The other day, I visited my friendly local Starbucks. Only because I was running late for work and didn’t have the half hour to drive to Dutch Bros. There, I talked with Suzie the barista and caught up, since she hadn’t seen me in awhile. She mentioned to one of the other baristas, a skinny college guy, that I was a writer and had my own travel blog.
I could tell from his reaction that he was an aspiring writer himself. I offhandedly mentioned that I had five articles to write about boats, compasses, rigging, and PFDs. Due on June 1st. That’s today.
He said “I don’t write anything with deadlines. I like to keep everything I do more freelance.”
Freelance.
You keep using this word, but I don’ think you know what this word means.
With his mindset, if that was how I wrote, the only thing true about “freelance” would be that I was writing everything for free. Yes, I have written a book and many short stories that may as well have been for the love of writing. But as a writer, as some point you might want to get paid doing what you love. If you truly love it, then writing about clamps and pocketknives and boat rigging and asbestos testing won’t diminish your love of the craft.
It will get you out of a freaking office where everyone thinks you suck and one day you will die having nothing to show for it other than hemorrhoids and carpal tunnel syndrome. At least as a writer, you get those, AND a sense of fulfillment. You have created something. That is rare in this world.
So, I just nodded and smiled because the kid is 20, maybe 21 and knows everything. Just as I did at that age. And it has taken me that much longer to understand that sometimes you don’t want to write the stuff that isn’t fun. But when the checks come and you get to fly to London and dink around for nearly two weeks, it was worth all the stupid copy you had to write for companies. It is an investment in getting to experience more of the world for the stories that matter. Inspiring pieces that are beyond the scope of your imagination, which I gotta tell you, without inspiration from the outside, is pretty limited.
Anyway, enough procrastinating. I have copy to write and maybe some stories. Because that is what a freelancer really does.
Wendigo Mountain 