How many hours do you work per week? Do you know?
I realized this week that I didn’t. I know how much time I spend per assignment for my clients because I track that. I do track how much time I work on freelancing and content marketing, too, because I want to track my hourly income in total. But if I were to add up all my work—the novel I’m writing, the work I do for The International Freelancer, the new nonfiction book I’m now outlining—I couldn’t tell you.
And that’s because I don’t care.
The truth is, in the last month, I’ve probably worked nine or ten hours a day and still gone to bed wishing I had more time to do the things I’ve got planned. I’ve been at my desk happily typing away the last several weekends as my husband and son go out and had not even a twinge of guilt (I spend every weekday with my son, so I don’t miss out on time with him). I’ve been experimenting and trying new things such as audio and video because for the first time in several years, I feel extremely confident in what I have to offer and what I have to say.
As some of you may remember from last week, here’s what’s happened: I’ve thrown out everything from my writing life that was making me miserable and added in everything that brings me joy and so now, I wake up each morning looking forward to working and not feeling miserable at the prospect of what lies ahead.
This process has taken three years. Many of you have followed along.
You followed along in my excitement as my husband quit his job, I wrote a book, and landed an agent. You followed along as I walked away from that agent, became disillusioned with freelancing, started a business, shut down a business, started another business, shut down that business, moved countries, discovered content marketing, made really great money with it, got a work-from-home content marketing job, quit the job, launched a course, launched The International Freelancer, launched more courses, finished a novel, found another agent, and well… here we are.
Lots of successes. Lots of failures. Lots of heartache. Lots of questions.
And here’s what I finally realized, over the last three years, as I’ve gone from loving my writing to hating my writing to wondering if I needed to quit, to finding my way back again: It’s all about taking control. It’s about asking, “What do I want from my writing life and my days and what steps can I start taking today to make that happen?”
I asked that question of myself a couple of years ago, and I asked it of myself again in a different form last year.
And I came to the shocking conclusion that even though I made a fantastic living with my writing, the joy was being sucked out of my days because it was coming at the expense of the writing that I loved, that fulfilled me, that made me want to be a writer in the first place.
Slowly, over months, weeks, and days, I have let go of the things that drained me and replaced them with things that fuel me, excite me, make me want to keep on going.
So now, if you asked me how many hours a week I work, it would be like asking me how many hours a week I play with my son. I don’t know. I don’t count it. I play with my son every chance I get because I love it. And sometimes I’m not in the mood and so I don’t. And I work every chance I get because I love it. And of course, sometimes I’m not in the mood and so I don’t. I don’t measure it. I treat my freelancing as a business and I track the hours I work for my clients, but I don’t treat my writing life as a business. It’s just life.
For that same reason I don’t have a definitive answer to the “what is your income mix” question either. It’s different every week, every month, every year. For the last few months, I’ve woken up every morning and thought, what do I need to say today? And then I say it without planning everything down to the last detail. Some of it makes money, some of it still hasn’t. When I create, money is not what I think about. But, over the last few weeks, as I’ve built up The International Freelancer more, I’ve woken up more mornings than most and focused on that. I’ve woken up more mornings than most and turned down freelance assignments to work on my novel.
I don’t worry about the income mix now because my goal isn’t to make an income from a certain kind of writing but from the writing that comes from my heart, that I enjoy, and that I feel good about doing. Some of that is freelancing, some of it is personal essays, some of it is The International Freelancer, and some of it is books. There is not a single project on my plate at the moment that I’m not incredibly thrilled about doing. I cannot tell you the joy and freedom that comes from that.
It didn’t happen overnight. It came from three years of really hard work, of asking extremely uncomfortable questions, of taking financial risks that left us very broke for a while, of being utterly miserable, of failing, failing, failing, and then finally, beginning to understand what I needed to do.
And of course, I want to share that with you.
Today, I’m launching a new 6-week audio program called Reinvent Your Writing Career, which will show you how to take that writing career that has gone off-track and transform it into something you absolutely adore.
Like me, I want you to be able to wake up in the morning and feel like you have control, like you have choice, like you can do the things that matter to you without worrying about finding yourself broke and on the street.
I’m hearing, often and repeatedly, from writers who started out with big dreams and big goals and who now are simply stuck in the article-to-article, paycheck-to-paycheck cycle that I once was.
And I want to tell you that there is a way out.
I’ve been there. I know. And I found my way out.
I’d love for you to be able to do the same.
And yes, in case you’re wondering why I’m launching another course pretty much straight after I’ve finished one, this is what happens when you’re on fire and having far too much fun. The productivity, to me, feels like a direct result of being in alignment and doing work that feels fun and rewarding. I don’t intend to stop!
If you’ve found yourself dissatisfied with your writing career and writing life, you need to ask yourself: What’s working? What’s not? And what do I need to change?
Start there. The rest will follow.