Building a Financially Sustainable Writing Career: Body Work

Everybody Hurts

My career as a writer has not been good for my body. I weigh far more than I should because I spend most of my day sitting. I have a perpetually bad back and stiff neck from poor positioning. At the end of a long day in front of a computer my vision starts to get fuzzy and I have to increase the size of the text on my screen. For almost a year in the nineties, I could barely type due to a repetitive motion injury to my left elbow. During one particularly tense stretch at a company that shall remain nameless, I developed a tick in my right eye that nearly drove me crazy and an earache that didn’t go away until the day after I quit that job.

Writing is hard, not just mentally but physically. It isn’t professional athlete hard or standing on an assembly line hard, but there are plenty of hazards to be had. If you want to build a financially sustainable writing career, you need to take care of your body. Fixing your body is expensive and doing without it impossible, so taking care of it is your best choice. Here are some keys to building a sustainable writer’s body.

Think Locally, Act Ergonomically

Seek out chairs that are kind to both your butt and your back. Invest in a trackball or other ergonomically designed mouse. Get the largest, crispest monitor you can afford and make sure your text is clear enough to read for hours. Make sure everything is the proper height and distance. For more information read here.

Get Up Off Of That Thing

Try to get up, stretch, and walk around at least once every hour. No matter how comfortable a chair might be, it isn’t meant to hold you all day. When you maintain the same position for too long, tension starts to build in your body. Movement helps to relieve the tension.

You Can Dance If You Want To

You don’t need to be an athlete, but for the sake of a sustainable body, you need to get at least three sessions of moderate exercise in every week. There are hundreds of ways to exercise. If nothing else, go for a walk. Try to sustain some exercise for at least a half hour, three times a week.

There’s The Rub

Massages are a great way to reduce stress and keep your body healthy. I try to get an hour massage about twice a month.  It is one of the things I can look forward to that keeps me sane during the high-stress times.

Doctor Feelgood

Preventing health problems is always easier and cheaper than fixing health problems. Get that annual check up. Figure out if there are any danger signs that you need to deal with before they become major issues.

Crack That Back

On New Year’s Day, 1987, I drove my car off of Dead Man’s curve on River Road. I flipped the car and although I “walked” away, I suffered from severe back pain and decreased mobility. It took me two months to talk myself into seeing a chiropractor. By the end of the first visit I felt almost like myself again. When your back gets into trouble, a good chiropractor can help, especially if you go before it turns into a crisis.

Get a Peaceful, Easy Feeling

Stress release is the key to long term health. Stress builds up in many ways and for many reasons, from the way you sit to the pressure of a project to personal problems. Find a way to release that pressure when you need to. Learn to meditate. Find a relaxing hobby. Take a hot or cold shower. Get some sleep. Do what it takes to manage your stress before it becomes a problem.

Building a Financially Sustainable Writing Career: Marketing

Most freelancers already know that they need to market themselves. Bloggers usually know this too, although they sometimes focus on their blog as their only marketing tool. Marketing is for all writers though, and in fact for anyone who wants to have a sustainable professional career. A fully employed technical writer or business writer might not see the need for marketing themselves, but even a “permanent” job can suddenly end, and the more well-known and respected you are, the easier it will be to find the next job.

If you are out of work, you need marketing even more. Sending out your resume in response to a job advertisement is just one way to get a job, and it is the way that ensures you have the most competition. Building a solid public reputation opens many doors and helps bring people to your door instead of you having to hunt for them. The best job search is the one that is already being done before you need the job.

Create a Portfolio

The first, most basic step that every writer should take is to create a personal portfolio. Collect samples of your best work and have them ready to send out at a moment’s notice. Be ready for print or electronic distribution. The more professional your portfolio looks the more professional and qualified you look. Don’t forget to add a business card, a well-designed resume and a professional biography.

Build a Web Site

It should come as no surprise that I recommend every writer have a web site. Even if you don’t want to be a blogger or web publisher, having a small, attractive site that has samples of your work makes you much easier to find. That is the key to marketing, making sure that when people are thinking of a writer with your skills, they can find you. The site isn’t just for prospective employers. It should be media friendly as well. Make sure it has a contact form or at least your email address so that it is easy to get in touch with you.

Be Social

One of the best ways to get your qualifications out there is to join social groups, both online and in person. Almost ever writing field has an organization that caters to it, from the Society for Technical Communication to the Public Relations Society of America to the Direct-Mail/Marketing Association. Beyond those groups, there are general groups of business people such as The Toastmasters, The Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce. Online, of course, you have services such as LinkedIn and Xing, which allow you to exchange resumes and professional contacts all over the world.

Advertise

When I needed freelance work to get me by while I was getting my Master’s Degree, I put an ad in the local newspaper. It has a professional services section and no other writer has a listing, so I put one in and I almost immediately got work. The ad paid for itself and more within two weeks. I also advertised on my web site, and generated some business that way. This was passive recruitment. I didn’t have to call a single person or send them my resume/portfolio. They came to me. It is amazing how many people are looking for your skills but just don’t know where to find them. Advertising in print publications is generally cheap. Advertising on a relevant web site can be an even bigger bargain. Sometimes you’ll want to do this even when you don’t need the work right away, just to make sure people remember you.

Pick Up the Phone

Do you know why cold calling works? It works for four reasons:

• It is quick
• It is direct
• It can be done from anywhere
• Most people don’t have the guts to do it

You can spend all day telling me why you can’t call people. Yes, it is hard to do. The only reason to do something that personal and risk individual rejection is that it works. You can get rejected a hundred times in a day. Getting rejected takes almost no time at all. The sale you make is what matters, especially when you absolutely have to put food on the table.

Get Your Name Out

There are literally hundreds of marketing strategies. I highly recommend reading a book or two on marketing so that you understand the general concepts. There are also companies (and writers) who specialize in doing this for you. The important thing about marketing, especially if you aren’t the type to cold call a company, is to be working on it while you have work so that opportunities are easier to find when you need them.

A key to sustainability is to avoid having limited resources. When it comes to a career, your resources are personal and professional contacts, advertising, marketing materials, marketing knowledge and a high profile. Having all of these instead of just a few will help you sustain a long-term marketing career.

Is your Writing Career Financially Sustainable?

Whether you are a freelance copywriter, a contract technical writer or a full-time reporter, you should be considering the financial sustainability of your career. There are many types of writing careers, and there are issues to be faced in every one of them. Even the safest sounding of careers can have sustainability issues. Much of it depends on you, and the way you approach your career.

How long do you need your career to be sustainable?

When considering the sustainability of your career there are some questions you need to ask. The first question is how long do I want this career to last? Most people don’t intend to stay in the same job, or even the same career for their entire life. You might want to be a freelance writer today, but you may not want it ten years from now. When considering sustainability, it is good to have a finite period of time in mind. If you don’t have a specific idea of how long you want your career to last, then a good time period to use is twenty years. Feel free to pick your own value though. If you do have an idea of what you want to transition to next, and when, part of your consideration should be about how you are going to position yourself for that next change.

How much money is enough money?

Money will always be a primary issue. You not only need to consider your income, but you need to consider your spending as well. You also need to ask how much damage a major crisis would have on your income.

For almost three years, I managed to live strictly off money I made from my web sites and money I made freelancing. I never had enough money to put much of anything aside. I just managed to meet my obligations and no more. There was more than one point at which I thought I wasn’t going to meet my obligations, but somehow money always came through. That doesn’t mean that the career choice itself was unsustainable. I was very careful with the money I did have coming in, and that helped. I spent money only on essentials, and made do without almost anything else.

Now, I work full time in addition to blogging part time. I make a considerable amount of money, so income isn’t a sustainability issue. That doesn’t mean that finances are no longer an issue. When I hade very little money coming in, I spent very little and I did my best to avoid debt because I knew how difficult it would be to pay back debt with so little money coming in. Unfortunately, the lessons I learned as a frugal freelancer did not carry over when I moved to a full time income. I have acquired debts and spent money on items I never would have considered when I had less income. Financially, there are still sustainability issues in my life.

Can you weather a crisis financially?

One of the key improvements that a full time job has provided, is insurance. As a web publisher and freelancer, I lived without it. If I had gone through even a minor medical emergency, it would have crushed me financially. Now, I have a job with paid time off and good health insurance as well as short and long term disability insurance. I can handle a minor or even a substantial health emergency.

Can you save for your future?

Another advantage of my current situation is that I now have retirement savings. I have access to a 401k, a pension program and even a profit-sharing program. Saving for the short term has been a problem for me, but saving for the long-term has been somewhat better because of all of these programs. There are similar steps that freelancers can take, but it is more difficult.

It isn’t about career choice, it is about career development

It may sound as if I am knocking my career as a freelancer. I am not. Being a freelancer was not the central problem that I had. The central issue was one of income. I did not take the steps that would have added to my income and helped me save for emergencies or get insurance. Had I run my career more wisely then, I may never have needed to move to a “more secure” job.

Next time I’ll look into some of the ways that you can make your career more financially sustainable.

Writing and Sustainability

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to sustainability. Sustainability is most often associated with environmentalism and over consumption. Fossil fuel, for example, is a finite resource and therefore unsustainable. There is only so much oil and coal to be had. Whether there is enough to last the world twenty more years or three hundred more years, at some point the resource will run out. An energy policy based on the primary consumption of fossil fuel is unsustainable.

It isn’t just the Environment

This is not an article about environmentalism. While that is one of the most common arenas in which sustainability is discussed, sustainability can be applied to any situation in which a resource (fuel, money, time, food, etc.) must be relied upon. When you consume more than you add, you reduce the number of resources that you have. This is true for a society, a family or even an individual. If I make $70,000 a year, but I spend $75,000 a year, I am maintaining an unsustainable lifestyle. At some point, unless a change is made, I will either run out of reserves. I will spend any money I have saved and I will use up any money that people are willing to loan. If I do not change on my own, change will be forced upon me. The situation will grow worse and worse until it either fixed or disaster strikes.

Some Things Cannot Last

Life itself, at least on an individual basis, is unsustainable. Your body is a finite resource. Each day on earth, you use a little bit of it up. Even a healthy lifestyle is unsustainable. A well-cared for body still comes with an expiration date. If you’re lucky, you have a hundred years. Most of us have somewhat less. Sometimes, when we think about sustainability, we have to be realistic. Just because a resource, such as your body, is finite, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it. It just means that you have to use it wisely and well, with the knowledge that it won’t be around forever.

Writers and Resources

When you are dealing with a finite or variable resource, you need to plan for that. This is especially important for writers. A writer frequently has to deal with limited resources. Money, of course, is the ultimate limited resource. When you are out of money, it is hard to do much of anything. Time is a limited resource, especially when you have lots of work or a deadline to face. Interest and enthusiasm are variable resources. You can only do work you don’t enjoy for so long before it starts to take a toll.

Be Smart

Sustainability is all about smart planning and having the strength to limit your use of things that either need to be replenished or cannot be replenished. In the coming days I plan to discuss some of the steps writers can take to build a sustainable career. For now, think about all of the things that go into keeping your career afloat, and which of those resources are sustainable and which are not.