4 Ways to Beat the Feast-or-Famine Cycle

A guest post by Linda Formichelli of The Renegade Writer

If youve been a freelance writer for more than a couple of months, youre probably familiar with the feast-or-famine lifestyle. For two months you have nothing, and then suddenly youre so slammed that you dont have time to eat, sleep, or shower. Your bank account goes up and down like a yo-yo. And with every feast, you wonder if it will be your last.

Ive been going through the cycle for almost 14 years, and have learned how to smooth out the bumps.

1. Market when youre busiest. It seems counterintuitive why try to carve time for marketing out of a week thats crammed with assignments? You have work. Duh.

The smart freelancer knows that the marketing she does now is whats going to supply her income three or more months down the line. It takes time for marketing to turn into sales, so waiting for the assignments to dry up before pounding the pavement isnt the best tactic. Even when Im on deadline, Ill be sending out article queries, direct mail to copywriting prospects, and letters of introduction not to mention touching base with all my clients and following up on queries and letters of intro that are more than two or three weeks old.

2. Be the ant. Remember the fable of the ant and the grasshopper? The ant spends the warm months gathering food while the grasshopper has fun singing and hanging out with lady grasshoppers. Come winter, the grasshopper has no food and the ant, whos rolling in goodies, tells the grasshopper to get lost.

The moral of the story for freelancers? No, its not that ants are jerks. Its that you need to save money from the feast times to get you through th! e famine s. Its tempting, when youve just deposited thousands of dollars worth of writing checks, to splurge on a vacation or a new wardrobe. You feel like the good times will last forever. But take my word for it: There will be a famine period and youll wish youd saved some of your cash. Try to build a cushion so you dont have to beg an ant for money when you have no work.

3. Space out (your deadlines, that is). This is something that affects your schedule and your sanity more than your income. Until recently I had a problem where Id have five articles due in one week, and then the next week (which of course had zero deadlines) Id spend recuperating from exhaustion. Now I know to negotiate deadlines so that theyre more spread out. Just yesterday, in fact, an editor asked me to turn in an article on March 14. I already have an article due on that day, so I asked my editor for more time. She immediately agreed.

Dont be afraid to ask for more time on a deadline when youre offered an assignment. Editors and clients often build in extra time on projects so theyre not stuck in a crunch if the writer flakes out. And I promise, they wont yank away an assignment just because you asked (well in advance) for a few extra days.

4. Trust. When youre going through a famine, it seems like youll never have work again. This is it, you think. The end of the line. You start scouring the want ads for minimum-wage temp jobs.

Ive felt that way myself many times since I began freelancing full-time in 1997. But the more years that went by without my having to search for a 9-to-5, the more I began to trust that even the scariest famine would end. For example, when my husband and I adopted our son two years ago, I planned to take a months maternity leave and get back to work in February. But February passed with hardly any work. And March. And April. Things looked dire at the time (though we did have money thanks to tip #2 above), but when I did my taxes at the end of t! he year I realized that I earned the same amount as I had the year before, even with the four-month famine. The assignments did come back.

Even the best writer goes through the feast-or-famine cycle. It can be a scary ride, but if you plan right and trust that theres always work out there for a good freelancer youll be just fine.

Linda Formichelli runs the Renegade Writer Blog, one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers, where she dishes out advice and offers an e-course on breaking into magazines, phone mentoring for freelance writers, and a free packet of 10 sample query letters.

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