The view from my desk
Do you ever find yourself writing a word or phrase then looking at it as if it were the first time you’d ever encountered it? Every so often, I’ll write that something is full to the gunwales and think, ‘Heck, I need to know exactly what that means and look it up. (It’s a nautical term referring to the upper edge or planking of the side of a boat). I was reading a novel not that long ago, traditionally published by someone quite famous and it was spelt as gunnals. Which made me very cross because I am such a pedant.
Freelanced, freelancer and freelance
I’ve been a freelance writer for thirteen years but have never once stopped to wonder why it’s called that. It’s a fluid word. It can be a verb (she freelanced her way to penury), a noun (he prided himself on being a freelancer) and an adjective (they had done nothing but freelance for many years).
I was reading the paper the other day, giving myself a short break from writing my novel and fulfilling several freelance contracts. There was an article on freelancing which gave me the etymology and the inspiration for this blog. In ‘Ivanhoe’, Sir Walter Scott coined the term to describe a mercenary warrior, or free-lance, i.e. someone who has not committed themselves to any one person’s service and is, therefore, a free lance for hire.
Free as in available. Not free as in unpaid. Just saying.
Being a freelancer is great for the following reasons:
You can work from home
It’s a short commute from bed to office and at a pinch, you can do your work in bed! Imagine that
If you want to work in your pjs you can and if you dropped your breakfast down said pjs earlier in the morning, who cares?
There are no annoying fellow workers hanging around your desk and you don’t have go out with them after work when you’d rather be crashed out on the sofa watching a box set
You can fit work around the family. This is a massive winner
You can take lunch when you like
If you do a good job, your clients will tell other people who will get in touch with you, so you don’t have to keep pitching yourself all over town
Not such a bad commute
It’s not all lobsters and lollipops, though. The downside is this:
You’re never not at work. At any minute, an email can come in and you have to spring into action
While it’s great being at home, it does mean that it’s all too easy to wander off and do the washing up or some dusting instead of knuckling down to the task at hand
You don’t get a guaranteed monthly pay cheque. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. If you lose a client/s, your bank balance is seriously affected
If you don’t pay into your pension plan, no one else is going to
You have to motivate yourself every day, because again, no one else is going to
On balance, though, I’d rather be a freelancer than have to go into the office every day. I did that for nearly twenty years.
You have to be fairly flexible and ready to learn in this job. I started off writing for a large Christian charity who specialise in generosity and philanthropy. They taught me how to tell a good story, how to engage the reader and how to conduct interviews. My boss calls me a terrier, which is a compliment. You need to be able to sniff out a juicy nugget and chase it down, then put it in exactly the right place in your article.
The break area
Over the years, I’ve found myself writing about flowers (ask me anything, go on), specialist paints, fashion, life coaching, hand-made kitchens, high-end property and loads more. The minute a new client approaches me, I have to become an expert on their subject. It’s never dull and if I was allowed to go to parties, I’d never be short of a topic of conversation.
Once I’ve done this, I’m returning to my current WIP (work in progress), The Trials of Isabella M Smugge. I’m writing “May” at the moment. My heroine is reeling from the latest spiteful attack from her archenemy Lavinia Harcourt and trying to find a way to silence the village snitch. My research has shown me that smoke blue is the in colour for towels this season, so naturally, when Isabella’s waters broke, she used her treasured Egyptian cotton smoke blue towels to mop up. What other job would allow me to sit here writing a novel?
None that I can think of.