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When your writing rules YOU

June 19, 2008 on 3:05 pm | In 2008, Don Vaughan, Freelancing, Perseverance, Professionalism, Writing | 5 Comments

It wasn’t so much an epiphany as a slow, gradual realization that I was no longer in control of my career. True, I was getting plenty of assignments, many of them lucrative, but I had fallen into the trap of accepting everything that crossed my desk in a frightened attempt to maintain an “income stream,” and in so doing I had killed the very thing that made me want to become a writer in the first place.

I’ve been writing for more than 30 years, and have worked steadily as a freelancer for 17 years. I entered freelancing in 1991 out of a desire to write what I wanted to write, not what others wanted me to write. But now, nearly two decades in, I was right back where I started, a realization that made me increasingly unhappy.

So one morning not too long ago I woke up and said, no more!

My problem, I realized, was that I had become lazy and complacent. I had developed bad habits that were keeping me from achieving my full potential as a professional writer. I had no one to blame but myself for the rut I was in, and it was up to me to climb out and start climbing up.

The first thing I did was resolve not to waste time on small articles for small markets. I wasn’t going to burn bridges — that’s never a wise career move — but I was going to politely decline the small stuff and more aggressively ask for larger, better paying features.

More importantly, I began jotting down the big ideas that had been filling my brain over the years, and identifying the larger, better markets that might be interested in them. This included, among others, Rolling Stone Magazine, Readers’ Digest, GQ and the larger inflight magazines. It might take me a while to break in, but I realized I never would if I didn’t start making the effort. These markets weren’t going to come to me, I had to go to them — and with my very best work.
Driven, I spent an hour and a half at Barnes & Noble evaluating markets and writing down pertinent contact information. Magazines that used to intimidate me are now targets in my sights. I may miss with my first shot, and maybe even my second and third. But eventually I’ll hit the target, and all of my efforts will have been worthwhile.

I’m also working harder and faster. I don’t procrastinate anymore. When I get an assignment now, I immediately get my questions together and move fast to arrange interviews. The faster I work, the more I work. And the more I work, the closer I come to my goal of writing what I want to write.

I’m telling you this because I want you to push and encourage me. Like the smoker who tells everyone he knows that he’s trying to quit, I want you to MAKE me work harder toward my bigger goals.

If you do that, I promise to do the same for you.

– Don