How could someone change careers to become a freelance writer? Advice? Ideas? Suggestions?
Not trying to be a smartass, but the first thing you have to have is the talent to write things that people are willing pay for.
If you have that, the details will take care of themselves.
How remarkably unhelpful.
Clearly you are an underutilized resource among the masses.
First rule: don’t quit your day job.
Essentially, you take every opportunity you can to get work writing. When I freelanced, I did ad copy, technical manuals, worked on local publications, and sent out fiction. You network from one job to the next: I got one job because they asked a friend of mine who couldn’t take it on. That led to others.
Some temp agencies place freelancers, and there are occasional ads in the local newspaper (make sure it isn’t some sort of scam). It helps if you can type. It also helps if you can do writing workshops. A Masters degree is a plus, not because of the writing, but because it opens up teaching jobs at local community colleges.
It will take time to build a business. There are plenty of freelancers available, and people tend to underrate the skill necessary to write (BTW, you don’t need to be a great writer, but you do need to know how to writer clearly and concisely. When you have 25 words to describe a CD player to make people want to buy it, you need to concentrate). Unless you can live without income for several years, you’ll have to freelance part time.
And, mostly, just keep working at it.
Well, it was late, and in any case I put more effort into my response than you put into the OP. You didn’t bother to post any information about your education, experience or other qualifications that might help someone give a meaningful reply.
The way you posed your question, I might as well ask, “How do I become a professional baseball pitcher for the New York Yankees?”.
The first thing someone attempting to reply would want to know is if I can actually pitch. “Can you throw a baseball over the plate at 90 mph?” would be a reasonable question.
Again, I wasn’t trying to be a smartass but you didn’t give me much to work with.
I had some advice but got distracted by the ads.
I logged in, hoping paid account peeps wouldn’t have to put up with ads.
I was wrong.
Ink, I’ve been just pimping myself out to friends to build up a portfolio, answering ads on craigslist, etc. I’ve got a mind to take a class from http://www.awaionline.com/ and go from there, but I haven’t had the spare time or brainspace to do it; maybe after NaNoWriMo is over.
Ew. The ads are still there.
My wife is a freelance writer. She was a full-time writer until about 6 months after our daughter was born, when she decided she’d rather be home than spewing corporate nonsense and dealing with large beuracracy at an insurance company.
She started with a posting on guru.com, she answered some newspaper ads, and she contacted local newspapers. She pitched stories to local publications about interesting people or events in the area, and is developing a website to showcase her experience.
As someone else stated, it will help greatly if you have the eduction and the background to write effectively, because the hourly rates for most freelance writing (ie for local papers and such which pay by the article) are not all that great even if you’re a good writer, and will be terrible if you don’t organize well, and need to do a lot of follow up and redrafting of your work.
Also, making a “career” of it isn’t all that easy or rewarding. Most of the time, when someone hires a freelancer, they treat them like any other contractor (ie they make unreasonable demands on short time frames). My wife REALLY likes writing, and, because she is also a stay-at-home mom, doesn’t devote herself to it full time. So, we’ll probably pull in between 10 and 13K this year from her freelance gigs, partly because at the beginning of the year she was contracted for 2 days a week full time to help out at the insurance company when about 3 other women had babies within weeks of each other. Next year I expect it to be a little less unless she gets a few more clients.
Hope this helps!
Yeah, freelance writing doesn’t pay much and you really have to hump to make a living at it. When I was in school getting a bachelor’s in journalism I wrote articles during the summer for my hometown weekly newspaper ($4 per article - whee! - but that was a long time ago) and my senior year I sent out a few query letters to magazines and got contracted and paid for articles as a result of a couple of those (50 each). Upon graduation I decided getting a full-time job where they'd pay me to write was a better idea (still had to work my butt off, and still low pay, but enough to satisfy the bills at any rate).
You can also get paid for offbeat stuff, like writing questions for quiz shows or ghosting pulp romance novels.
It helps a lot to develop relationships with clients - if they like your stuff, then they’ll call you if they need something because they like your work. Repeat business is a good thing.
I think you really, really have to not only love writing but also not mind dealing with the details of essentially owning your own business too - that includes stuff like making sure you get paid on time, doing the taxes, dealing with picky clients, etc.
Here’s how my wife did it. She was staying home after our first daughter was born. We were involved in a games group, and we got some games to sample from a game reviewer who lived nearby. At one point she said that she was too busy to write the review, and could my wife do it? She did, got a byline, and decided she liked it. She then started writing for the local free paper, which paid pretty well. She was also teaching at a school for nannies, and somehow got hooked up with a woman running a magazine for nannies. She started writing parenting articles., and then syndicated them to papers around the country. She didn’t sell each article for much, but when you sell them to 20 markets it adds up.
Since she has a degree in biology, she joined a medical writers group, and started getting those kinds of jobs. She has ghost written a few textbooks, has two books out in her name, with two more in progress, and has done lots of entries in various encyclopedias.
Bottom line - there are a lot more markets out there than national publications. Look on Craigs List and other such places. Start small - it really helps to have a bunch of clips to send in. Specialize on something you know better than other people.
She doesn’t make a fortune now, but enough that the estimated taxes are painful.
I freelance. Just had a piece in the WSJ, for that matter.
It’s not a career. I do it for some extra cash…not a living. I do other things for that and take the freelance stuff as it comes.
First off you need to write. Go to your local paper and offer to freelance something for them. Write to magazines in fields that interest you and offer. Anyone who publishes things go to and make the offer…even if it’s cheap. You need a clip or two to get things rolling.
And go here to learn: www.mediabistro.com It’s a great source for newbie freelancers.
Freelance writing is my primary (but not only) source of income. I did finally quit my day job a few years ago, but I still do non-writing gigs from time to time. John Carter of Mars and Jonathan Chance pegged the first requirement. You have to be able to write. Given that, let me see if I can help with the procedural stuff:
First, freelance writing is a numbers game. I have over 200 published articles and a dozen books, and I still only sell about 1/3 of what I propose. Don’t let initial rejections kill your enthusiam for writing (and you’d bloody well better have enthusiasm, or hang it up right now).
Next, get a few clips (published pieces that you can use in your portfolio) however you have to do it. Once you’ve accomplished that, don’t write for free. It’s your job now. A carpenter would have a hard time feeding his family if he spent all day building stuff for his buddies, and you won’t be able to live off your writing work if you’re giving it away.
Study the business of writing. Join a couple of writer’s groups, and maybe a message board or two. Buy a copy of Writer’s Market. Don’t just get it from the library. Spend the $30 so you can highlight it, mark it up, and dogear the pages. Learn how to write a proper query letter, and send out LOTS of them.
Never apologize for being a beginner. All of us were beginners once. The words “I haven’t written much, but…” or “I’m just a beginner, but…” should never appear in a query letter, proposal, or cover letter. For that matter, “but” and “just” don’t belong there, either.
Put more effort into the query letter than you’d put into the article or story. It’s the first time the editor will see your writing skills. Spelling and grammatical errors in a query letter are fatal–and this includes misspelling the editor’s name!
Do some research. Virtually every publishing company has a Web site, and most of them have writer’s guidelines. Follow those guidelines to the letter. If they want their proposals or queries double-spaced in Courier type and mailed in (“no emailed queries accepted”), then by golly you should do it that way.
Look for different places to start out. Playboy magazine gets about four bazillion queries a week because they pay very well and it’s a very prestigious place to be published. Many newsletters and trade journals are dying for good material, and some of them pay well.
Once you’ve sold a piece, ask the editor if there’s anything else they need. Then ask the editor for other editors that might need your kind of work.
Local newspapers don’t pay very well, but they can be a good place to get a start. Start out by pitching article ideas rather than columns. It’s tough to get a column lined up, and unless you can get it syndicated, you’re not going to make a lot of money from a column.
Good luck!
Is your wife named Tish? 
My primary part-time job is in education.
But I’ve also had articles accepted for publication at roughly two dozen magazines in the past two years. I specialize in parenting.
I second and third every single thing Invisible Wombat said. Write for free to get a few clips and then use those clips to get paying jobs.
Spend a lot of time with the query. Research it beforehand. Try to find at least five to eight markets for every idea so all that you’re pitching isn’t just tied to one magazine.
Do not go into this business if you are easily discouraged and dislike rejection. Rejection is often a weekly (and sometimes even daily!) part of being a freelance writer.
God forbid someone be curious about something in general. I’m also curious as to how people end up becoming armpit sniffers, couch testers, and bull-semen extractors. Perhaps you could enlighten me there if I submitted a CV?
If your skin is truly this thin you’re not cut out to be a (paid) freelance writer.
I tend towards the sarcastic, but not the thin-skinned.
Inkleberry, you are a good writer, and I think you have a strong voice that comes through your writing that publishers will be attracted to, so that isn’t what you need to worry about. But what most here have said is true:
It doesn’t pay much.
You have to really work to get yourself established.
It requires not just good writing but excellent organizational skills and being able to meet deadlines. If a story is due at 5 p.m., then it’s due at 5 p.m. There’s usually no “negotiating” for extended deadlines.
It’s better if you can write about what you know, but you may have to write about things you aren’t interestdc in and don’t know much about. It comes with the territory.
I think approaching your local newspaper and offering them a freelance feature story is a good way to get started. You strike me as a person who knows what’s going on the neighborhood that people really care about.
Good luck to you.
Maxie’s ten steps for budding freelancers, composed off the top of my head:
First off, don’t think you’re going to start making money very quickly unless you are not merely insanely talented, but also insanely lucky.
Second, go to your local Barnes & Noble and buy yourself a copy of Writer’s Market. It’s a reference volume with information on thousands of possible market–both magazine and book publishers–as well as much practical advice on things like manuscript formatting, query letters, copyright, and so forth.
Third, if you’re trying to break into the magazine market, take a look at the sorts of magazine you wish to write for. Don’t buy them just yet. Instead, sit down at B & N with a dozen of the magazines & question and the Writer’s Market. WM wil probably have entries on them, and you’ll undoubtedly fine that many of the one’s you’re interested in don’t accept unsolicited submissions; a good number are completely staff-written. That doesn’t mean it’s completely impossible to sell to them as a freelancer, but the odds are vastly against you unless you know an editor there (and have a WORKING relationship with said editor) and have published clips. Concentrate on the magazines that accept freelance submissions.
Fifth, buy the magazines you’ve selected, along with Writer’s Market, before you spill tea on them.
Sixth, take th magazines home and read them. Try to find a back issue or two of each at your public library, and read those as well. Get a feel for what sort of pieces the market publishes, as well as topics they’ve covered recently and probably won’t want a repeat of anytime soon.
Seventh, brainstorm story and article ideas. Try to come up with at least seven.
Eighth, put yourself on a schedule. Work on your stories at the same time every day, or every week, or however fits your life. Except for emergencies, deviate from said schedule only to ADD writing time. Treat it as a part-time job, in other words; if you were moonlighting at Sears, you’d have to be there at a specific time each day, yes? This is the same, except that the only person disciplining you is you.
Ninth, put aside some time in the schedule listed above to go through WM and learn as much from it as you can.
Ten, resign yourself to a lot of rejection–but know that if you have talent as well as discipline, you can do it.
The details will not take care of themselves. You can be as brilliant as Hemingway, but if you’re an utter unknown and you don’t format your submissions properly, you’ll only annoy the editors you send them to, and they won’t even read them. You can write the most brilliant short coming of age story in history, but if you submit it to Time you’re wasting your time, and if you expect The New Yorker to fall all over an unknown, you’re nuts. You have to learn the business and put in the time.
Or you could try supporting a local independent bookseller instead. Freelance writers and indy bookstores have a symbiotic relationship. The indy stores will push good books from newcomers that don’t have a chance of getting into the B&N stores. The people who own and work for indy stores usually do so because they love books, not because they’re just looking for a place to work.
You’ll do better networking and get a lot of good information that way. Not only that, you’ll be supporting your own local economy instead of sending your money off to New York City.
Booksense.com will help you find the nearest independent bookseller.