When I told colleagues in 2014 that I was quitting my job to become a freelance writer/editor most wished me well, many told me I was brave and quite a few asked me questions. The most popular were:

Can you make a living?

Can you bear the solitude?

These still interest people most, along with the supposed bravery, which often translates as Can you stand the anxiety?

Can you make a living?

I’ve lasted ten years without any other income, albeit with an overdraft to draw on, so yes. If you already have professional experience and industry contacts, like I did, it’s a whole lot easier. I know this from trying to freelance without either when I was in my twenties.

You can make up for lack of experience and contacts with energy, chutzpah and the sort of pride that isn’t dented by having to sell yourself. (I failed as a freelance without experience and contacts.) In the case of editorial work, you can also obtain ‘artificial’ experience and contacts through membership of and training by the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP; formerly the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, SfEP) or by taking courses at the Publishing Training Centre (PTC). There are other options but those two seem by far the best and most respected.

Networking is one of the things you’re told you must do but I’ve largely avoided it. I suppose I’ve accidentally networked along the way. Many of my best jobs and clients have more or less come to me rather than me seeking them out. Possibly I’ve just been lucky and I also recall something Samuel Johnson said: “Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.” He also said that, “There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity” and “A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair”, which is sound advice for freelances regarding their clients (and doesn’t just apply to men).

Nonetheless, there will be wastage and you’ll lose clients when e.g. your editor, contact, whomever moves on, or the publisher is taken over, or there’s a new higher-up with a new plan, or the magazine ceases publication, or whatever.

Many freelances have something of a feast–famine work cycle. This means we get to be both rich and poor, giving us a range of emotions and experiences that our salaried comrades can only fear and envy. It is possible to arrange things more steadily but that’s likely to involve doing something rather like a salaried job.

There are also “Events, dear boy, events”. Since becoming a freelance, among other things, I moved across the country; my fiancée was diagnosed with a brain tumour, became increasingly ill, had major brain surgery and then e.g. needed to learn to walk again; I moved house again; I got married; there was a global pandemic with repeated lockdowns; I had an ‘adverse reaction’ to some antibiotics that meant I struggled to stand up for more than a few minutes at a time for months; I fathered a child (my wife discovered she was pregnant a few weeks into my malaise); I moved house again; my father became critically ill; I fathered another child (my wife was pregnant while I was away helping my parents).

Would any of this been easier had I been a salaried employee somewhere? Probably more no than yes, but this will be influenced by temperament and individual circumstances. There’s often more flexibility as a freelance, especially if you have sympathetic clients who have some leeway of their own — I mostly have, especially as over the years I’ve increasingly chosen who I work for with care. However, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. And, above all, you have to be able to compartmentalise. I always think of this as being like a ship’s hull, where a compartment is sealed off if there’s a breach in that area, and usually the ship stays afloat. If you can’t do that, you’re in a jam.

I said upfront that yes, you can make a living, but I didn’t say it would necessarily always be easy. So long as you have the basic equipment to be a capable freelance in your field, I’d say that the most important questions to answer are Can you stand the anxiety? and Can you bear the solitude? It’s really a question of temperament*.

A follow-up piece here talks about bearing the solitude, i.e. working largely alone.

Note added: I launched a Substack in May 2024 at fishmandeville.substack.com. You can subscribe for free now, if you want.

Paul Fishman (Skelsmergh, March 2024)

*Until, of course, AI severely disrupts the editorial and writing professions, or, in the case of academic publishing, the potential for radical instability is realised.