June 29, 2009 – 1:08 am
It’s one thing to write well for newspapers and magazines or to be an excellent business writer, copywriter or web writer. It’s another to write on a freelance basis for a variety of editors and/or corporate clients. To succeed as a freelancer, you have to have solid writing skills, more business skills (marketing skills in particular) than you might imagine. And you have to have the freelancer’s personality.
I am not going to pretend this quiz below is the definitive freelancer’s personality quiz; however, if you are thinking of becoming a freelance writer, if you are wondering if freelancing is for you, if you want to know if you have what it takes, in terms of personality, to become a freelance writer (or almost any independent practitioner) you might want to take this quiz.
Freelancer’s Personality Quiz
1.) Do you want/need/desire the security of a steady paycheck?
2.) Do you love water cooler chit-chat?
3.) Do you want set coffee break times and lunch hours?
4.) Do you like to chat with others about “whatever” during coffee breaks and lunch hours?
5.) Given the choice between telecommuting or traveling to work, would you travel in?
6.) Do you like to steal company time?
7.) Do you feel you deserve personal access to company resources and supplies?
8.) Are you generally opposed to working evenings and/or weekends?
9.) Do you often wonder how you can make more money while working fewer hours?
10.) At the end of the day, do you gripe about your employer, boss, co-workers, work?
11.) Do you firmly believe in the strict separation of work and life?
12.) Do you feel you deserve a pension and a set retirement date?
How did you do?
I suspect you could see where this quiz was going. If you answered “yes” to most of the questions, you do not have the personality of a freelancer or independent practitioner. If you answered “no“, then you have the personality of a freelancer.
Freelancers can earn more than people who do similar jobs full time;however, income can ebb and flow and there is no guarantee you will make money every week. Hell, sometimes you think you’ve had a good week and a client stiffs you. Life, or at least business, is like that.
Some freelancers are extroverts. However, almost all freelancers are social camels. Just as camels can take a long cool drink and then go weeks without water, freelancers can absorb a social gathering and then go days and even weeks without social chit-chat. In fact, many freelancers consciously eschew social chit chat during working hours.
Most freelancers who have previously worked full time will tell you they can’t remember how they passed coffee break and lunch time. A coffee break is a sip of coffee or tea between work-related tasks. Lunch hour is never close to an hour. It takes as long as it takes to make and eat lunch – if you remember to make and eat lunch. And yes, on occasions, a freelancer will go for a long walk during the day or even a long lunch with other freelancers (the camel filling up on social interaction).
Some freelancers will take a break and engage in online social networking during business hours. But successful freelancers will tell you they make sure they have completed business tasks before they engage in cyber chit-chat – unless, of course, the cyber chit-chat is proven method of marketing their business.
Most freelancers love to work from home. In fact, if asked to come in to work on a contract gig they would convince the employer they’d be more productive working at home. They’d get the job done at home in less time than it would take to do it at work – and take on additional freelance gigs.
Freelancers know that every hour they are not working, is an hour they are not getting paid. Or every hour they are not marketing, is an hour they are not generating future pay. But freelancers do not necessarily work all day. In fact, you might see one shopping during regular business hours – when crowds and line ups are thin. However, the freelancer will then gladly work in the evening or on the weekend to get the job done.
Freelancers buy what they need to run their business, and not much more. They know every dollar spent comes out of their pockets. And they know they worked hard to put the dollars into their pockets. Just as some people are connected to the land, freelancers are connected to every buck they earn – and to the work it takes to earn each buck.
Many freelance achieve work/life balance through work/life integration. Fact is, if you love what you do it can be hard to see where work ends and life begins. And if you have a problem with that philosophy, you probably hate your job (or your life). If it sounds as if freelancers are workaholics, it is not the case. If you are passionate about what you do, you become a work-a-frolic (if I may steal a phrase from author Richard St. John). And working evenings and weekends, as may be required, is not a big deal. (Remember, we’ll slip out in the middle of the day to do some mundane chore in minutes – the kind of thing that will take you hours to do after work or on the weekend.) At the same time, if a client is totally disorganized and asks us to work miracles, we’ll do it for a premium. Because we know the value of our labor.
Labor unions seem hell bent on negotiating fewer hours of work for more pay every time contracts come up for renewal. Freelance writers, on the other hand, know they have to work billable hours before they can bill a client. But yes, we sometimes wonder how we can earn money in our sleep – the way I generate income by selling books. But we also know we will have to put in long hours to do so – like the hours I put in writing my books.
Yes, even freelancers will gripe occassionally about a client or a particular job. But not that often. If we land the job from hell, we fire the client. In other words, we love what we do and we are not prepared to become disgruntled gripers. Life is just too darn short for that, my friends.
Liking, even loving, what we do, means we incorporate our work into our lives. Yes, like anyone, a bit of time away from the job helps us refresh our batteries. But we look forward to going back because we are doing what we have chosen to do. We have turned our desire into our business.
With that in mind, we have no retirement date in mind. Why would we stop doing what we want to do? Don’t you do what you want to do in retirement? Hell, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been successfully retired from reality for almost 20 years, and I plan on staying this way until I type my final period… … … … And I an in no rush to do that
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Paul Lima is a freelance writer, copywriter, business writing instructor and media interview trainer. He is also the author of several books on business writing and the business of freelance writing. His latest book is How To Write A Non-Fiction Book in 60 Days.
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