I’ve made my living for a great portion of my life as a writer, though of the dedicated, owned variety. I recently delivered and saw published the first freelance article I’d taken on in quite awhile. Can I jump into freelancing and make a living? Probably not–the ex and the creditors and the electric company are unlikely to agree to a complete cut and run. But I think I can make it into a nice sideline and I am all about mulitple streams of income and diversity at the moment.

In my past I’ve written (and published) newsletters for book collectors for nearly ten years. Before starting that business I was working as an analyst and writer for a couple of financial newsletters. The financial writing was much more lucrative than the book newsletter writing, but the latter was much more fun. But all the writing got left at the side of the road at some point in all this and regular finance/accounting jobs took over my life.

When I started this blog six months ago it was as much for the regular creative outlook as for the learning experience of getting caught up on the newer web technologies. And I’ve found that I like doing the blog and was looking for some other outlets to write. I took on an article for a specialized financial publication about a group of companies that had all used an even more esoteric financing methodology. A little specialized, that.

So, I can write and get that writing accepted, in print and paid for. But I want to branch out here and do some other types of writing. I want to find my byline in some general market magazines. So, being a believer in the written word, I promptly found a few websites and books that could give me some idea of how to go about this. I sped through three books already and have a couple more that look like they can answer some of my questions. And now its time to start mapping out some potential articles, find some likely markets and see if I can break into the freelance world. In the meantime I’ve committed myself to some 30 hours/week of consulting projects for May, and 50 hours/week in June-August. But you know, I get more done when I’m busy than when I’m not, so why not now?

I’ll blog a bit about my progress, successes and failures here on LostInaFog. I’ll also do some reviews of the sites and books I’m absorbing now and along the way as my bit to add some signposts into the ground for others that may be looking for a similar path.

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Posted by DB in Blogs, Books, Development, Magazines, Opinion, Personal