Becoming a Fulltime Writer: Jumping in Feet First

You have decided to be a writer, and you have picked a field. Now comes the fun part, breaking in to the business of writing.

There are, fore the most part, only two ways to break in to the writing business. You can either a) quit your job and jump in with both feet, or b) you can work on your writing part time until you build experience.

This article will deal with the first option.

If you are planning on the feet first method, than there are a few things that you need to first consider.

If you are going to try to freelance write for magazines and/or newspapers, it will take some time to land a gig. Even if you have your first gig already lined up, it may take a month or more before you are paid for it.

Many freelance jobs for magazines pay within 30 days of publication, which means they don't even enter your invoice until after they print your story. This means that you may end up having to wait six months or more before you are paid. These types of jobs will usually give you a time frame for publication up front so you will know when to expect payment.

Even if you are lucky enough to negotiate an agreement for payment upon acceptance, which means that you are paid as soon as your editor approves your story, you still have to wait. You are probably still looking at 45 to 60 days for payment on any decent sized job. You can count on 15 to 30 days to write your story, then submit it and then have it accepted. After that, you still have another 30 days before they actually pay you.

More than likely though, you are not going to have any big jobs lined up before you make the move to full time writer. That is why you need to have a back up, a cushion if you will.

Most writers that I have spoken to agree that, in order to make this method work, you need to have at least six months worth of savings. This way, even if you make no money for your first few months, you are still covered.

Because unpaid bills can be a huge stress on a person, the more money you can save ahead of time the more likely you are to be successful in your transition to full time writer. If you start to see late fees and collection notices piling up on the coffee table, than you are not going to be able to dedicate yourself to your work. If your work gets sloppy, especially in the beginning of your career, than you can forget about maintaining any on going relationships with editors.

Another, very important, thing to understand about the move to full time writer is this: you will probably put in more hours a week as a freelancer than you did at your full time job!

When you are first starting out you will need to really dedicate yourself to finding work. It is not as easy as it sounds. In coming articles we will explore the methods of finding work, but for now, suffice it to say that it can be daunting.

Even after you land a gig, you still have to keep up the search for then next gig. As previously stated, it can take months to receive payments, so you need to keep your cash flow coming in.