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Right away, freelancers live in tumultuous times. One successful 18th-century author understood the struggle higher than most—and what was true in her time remains to be useful in learning how you can turn into a freelance author today.
Charlotte Lennox (née Ramsay)—a novelist whose work would later encourage Jane Austen—had a position lined up as a lady’s companion, however the role fell through when her employer succumbed to a sudden mental illness.
Alone in England, she nonetheless found ways to pursue her writing and get her first book published. On this post I’ll share how you can turn into a freelance author by following Charlotte’s timeless wisdom, plus practical suggestions for integrating these strategies into your personal writing practice. We’ll cover:
- Getting noticed, even if you happen to don’t have any connections
- Constructing your writing network (sadly we will’t all be BFFs with Samuel Johnson)
- Creating a sustainable profession that fulfills you creatively and financially
But first, some background. Like many writers, Charlotte’s literary interests began early. Growing up within the colony of Recent York within the 1740s (her father was a British army captain), she scribbled verses and shared these poems for the amusement of family and friends.
When she was a teenager, her wealthy widowed aunt, Mrs Lucking of Messing Hall, wrote to request Charlotte come stay along with her in England, as her companion. But as Charlotte crossed the Atlantic, Mrs. Lucking’s son (Charlotte’s cousin) died suddenly, causing her aunt to have a mental breakdown.
When Charlotte got off the boat, she was met with the devastating news: Her aunt was incapacitated, meaning Charlotte couldn’t live along with her.
What happened next was nothing wanting extraordinary.
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As a substitute of turning around and taking the subsequent boat home, Charlotte stayed in England. She circulated her poems and commenced to make waves as an up-and-coming author. Her writing caught the eye of Lady Isabella Finch, a noblewoman and literature aficionado, who soon took Charlotte under her wing.
Inside a few fleet years, Charlotte was rubbing elbows with a few of crucial writers of her era—Samuel Johnson, Henry Fielding, and Samuel Richardson—and had published her first book.
How did she do it? There was definitely a component of luck. But there was also a lot of exertions that went into perfecting her writing, making the best connections, and sustaining a lifelong writing profession. Here’s a modern tackle how you can turn into a freelance author, following Charlotte Lennox’s example.
1. Getting noticed: Produce exceptional quality work first, deal with self-promotion second
When many freelancers first start out, they pursue the trimmings of a skilled author. They construct a website, arrange social media accounts, or otherwise try to advertise their services. But these self-promotional tools—while useful—serve no purpose without quality writing to back up the implicit promise they make: that their writing may be trusted.
When Charlotte landed in England, she wasn’t focused on trying to advertise her writing to a recent audience. She did what she’d at all times done, writing poems and circulating them through her network of latest friends and acquaintances.
People enjoyed her poems a lot they couldn’t help but share them—which in those days meant they copied them down by hand and shared the manuscripts with their friends. Charlotte didn’t push people to read her work, she wrote the sorts of things people desired to read. And that’s a lot harder than organising a Twitter account.
That’s to not say that Charlotte wasn’t tactical about how she shared her writing. She wrote sociable verse, essentially the most shareable content of the day, which she knew people would flow into in the event that they enjoyed reading it. And she or he signed her poems along with her name—unusual for a woman right now—indicating that she wanted to be known as a author.
There’s a place for self-promotion. But self-promotion ought to be secondary to the fundamental event: creating work that enlightens and informs, uncovers interesting recent angles on old topics, or resonates with peoples’ deeply-held experiences.
What’s the key to producing high-caliber writing like this? Time and practice. There aren’t any easy shortcuts to generating exceptional quality work—that’s what makes it so rare and priceless. But there are methods to be certain you’re learning how you can turn into a freelance author who manages their writing time effectively and progresses their skills. I’ve outlined a few strategies in the information below.
Timeless suggestions
- Prioritize effectively. Be certain that you’re spending nearly all of your core working hours on writing. You could wish to schedule writing time for very first thing within the morning while you’re most fresh and leave promotion-related tasks—that are typically less mentally demanding—for the afternoon while you’re more drained.
- Keep a writing log. American philosopher Jason Brennan, who has authored (or co-authored) greater than seven books and countless articles, recommends logging a minimum of 20 hours of focused writing time per week and keeping track of it. And no cheating! Once you’re in a writing block, stay focused. Don’t check your email. Don’t quickly glance at Twitter. Just write.
- Avoid looping. Ever caught yourself rewriting the identical paragraph for the fifth time or twiddling with a sentence for greater than twenty minutes until it was good? You may have been caught in a thought loop. That is where your brain defaults to old patterns to avoid the exertions of generating recent ideas. The important thing to stopping loops is noticing that you just’re in a single, which is difficult, but possible. Developing your mindfulness skills—whether that’s a formal meditation habit or simply the every day practice of becoming more present—can provide help to higher recognize and stop thought loops of their tracks.
Networking like a pro: Make friends with freelancers in the identical phase of their profession
Freelancing may be lonely work. You’re likely working remotely and interacting with clients primarily through email—possibly the occasional Zoom call. All this isolation can take a toll in your mental health: A recent survey found that freelancers are nearly twice as prone to be depressed than office staff and report loneliness at much higher rates.
Sixty-four percent of freelancers say they’re lonely in comparison with only twenty-nine percent of office staff. Because the character of the work is so solitary, it’s crucial to learn how you can turn into a freelance author with a support network.
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Charlotte Lennox understood this challenge well. Regardless that she had a patron in Lady Isabella Finch, their goals were often misaligned: Lady Isabella saw Charlotte’s writing as a gateway to achieving higher status—the form of “polite accomplishment” that would land her a paid position at court, or higher yet, a wealthy husband.
But Charlotte wasn’t all in favour of climbing the social ladder; she desired to make a profession out of her writing. To achieve support for her goals, she needed to make friends with individuals who could empathize—her fellow writers.
Charlotte found one such supporter in Samuel Johnson, a author best known for creating the primary English dictionary. The 2 met just as each of their literary careers were beginning to blossom within the early 1750s. They became fast friends, reviewing one another’s work, introducing one another to recent contacts, and celebrating one another’s successes.
Actually, it’s only due to Samuel Johnson that Charlotte met one other Samuel—Samuel Richardson—a longtime author who helped publish her wildly successful novel, The Female Quixote.
Likewise, finding your peers will likely be crucial not only in your mental well-being, but additionally your profession success. So how do you discover your people? It could possibly be difficult, especially when quarantining. But there are things you may do to construct your writerly network, even from a distance.
Timeless suggestions
- Deepen an existing connection. You may have already got some skilled connections you possibly can cultivate into deeper friendships—ask them for a (virtual) coffee date or start a conversation about something they’ve recently written—chances are high they’ll be greater than completely happy to speak about it
- Join a local writing group or coworking space. Depending on where you reside, it might or might not be possible to do in-person meetups in the mean time, but loads of local groups have gone digital in the meanwhile—they usually’ll return to normal in the long run. Try searching the location Meetup for writers’ groups or see if any local coworking spaces or libraries are running events (physical or virtual) for freelancers.
- Find a web-based community. The web offers no shortage of opportunities for writers to attach. While these groups could also be less intimate than local communities, they will still be a great resource—you might just must be a bit more deliberate in cultivating meaningful friendships. To begin, try trying out these Slack groups for writers.
Sustaining your profession: Use the writing that pays well to fund your passion projects
For many of us, there’s a disconnect between the writing we absolutely like to do and the writing that pays well. And that’s okay. The skill is balance: You possibly can leverage the writing that’s in demand to fund your fun writing—whether that’s blogging, screenwriting, and even (like Charlotte) writing your first novel.
Eventually, certainly one of these passion projects may turn into your primary source of income. But until then, you continue to should eat.
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Let’s have a look at Charlotte. For her whole life, she was a working author. “Her profession was not made in a tapestry-lined room, and even a quiet cottage, where she could write wherever the spirit moved,” writes scholar Susan Carlile. “Her words…needed to support not only her material needs, but sometimes her husband and eventually their daughter and son.”
She didn’t have the luxurious of only working on her poetry and novels. As a substitute, she worked on a number of projects, including translations of foreign-language novels and memoirs for an English audience.
In Lennox’s day, translations of popular foreign works were a literary goldmine. Today, the writing that pays well takes other forms. One key opportunity is B2B writing—an industry ripe with possibility (and in dire need of some clever wordsmiths).
Brands are willing to pay expert writers well above market rates for clear and compelling writing. And the writing they need takes many forms, from content marketing to technical writing.
So how do you balance all of it—put food on the table and still leave room for the writing that fulfills you creatively? It’s not at all times easy, but a number of the strategies on how you can turn into a freelance author listed below may also help.
Timeless suggestions
- Develop a lucrative writing specialty. Carve out a area of interest for yourself that’s in step with your interests, but additionally with what’s in demand available in the market. Possibly you’re keen on human-centered design and might develop your skills as a UX author. Or you have got great social media savvy and might craft compelling copy for brands’ social media accounts. Whatever it’s, turn into an authority in it. Your goal is to turn into your client’s go-to person for that specific sort of writing.
- Create a sales process. Freelancers often get caught in a cycle of feast and famine. But when you have got a regular stream of incoming sales pipeline, you’ll even have a regular stream of labor. A sales process takes time to create, but saves time in the long term—not to say significantly reducing stress and financial hardship.
- Put your passion projects in your calendar. Simply because they’re not your primary source of income straight away, it doesn’t mean they’re not essential. Your fun writing works to develop your writing skills just as much because the writing that pays the bills. Commit to taking time every week for the writing that brings you joy.
Final Thoughts
From humble beginnings, Charlotte Lennox went on to have a long and fruitful writing profession, publishing six novels in addition to poems, plays, and even works of literary criticism. While she lived and wrote in very different circumstances to modern freelancers, her life nonetheless offers many hints on how you can turn into a freelance author today.
By prioritizing writing quality over promotion, constructing a support network of like-minded peers, and developing your profession in a way that’s sustainable for each your financial and artistic needs, you’ll be well in your technique to launching a successful freelance writing profession. Charlotte can be proud.
Source material about Charlotte Lennox’s life comes from Susan Carlile’s excellent biography, Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Life.
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