Freelance Writer Tip #8 — Writing for a living is exactly that — writing.
I was listening to an interview with Stephen King back in the 90’s and he mentioned during the conversation that he wrote 5k words every day, no matter what was going on. Monday through Friday he sat at his desk and wrote 5k words.
At the time I thought that was a large amount of writing to be doing every day, but since that time I’ve learned it really isn’t that much. More importantly I do write that much every day. Whether I have a freelance job to work on or not, I always write my goal-set amount of words.
There are good reasons I have found for adhering to this type of daily goal, the largest being, keeping my mind and my habits in a “writer’s mindset”. Since starting this routine, I also never have writer’s block, or writer’s stress or whatever the term for that blocked state of mind is these days.
It is a place to put thoughts, sample work, and articles on subjects you would like to write about. Blogging is fast, easy to publish, and it doesn’t interfere with the writing process. What you write inside a block of time, generally fills the block of time. There is no HTML formating, or other distracting nonsense.
Then, when you do get your next gig, you just add the work to your docket and keep working.