RETURN TO WRITING STRATEGIES

My First Day as a Freelance Writer
By Terri Mrosko

The house is blissfully, yet ominously quiet. It is blissful because everyone but me is gone--off to work, off to school, off to college. It is ominous because today is the first day I am writing as a freelance writer.

I must begin the process of starting, developing and nurturing a new career--from scratch. I have no experience in this field. I have a business and communications degree. Does that qualify me to dive into these unknown waters? I have been voraciously scouring the Internet and library for written pieces on starting a writing business. Most of the information is less than encouraging. Most freelance writers make quite less than $30,000 per year, and that's only after they have been at the task for several years. Oh dear.

The information I have seen encourages new and not so new writers to take on projects that excite passion in them. This way the words will flow right out of their fingers as they tap, tap, tap the buttons on the keyboard. Well, I am certainly passionate about a career in writing. I am most definitely passionate about
writing--period.

I have kept a journal since I was 14 years old. All those long-ago written words are somewhere in my attic. I am afraid if I go and try to find those old notebooks, I will become so enrapt in revisiting my junior high school days that I will fritter away yet another day without a written piece to show for it. Perhaps I will save that endeavor for a writer's block day (which I am most certainly going to have--according to the insightful words generated by writers who have shared their thoughts on the Internet).

No, today is the day I must begin to actually write a piece. All of those guidelines from magazines and e-zines call for clips of work so that the editors may get a feel of my style. I have no clips, but hopefully I have style. I have never been published. I have a lot of work cut out for me. I must write. I must write passionately, trying to capture a unique sense of just who I am and how I can express the bottled-up, long-dormant stirrings within.

I must write and not worry about censorship or editing as I go. I must let the passion pour from deep inside, until I can sit back and review the finished piece. The juices and ideas will fluidly flow if only I can put ink to paper. This is what my fellow journalists have reported. This is the path I am determined to take. This piece is the first step on a journey that has been beckoning me for 20-plus years. This is the culmination of daily dreams, aspirations, and the curiosity of wondering all this time if I indeed have the talent and perseverance required to make it in this industry.

A 20-year corporate career. A merger. A buy-out. I finally have the money and time to devote to my passion. So now, after two months off to deprogram my brain from the strenuous, life-sucking corporate world, it is now time for a new reality. It is now time to write. Time, glorious time, apportioned out to me in precious periods of exquisite solitude. We are alone at last, my computer and me. And look--there is no writer's block. There are only words finding their way from my heart to my keyboard, words that reflect who I am and what I have endured and how far I have come to finally be able to express the passion. These are passionate words that come together to form my first piece as a freelance writer.

© Terri Mrosko. If you are interested in this article or commissioning a feature article for your company newsletter or other publication, contact us.