Readers!
First, thank you so much for the overwhelming response to last week’s newsletter. A few people left, but a lot more signed up, so I’m glad we set things right. Welcome welcome!
Second, a lot of you new subscribers have said that you aren’t writers but wanted to sign up anyway. Totally cool! Every newsletter features reading, movie/film and nail polish recommendations. You can skip the stuff about making it as a freelance writer and jump right there. Oh, and I really like Donald Duck. You’ll see this in the gifs I choose.
Third, I have an update from my Oct. 13, 2024 newsletter, which was about using your writing abilities in your personal life. I saw that a Moms of Liberty [redacted] had written in to The Retrospect, a newspaper local to me, saying that they didn’t want to ban books, but were just “concerned” parents. I took out my writer brain and wrote this response.
And finally, this newsletter is and has always been free. I plan to keep it that way for as long as I write it. If you would like to support me, though, you can buy me a coffee, or buy one of my ebooks. Also, because this newsletter is free, there might be typos, and I may not send it out every week. Just an FYI!
Now, onto the freelance writer part of things. I’ve had a few people ask me how the election results will affect freelancing. I have no idea, but I have a FEW thoughts.
First, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would have forced many legitimate independent contractors into become employees (or stop companies from hiring freelancers all together), is most likely dead. I can’t imagine the next administration will do anything that unions want, and in 2020, that man said he would veto this if it made it to his desk. I hated the idea of the PRO Act, and was active on showing how detrimental it would be to large groups of self-employed people, but I’m not going to frame this as a silver lining because of everything else going on. You may still see individual states trying to pass PRO Act-like regulations, so just keep an eye out for that.
Work wise, I’m preparing for a possible recession and for life to become more expensive. Maybe I’ll be wrong, but I don’t think any of the suggestions I make are a bad idea as year-end activities anyway.
1. Does any of your hardware need to be replaced? The price of many goods, especially those that are manufactured or have components imported from other countries, could become a lot more expensive if that man has his tariff-y.
- What you can do: Assess what you have, how it’s working, and if it makes sense to replace it right now. That means laptop, phone, printer and any other electronics you use to get your job done. Some economists estimate that tariffs would add $300 to the cost of an iPhone. Yikes. I upgraded my tech not too long ago, but I’m on the fence about my iPad, which I use as a second screen. It’s older, but it works just fine, so I may stick with it. We’ll see how I feel after the holidays (and remember, if you do replace something, tax write off!)
2. Is 20% or more of your income with one client? If you put all your eggs in a few baskets, you’re going to be in trouble if one of them disappears. That’s especially true if you have just one or two clients. You want to make sure that you’re a bit more insulated in case someone you work for goes under so that they don’t take you with them.
- What you can do: Start looking for other clients. People might be shaky on making any decisions right now, but it’s worth starting to look now and planting those marketing seeds even if you don’t know when they’re going to grow. More on this in the next item.
3. Is half or more of your income in one sector? When the 2008 recession hit, most of my work was in travel in consumer publications. That work, for the most part, disappeared. Since then, I’ve made sure to spread out my work between a few different fields of interest, including medical research, engineering, fitness, cybersecurity, enterprise resource software and New Jersey. I do still dabble in travel, but I don’t rely on it anymore. I’m not saying that’s the sector that could be affected in a possible recession, but luxury things and extras — and assignments about them — tend to dry up. Whatever your work mix is, make sure it’s not tipping too far in one sector.
- What you can do: If you think “I can’t write about any other topic!” I bet you can. For example, let’s say you write about gardening. Fun! I could see using that as a base to explore writing about garden store management, current trends in agriculture, agriculture lending, how climate change is affecting backyard gardeners, how climate change is affecting small farms, how climate change is affecting large farms, trends in CSAs (like will more people be using them because of growing concerns about food safety). You could also write for publications for pot growers. You can very easily can take your experience writing about X to write about Y in X. And yes I’m going to plug: I write about doing this in much greater detail in my second ebook, about how to turbocharge your writing career.
4. What specialties do you have that will most likely be more relevant in the near future? A writer friend emailed me and was looking for advice into how to expand her client base, and I said that most likely, an industry she writes about a lot is going to be impacted by possible tariffs. She also has experience writing about supply chain, so I suggested she combine the two for a couple of good story ideas, and to let her clients in the non-supply chain world know she has this expertise.
- What you can do: Much like the task above, brainstorm what knowledge you have that will most likely be needed by editors right now and in the near future. A few other fields I can think about: transportation, healthcare, food production, manufacturing, library science, labor relations, agriculture, wellness and “wellness” (yes, I use the scare quotes on purpose). You can also just put your specialty plus “tariff” into your preferred search engine and see what news stories come up. And then tell people! I made a post on my LinkedIn page reminding people that I also wrote about supply chain through the worst of the pandemic in case they needed someone. I also sent notes to some of my favorite clients about this too, because most did not know I had this as part of my suite of writing specialties — and got one assignment so far from this push. This bilge coming down the pike is going to affect us all in a variety of ways. If you can write about it, that’s going to open up some new avenues for you and also help editors meet a changing demand.
I’m not saying this is the most important thing to be tackled for society as a whole right now. Far from it. But if there’s one thing I can talk about, it’s about worries about being a full time freelancer in an incredibly unstable time, and what I am going to do about it.
Have any more ideas? Drop them into the comments on this post.
What I’m Reading
- The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. I was all in on this book until about the last 50 pages. I went from being an exploration of “who deserves humanity” — not unlike The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro — but then punted and ended as a sci-fi adventure instead. I’m not mad I read it, but I was a bit disappointed in the ending.
What I’m Watching
- Endurance. I recently listened to an audiobook about the story of the Endurance, a doomed polar expedition and the incredible tale of survival that came after. National Geographic released their documentary on both the Endurance expedition and the quest to find the ice-crushed ship earlier this month, and I highly recommend it. One thing that irked? They used AI to recreate some of the crew’s voices. Just hire voice actors for PETE’S sake.
- Deadpool & Wolverine. I guess this counts as a “movie I missed” since I didn’t see it in theaters, but I did stream it just after it came out on Disney+. It’s silly! I think the jokes will be stale by next year, but I didn’t mind it. The violence was cartoon-like enough that it didn’t really bother me, who is typically squeamish about such things.
Nail Polish of the Week
A green/gray may not seem like a neutral, but it does for me this time of year, which is why I went with Suzi Talks with Her Hands by OPI. Bonus: it perfectly matches a Billabong x Salty Blonde sweatshirt I forgot I had but rediscovered when I did a recent massive clothes clean out. I’m wearing both right now. How color coordinate for someone who works from home.
Until next time!
Jen A. Miller
Notes from a Hired Pen ebook series
Like this post? Buy Jen a Coffee!
Bookshop.org links are affiliate links.
Leave a Reply