazard

I've mentioned on my blog before that I have the occasional problem with repetitive strain injury in my wrists.  I haven't had it happen since around Christmas 2008, when I caused myself some major wrist pain by spray painting a kiddie table as a Christmas gift for my nephews.  Occasionally I'll feel the initial twinges of a problem, but I'm usually able to prevent any significant problems by reminding myself to move around, stretch, and change my position a little more often.

Perhaps a week ago, I started noticing some major twinges in my left wrist.  I thought it was due to the abrupt change in our weather — I was also feeling some soreness in the knee I injured falling off my horse a little over a year ago, and I assumed all the rain was making past injuries achy again.

The ache in my knee went away, though, and the pain in my wrist only spread up into my elbow.  Oops.

It's my left elbow, which has been giving me problems off and on for years.  It started bothering me in college, when I would rest my left elbow on the desk while I browsed the Internet, sometimes for hours.  It actually started messing with my nerves or something, because I would get pain and numbness radiating down into my hand sometimes.

I had to stop myself from resting my elbow on the desk, but lately I've been doing it again.  I've also been frequently propping my chin on my left hand or playing with my hair (a bad habit of mine) while I read, which means that my elbow is frequently bent.  I think that may have something to do with the current pain I am experiencing in my left wrist and elbow — I must be pinching the nerves.

When I first started freelancing full-time, I developed my worst case of repetitive strain injury from a day of using the mouse for hours and hours, looking for markets and editing some photos for an article I was writing.  The pain afterward lasted for days, if not weeks, and radiated from my wrists all the way up into my shoulders.  It took a lot of ibuprofen and heating pads to get through that — I found that using a heating pad on my wrists while I typed during the day, and keeping one on my shoulder or upper arm in the evening, helped keep me from making anything worse, and helped me be better rested when I began work the next morning.

So that's the approach I'm taking now.  Yesterday I had to take ibuprofen several times, so today I broke out the heating pad.  I've spent the day working on the couch, with my laptop on my lap (a more comfortable angle for my arm), a pillow under my forearm, and the heating pad wrapped around my elbow.

What about you?  Do you have any funny little aches and pains that plague you sometimes, or do you remind yourself to get up and move around regularly to avoid them?  We all have our favorite remedies for recurring injuries or aches — what are yours?

Professionalism for writers: What NOT to do online

Those of you who are plugged in to the self-publishing world may have already heard about this, but in case you haven't:

A self-published author recently threw a public tantrum in the comments on a book review blog, because she didn't like what the blogger had to say about her book.  He gave it two stars, because although he liked the story, the many grammatical errors throughout the text made it difficult to follow without getting distracted.  He gives a few examples in the comments, and wow, he wasn't kidding.  When you have to ponder a sentence for 30 seconds or a minute before you can figure out what the author meant, you are no longer enjoying the book.

Anyway, the author basically pitched a fit in the comments, insisting that he read the wrong copy of her book, and demanding that he remove the review from his blog.  From there it continued to go downhill, until she was telling other commenters to "F--- off" for criticizing her behavior.

Apparently the entire thing went viral.  It was being linked to on Twitter and Facebook, and in forums such as the Barnes & Noble forums (which is where I heard about it).  The sad thing is that her sales probably did go up a little as a result (bad press is better than no press), but I think for the most part she has alienated more potential readers than she has attracted.

This demonstrates the need for writers to behave professionally at all times, especially authors, and especially on the Internet.  What you type online can come back to haunt you, in your writing career or even in another career.  (A friend of mine found this out a couple of years ago when his employer took offense to some coarsely tongue-in-cheek reviews he had published online.  He now writes anything potentially offensive under a pen name.)

I think this is probably by far the most extreme example of writers behaving unprofessionally online, but have you noticed other authors or freelancers behaving questionably online?

An unexpectedly quiet night at home

I was originally supposed to babysit this evening, so Michael made plans with a friend. (I still babysit for a family I started with in college. It's been six years, and I've known their two younger children from the time they were teeny babies, so it's a labor of love as well as a welcome source of cash on the side.)

Turns out they don't need me to babysit after all, so my evening is unexpectedly free, and I've been happily deciding how to spend it.

Today wasn't the most productive day, so I think the first thing I'm going to do is get some more work done. I just got several new projects in, and I'm eager to get started on something fresh and different, after struggling all day to focus on one single article.

And oh, how could I plan a quiet evening alone without reading? I'm currently reading Dracula in Love, and enjoying it very much. An hour or so alone with my book sounds fantastic.

I am also thinking about going somewhere for all this lovely alone time. Maybe it sounds counterintuitive, but I've been home all day, and it hasn't really been working for me. I'm debating between Starbucks and Tokyo Joe's — both are close and provide wireless, although I must say sushi sounds more appealing than anything else at the moment!

Since most evenings I spend eating dinner and watching movies with my husband, it's nice to have an evening to myself for a change. What about you? How do you like to spend your quiet evenings alone — and how often do you get them?

Sleep schedule struggles

Who here remembers when I used to sleep until noon every day, easily? I usually worked from midnight until 3am or 4am, then went to bed and slept late. In the afternoon after I got up, I usually blogged, networked, and browsed the job boards, and at night I would get the real work done. Because no one was awake to bother me, and because I am a night person and have the most focus then, I was able to work much faster than I can during the day.

A number of factors made me have to change my schedule. Having a horse and sharing a car with my husband (in order to go ride said horse) were two major factors, but I think the biggest was when my cat Prince got sick last fall. He stopped eating sometime around October, so I was force feeding him, which meant getting up extra early in order to get some food into him before I went out to the barn or whatnot.

Even after Prince passed away in April, I kept my earlier schedule, which I was proud of. It means I get up earlier on the weekends and have more time to spend with my husband, which we both like. It also meant I was going for trail rides a couple mornings a week, and I've found the morning activity makes me less likely to be sleepy later on in the day.

The drawback is that I'm not as productive during the day. Other people are awake, so I spend more time checking email, Facebook, and blogs. But for nearly a year now, I've made it work, and I've been pleased.

Until Wednesday. I worked until 3am to meet a deadline, and then read for another hour. Although I was up at 8:30 the next morning anyway, I was groggy and tired. I went back to bed, and didn't get up again until nearly noon. Then yesterday, I also slept until noon, after staying up late again to finish a book (The Help, by Kathryn Stockett — awesome book).

I was so worried that my sleep schedule would be permanently messed up, so I made myself go to bed earlier last night, and got up at 9:30 this morning. Unfortunately, now I'm getting sleepy. (Dehydrated, I'm sure!) Time for a coffee beverage and a little blogging break!

After staying focused on work, I think my schedule is one of my biggest struggles as a freelancer. What are yours?

Beating the need for a nap

One of the biggest challenges I've encountered as a freelance writer is staying awake all day. Working from home makes that afternoon nap harder to resist, probably because I'm surrounded by the quiet comforts of home. Plus, those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I tend toward a rather nontraditional schedule. For almost a year now, though, I've been forcing myself to go to bed earlier and get up at a decent time (before 9:00 most mornings!). Although I'm not as productive in the daytime as I am late at night, there are some other advantages, such as being on a similar schedule as my husband.

Unfortunately, it does mean that I struggle with sleepiness in the afternoon, particularly on days when I don't go to the barn in the morning. Although it's nice to take a nap sometimes, I almost never take short ones, so a "quick" nap blows half my afternoon. Therefore I've had to learn a few tricks for combating afternoon sleepiness.

* Drink plenty of water. I learned this trick from our water department newsletter, of all places. (Kudos to the writer who put that newsletter together!) Apparently mild dehydration can actually cause you to feel a little sleepy.

* Eat a small lunch. A large meal will make you feel sleepy in the afternoon. I prefer to eat a lighter lunch, along with some snacks throughout the day if I get hungry.

* Snack on something spicy. Did you know that spicy food can actually wake you up if you are getting sleepy? Eat something spicy for lunch, or snack on chips and salsa in the afternoon when you feel yourself starting to drag.

* Go for a walk. Exercise will also wake you up if you are getting sleepy. Even if you don't have time to work out during the day, a 30-minute walk around the neighborhood should get rid of the urge to take a nap. I even sometimes will get up and put away a load of laundry, just to get out of my chair and move around a little!

* Change the scenery. I'm actually writing this from Starbucks on Friday afternoon. I'm a big fan of going to coffee shops and bookstores occasionally to work — if I'm feeling sleepy or bored, I find it usually revives me to work someplace with a little activity. It's hard not to want to sleep when you are surrounded by napping dogs and cats all day long!

Do you struggle with afternoon sleepiness, and if so, how do you stay awake and productive?

Do you work weekends?

One of the things I like best about freelancing is the ability to determine your own schedule. For some freelancers, this means working in the evenings and on the weekends in order to make time for things you want to do during the day.

For example, I love going out to the barn to ride my horse in the mornings, when it isn't as busy. However, this often means I have some work left to do in the evenings. My husband and I work around this by going to a bookstore so I can work in the cafe while he browses, or we just stay home and he plays Xbox while I work.

Likewise, I use weekends as my backup plan. If, for some reason, I don't get something done during the week that I'd planned to do, I can work a little on the weekend. Usually we either go to a bookstore, or I work for an hour or so late at night, after Michael has gone to bed.

Working weekends is getting more rare for me, but it's still always a possibility. I actually kind of like the feeling of always having something to do. I know other freelancers, however, who prefer to maintain firm boundaries with their clients. They don't work evenings or weekends, don't even answer client emails unless it's during normal business hours.

There is definitely some merit to that kind of approach. Some clients will take advantage if you let them, contacting you at all hours with last-minute projects and revision requests. Having office hours will set boundaries prevent that kind of client from making you miserable. But in my opinion, there are advantages to a more flexible schedule, too, as it enables you to work around your life, rather than living around your work.

What about you? Do you work weekends sometimes, always, or not at all?

Coming back is hard to do

As many of you know, I've had a difficult month. Heck, in some ways it's been a difficult year. After force-feeding my cat Prince for 5 months, we had to put him to sleep on April 15th. (Now I have yet another reason to hate Tax Day.) And that was following a week that I completely lost thanks to a burn-induced infection in my hand.

Needless to say, April wasn't a good month. I haven't had the heart to finalize the numbers yet, but preliminary counts show I made only about half of my normal income — which would make sense, considering I was out of commission, either from physical complaints or from grief, for 2 weeks out of the 4 ½ that made up the month of April.

Even though that's all over now — my hand healed long ago, and although I still miss my kitty from time to time, I think about it less frequently and with less intensity than I used to — I'm finding it hard to come back. Even though I technically went back to work on the 19th, I've been working only sporadically since then, with a lot of wasted hours and even days.

Yesterday Lori Widmer wrote a post called Do You Have What It Takes?, meaning what it takes to freelance, of course. I've never doubted that I do — I've never minded working late and pulling the occasional all-nighter in exchange for a more flexible schedule the rest of the time, and that sort of thing. But this last month, I've had to wonder: Do I have what it takes? How have I made it 4 ½ years?

I know it's been a pretty extreme month. Most of the time you aren't going to have an infection in your hand followed by having to put your cat to sleep. But we all know how bad luck can all hit at once. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at planning ahead, and I had no reserve to fall back on. My clients have been pretty understanding, but then again the show must go on, and deadlines must still be met. Sometimes I wonder, if this train is going to keep chugging onward, if it's going to roll me right under the wheels.

I'm curious whether my other full-time freelancing friends have had similar experiences, or if it's just me. Have you ever doubted your decision to freelance? Have you ever wondered how you'll make it through some crisis or another with your career still intact?