What Else Can You Do As a Freelance Writer?

Well, here we are at the end of September and it's been one whole month since I last posted. I apologize, it's been one hell of a month and I'm not sure where it's gone. I've started teaching an ESL English class, dealt with hurricane Ike, had future in-laws in town and have been catching up on wedding planning that I hadn't done for 2 months and now it's getting to be crunch time.
I've been working very little with my actual writing, and reading as much. I'm not worried about the money I'm losing because I'm making up for it by teaching, I'm more worried about the fact that I'm going days without writing a single word that doesn't have the words "invitation," or "non-traditional wedding" spelled out in italics to make my point heard.

That said let's talk about one of the other things you can do in addition to freelance writing and how they can benefit you.

1) Teach a class of some sort, somewhere. I started teaching ESL because my fiance (I really hate that word for some reason so I most often just say "my dude") has a lot of "english-as-second-language" speakers at his work where he is an engineering supervisor and there had been numerous complaints about the lack of understanding between them and the salesmen so some had suggested replacing them. Now, although it is important they communicate effectively at work I have to say most of them are rockin' out at their job better than native English speakers...so "why get rid of them? Why not FIX the problem?" I suggested. Then I suggested to them that I could teach a class. I drew up a short proposal of what we'd cover, we negotiated a fantastic rate and I was in.

What does this do for me?
a) It provides me with some lovely corporate rates without actually workin' for the man.

b) It gets me out of the house when I normally wouldn't leave

c) I interact with people--which, as an introverted freelancer is sometimes difficult.

d) It lets me switch gears a couple times a week and focus on different things when my brain is getting foggy from looking at the same project for hours.


Identify a need and determine what you can do to help them with it then pitch yourself.
Look for every opportunity and try it out. Nothing has to be permanent. Maybe you even take a short-term, on-site, part-time job doing some writing to get you out and meet people. It's so easy to get into a routine of holing up in your house, but I find that if I do that for too long I start getting depressed and can't focus on my work.

Do you have any auxiliary jobs you do?

Tip #2 in next post...stay tuned...