The "secret" we forget to talk about

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This week my partner and I sat down to work out a budget. With a new house and a baby on the way, expenses have the potential to be extremely stressful right now. But once we wrote everything down, I felt mostly relief. Because after two and a half years of freelance writing (plus two years prior to my 3-year break from journalism) I am finally making around what I made at my last full-time job.

I’ve still not hit the illustrious six-figure salary—a very tweetable goal and accomplishment that makes us all feel *a certain way*, whether that’s pride in achieving it or frustration with how distant and impossible that kind of money can seem when you’re scraping together .10/word blog posts and flakey clients. Six-figures would be great. But I am making enough to support the life I want to live, enough to budget for the big stuff without having a panic attack. I’m still working on the work-life balance part of this, but I’m getting there.

I don’t share this seemingly sudden financial relief to add to the pile of humble-brags that can be so distracting in the guise of being inspirational. (Really… I hope I’m getting at something that’s actually helpful here…) Because the truth I want to acknowledge is, that I’ve spent A LOT of time feeling frustrated and resentful towards the people who make freelance writing work, when for so long it seemed impossible. For most of the last two years, I barely scraped by with bills and student loan payments. (And the fact that I haven’t had to make a student loan payment in the last two years has been HUGE in paying off credit cards and clawing my way to more stable financial footing.)

I have spent so much time on assignments that didn’t pay nearly enough, and I’ve chased after work that wasn’t right for me at all, because I felt like I needed to chase after any work. I’ve made all the mistakes, and I’ve considered walking away from this industry again and again.

There is so much advice out there on how to make more money through freelance writing. As someone who writes a newsletter with advice on freelancing, I offer it up myself. All of the advice and resources can be helpful. All of the “secrets” to success, even if they’re not really secrets at all, can nudge you in the right direction, towards the habits and practices that work best for you.

But I think what most of the standard advice neglects to acknowledge is the most consequential thing.

And that, my friends, is time.

Not the number of hours you work in a day, but the days after days that add up to months and years of mistakes and experience and eventual sustainability in your freelance writing career.

And maybe that’s kind of a bummer. I really don’t think there’s some big secret—or some optimal strategy, productivity hack, or hours of overtime that can move you from struggling to secure in this field. I really do think it’s almost entirely about time spent in the game.

The secret then, maybe, is how you hold on and stick with it.

You’ll hear writers advise other writers to charge more for their work. To not accept work that isn’t right for them. (Abundance mindset people! It’s all in your attitude!) To cold pitch in this specific way and to keep a spreadsheet of outreach and find a well-paying niche and network and educate yourself and be on Twitter and all of those things. All of those things can be great and they can slowly move the needle forward.

But they all take time. A LOT of time. And while some people will land that prestigious internship right out of college and that’ll open the door to all the biggest bylines by the time they’re 23, most of us just have to put in a lot more time.

Me, writing from home (or pretending to write for this photo?) back in 2014.

Writers, for the most part, don’t love talking about the things that helped them stick with it. It’s less fun to share the secrets that have so little to do with our ability as writers. But here are a few of mine:

• Side gigs. Mostly bartending for those first few years.

• Privilege. A family who has offered to help in desperate times.

• Scrappiness. I’ve done a lot of home-hacking, renting out my places and living on the road to make ends meet for short periods of time.

• The willingness (and privilege) to take some big chances on big projects that didn’t have big budgets, but allowed me to do work I really cared about.

If you’re doing all the little things other writers will advise you to do, but still not landing the work that makes this career sustainable, it’s probably not because you’re doing something fundamentally wrong. It’s most likely because you haven’t had enough time for all of those things to add up to the progress you’re looking for, to those connections who will pass your name along for $1.50/word gigs and clients who pay $100/hour. Those big things just don’t happen (for the most part) until you’ve spent a lot of time doing all the little things. And there is no hacking the passage of time. You just have to figure out what makes it possible for you to keep at it.

I still have days of frustration—days filled with unreasonable requests and blank Google Docs and unanswered pitches—when I feel like I should have accomplished more, saved more, built relationships with more editors who trust in my skills and my ideas. But then the time I’ve spent doing all the other things sneaks up behind me and pushes me forward. I’ve come this far, so I know I can keep going.

So, I guess the secret is to keep doing the little things that add up to big things, to hold on for as long as you can in this challenging industry because time is at work and you are at work and it’s all leading to bigger and better. I’m still learning and working towards goals that feel elusive some days. The secret is, I haven’t quit. Thanks to commitment, some luck, a lot of good people who have supported me, and some foolish determination to keep doing this.

I hope you do, too.