Freelance Writing Burnout and What You Can Do About It

Everyone gets burned out from time to time. Freelancers are no different. There are plenty of great perks to being a freelancer, but sometimes you have that existential crisis. Why am I here? What do I want? Is this what I want to do? Prolific freelance writer and author Kelly James Enger has been there. “With fourteen years of freelance experience, I’m far from immune to burnout. Instead, I can predict that every nine to eighteen months, I’ll go through a period where I seriously question my freelance career.”

Yet Kelly doesn’t let the burnout get her down. Instead she takes the time to evaluate the root causes of her disillusionment, and looks for a way to get through it.

In her new post for Dollars and Deadlines, she describes some surefire ways to beat freelancing burnout.

Here are a few of Kelly’s insights.

If you’re falling out of love with freelancing, first determine what’s causing the burnout. Do you have too much work overall—or simply too many deadlines all falling at the same time? Are your clients too demanding? Is it the type of work you’re doing? Or is it that you’re bogged down with “grunt work,” things like transcribing interviews, chasing down money that’s owed to you, or following up on queries you haven’t had a response to?

Sit down with your choice of caffeinated beverage and make a list of the pros and cons of freelancing. Look at this as a brainstorming exercise; don’t worry about listing them in order of importance or how many you have on each side. Then read your list and compare the pros and cons.

 

Read the rest of Kelly’s post A Surefire Way to Beat Freelancing Burnout at her blog Dollars and Deadlines.

How do you deal with freelancing burnout? What are your own tips for how to beat it?