From Fiction to Freelance: What I Learned as a Creative Writer Turned Copywriter
Yes, I’m among the many who have ditched the 9-5 and gone freelance. While the hustle is new, the skill is not: I’ve been a writer for twenty years now, with website copy, blog posts, articles, marketing material, and social media content under my belt. I guess you could call me a business copywriter.
But here’s the thing: I was trained as a fiction writer, and identify first and foremost as a fiction writer. I’ve been a storyteller as long as I can remember, and wrote my first novel back in high school. Currently I’m seeking representation for a novel (a different one), and have some short stories published. I have a degree in fiction writing and a degree in literature. I’ve worked in a bookstore, run a website that covers the literary community of Boston, interview writers, am part of a writing group, have been a moderator at the Boston Book Festival, and more.
In other words, my nerdy literary life is very far from business copywriting.
Here are a few things I’ve learned in my recent shift to freelance as a fiction writer:
Your skill is valued differently in a non-literary setting
When you’re part of an MFA program, or in a writing workshop, or hanging out with writers, you’re all working in the same vein: writing. It’s your skill, but it’s everyone else’s skill also. You know how to read one another, critique one another, and you speak the same language. But once you start working in copywriting or content creation for businesses, the scale shifts. You’re no longer one shade of a variant of gray. You’re a bright red headlight. In other words, businesses are looking for people to write their copy and content because they’re not writers. And they trust you because you are. Suddenly you have a special power – and a lucrative one – that those in that world don’t have.
Money is scaled very differently
I’m a fiction writer. Which means after twenty years of fiction writing, I have yet to get paid for any work I’ve written. Most literary magazines can’t pay simply because literary magazines are not a hot item. I’ve never won a writing contest. I’ve actually paid to submit my work to literary magazines (thanks, Submittable) who then haven’t accepted my work. I’m not yet published, but even those who are average around a $10,000 advance. Spread that out over the years it took to write the book and you get…well, not a whole lot. And forget those six-figure advances. There’s only one or two for the thousands of books that come out a year. Most published writers I know have fulltime day jobs.
Yet, I have a few copywriting jobs right now that are going to average out to about $100 an hour. I mentioned before that being a writer is in high demand for those who don’t have that skill. It can also be highly lucrative in arenas – like business, tech, healthcare – where the money is.
Skill is skill – and transfers
One of the worries I had was, “Oh! I know how to write story, narrative arcs, tension, setting, character, description, or, I know how to write academic papers, research, constructed arguments…but that won’t ever translate to marketing copy.”
It does. 100%.
Instead of likening it to a writers toolbox (which you hear often), I’ll liken it to a lump of clay. As a fiction writer, you’ve shaped unicorns and bridges and fruit out of the clay. But then you’re asked to shape a key or a flower or a cat out of that clay. You might never have done that before, but you know what a cat looks like, and, most importantly, you already have the clay and know how to use it. Same lump of clay, just different objects; same writing skill, just different voices.
Pitching for jobs is a lot like submitting stories – with a lot less lead time
I’m on Upwork, and have gotten used to pitching jobs multiple times per day. At the start I was so nervous about appearing wonderful that I pored over the proposal, and would only send them few and far between. But now I’ve done it so much that I’ve started constructing proposals on my phone and tossing them off as I walk. After all, it’s a numbers game: I need to pitch to more jobs to get more. It’s also a rejection game as well.
This is how I should be working my short story and agent query pitching. After all, it’s similar: There are hundreds of venues out there, and it’s a numbers game. It’s not going to get you anywhere if you pore over a submission, and only send one off once in a blue moon. I should be sending out submissions constantly – like my job proposals, get it in front of as many eyes as I can – in order to get a good return.
And one nice different? Jobs will usually reply within a day or two. There are dozens of literary submissions I have yet to hear from six months later.
Finally, freelancing is for the fearless
Fiction writing is inherently emotional, and comes with a whole slew of ups and downs to it because you’re so close to the work. Copywriting or content creation is just a job, a way to knock out some projects using the same skill of writing. But freelancing itself – the idea of going out and hunting up work every day in order to pay bills, and trying to sell yourself and your services – is scary! And not just the searching for jobs, but the sudden questioning of your ability, the confidence issues, the pitch fatigue… It’s not for the fearful, and it’s not for those who want to lay on the couch and watch Netflix, either.
But as a writer who has wanted to do work on her own terms, and who tends to be super hustle-ly, who loves problem solving with the written word, it has been fantastic new facet of my writing life.