My Freelance Writing Story

Tick, tock, tick, tock…a month goes by and I’m back…now what was I saying about years go by?

Lucky for me a husband and three children later didn’t kill the dream. What has happened to me in that time? Writing in dribs and drabs, volunteering desktop publishing and creative church endeavors, some small but relevant stuff and then one day my daughter asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. She was interviewing me for a school project and I was in the midst of considering work at home options related to previous admin and database management work. I knew I didn’t want to go back to an office with a toddler, a preschooler, a middle-schooler and a husband that travels a lot.

“What do I want to be when I grow up?”

“…a writer.”

She said, “That’s cool” and I thought yeah, that’s cool.

Needless to say, my work at home job search took a u-turn from the original plan of web research, etc. I was going to be a cool mom. Yeah, let’s see how long that lasts.

Coolness wasn’t part of the dream, just doing what I love. So I set forth on a realistic plan, ever with that practical bent, I thought I’ll get my feet wet with online writing and ease myself back into creative writing.

To my surprise I started with creative writing when I partnered with a gentleman to write scripts for web animation Christian stories. We are still in the start-up phase but Purpleseed will come to fruition in good time.

I then immediately moved from the Telemarketing forum at WAHM.com to the WAHM’s Who Write forum. Somewhere around that time while I was looking for writing jobs on Craigslist (where I found my Purpleseed gig) daily and had just started visiting Deborah Ng’s Freelance Writer Jobs, Freelance writer Sue LaPointe of Working Writer Happy Writer was looking for a handful of guinea pigs at WAHM to give the recommendations in her new book on becoming a freelance writer a spin for thirty days. I was one of the lucky guinea pigs.

If there were three things I would advise you do to become a freelance writer, besides write, I would have to say visit WAHM, Freelance Writer Jobs Network and Sue LaPointe at Working Writer Happy Writer and Build a Thriving Writing Business. These are great places to start. And if you have somewhat of a creative bent like me add Absolute Write to that list. Whatever you do, start making a list.