From Marketer to Freelance Writer

We’ve all felt that calling. We’ve been working at a job for years that is somewhere on the periphery of what we’re really good at, but it doesn’t fulfill us. We dream about the day that we can cast off those bowlines and start to pursue our dreams. For many of us, we have been toiling away in marketing and public relations, waiting for our chance to break free.

And then you do it. You separate yourself from the pack and take that first step on your own. You hand in your resignation and decide you are going to be a writer. That first day you wake up knowing your commute is only as far as your desk, and you relish the idea that never again will you need to listen to your co-worker telling you about her dog fiascos and never again will you have to sit through the three-hour Powerpoint presentation.

Your fingers find the keyboard and you start to write. At first, nothing exciting comes, but you know that’s part of the game. You know that you have to write through all the mess in your head to get Hemmingway’s one true sentence.

But after all those years writing for someone else, it’s hard to find your own voice. You’ve been writing marketing copy and press releases. Your writing has been pushed and prodded and scrutinized by the suits that can’t put together one coherent sentence. And you realize your ego has taken a beating too. After all, a good marketing writer can switch tone and voice at the drop of a hat. You have learned to be a chameleon, changing with each piece of collateral. But now you’re writing for yourself, and you’re not sure who that self is anymore.

So you need to set yourself apart from all of that. You need to find yourself and your own voice.

1. Know that it will take some time. Allow yourself the freedom to explore. It may take months to get through all the build up and residue of the life you let before.

2. Begin to write yourself out of it. Free write as often as you can. Let your mind take you anywhere you want.

3. Make sure your free write is a true free write. Don’t worry about poetry and substance. Just get some words out of you.

4. Don’t give up. You’re in there somewhere.

5. Go back through your old writing. But don’t expect to be the same writer you were years ago. You are different now. You have changed and grown.

6. Pay attention to your internal editor. Turn that editor off as often as you can. You and your writing have been pushed and prodded in many different directions in the past years. Try to let all that pushing and prodding result in a malleable you that can find different perspectives and ways to write without sacrificing your own voice.

The change to writing for yourself is a spiritual one. You already believe its somewhere in you, otherwise, you wouldn’t be going this route. Now you’ve got to be gentle with yourself as you extract your true voice from all the voices you’ve been writing in. And it will be a relief to find that you are still you.