Member-only story
FREELANCING | WRITING
Why I Don’t Need to be a Know-It-All Writer
Sometimes it pays to turn freelancing work down
Ask any experienced writer and I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you a tale from their newbie days, where they succumbed to the temptation to keep income flowing by taking every writing job offered. That’s a mistake, but it’s something writers often learn the hard way. Here’s how I learned that lesson.
Early in my freelancing career, I was working for a UK copywriting industry. At the time, I wrote a lot about consumer finance, home and lifestyle, and web and social media topics. Sometimes, I’d write for a client who had a lot of websites on different topics. This was common at the time, as people were still trying to work out how to use the web effectively, and how to make money from it.
A Lesson from My Freelancing Past
One day, this client gave me a job. It looked pretty simple: five general articles on sewing as part of a much bigger home and lifestyle job. Sewing wasn’t a topic I particularly wanted to cover, but the agency was playing hardball: I had to take the whole job or lose it all. Since I couldn’t afford to do that, I caved.
