How To Avoid Being Swallowed By Writing

I won’t deny the fact that writing is a great way to earn money on the side. If you have a day job to keep, taking on a writing job on the side doesn’t really interfere with it much because you can do your writing during your free time.

However, some people find the fact that they would have to work during their free time a bit worrisome. Taking on a side job means you’re going to sacrifice precious hours of rest and relaxation to work.

But that doesn’t have to be the case. There are ways for you to make sure that your personal life doesn’t suffer because of your freelance writing job. Here are great examples of how you can do it.

Pick the best time to do your writing. Set a schedule and stick to it. First, you have to find the most convenient time for you to write. By convenient, I mean the best time when your mind is at its snappiest. You want to avoid being sluggish and unproductive during your writing time, so pick a time when you think that your creative mill is working at its best.

Learn the word “no”. This is a tip I had to learn the hard way. I used to have a problem saying no to projects that came my way. The result – I had to frequently race against time to beat the deadline. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.

If you only have a certain amount of time you allot for your freelance work, make sure that you accept only the amount of work that fit into that time frame, no more no less. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself pressured to deliver so much in such a limited time.

Write buffers. That is, if you feel like you can do more than your daily quota in your allotted writing time. Writing buffers allow you to kick back if you don’t feel like writing, without having to fear not meeting your quota for the day. Also, it helps for those days when you can’t seem to strike up the inspiration to write anything.

These are the three tricks that work for me, what’s yours? How do you keep your freelance writing stint from interfering with your life?

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