“Mummy, I want to be a freelance writer and have a pool I can fill with cash and every week I’ll take a coin bath in it and smell of metal.”
Every boy’s dream, right?
I loved writing when I was a kid. I wrote stories at school and at home. Mostly about people falling out of trees or through woodworm infested floorboards. You know, the usual.
I loved writing, so it was inevitable I’d live the dream as soon as school was out.
How I didn’t become a freelance writer.
I hated numbers at school, I didn’t even pass my Maths GCSE until I sat it again 11 years later. Numbers just weren’t my thing.
So, there’d be no chance I’d end up working in payroll for over ten years, right?
Wrong.
Yes, the life of a complete freelancer, raking in oodles of cash and sipping Sangria on the beach while writing an award-winning piece of copy is yet to materialise.
Because when I left school, I stopped writing.
Daft, I know. I did other things: I became ill with epilepsy, went out, played football, got sick with depression, met my first girlfriends and watched Red Dwarf.
But writing?
Nah, life was too good or bad depending on what kind of day it was.
How I decided to become a writer.
Writing ceased for me at 16 and didn’t start again until I was 28 (which isn’t actually true when I really look back at it, because I was writing match day reports for a local football team and writing fan fiction) when I picked up my pen and began to write for NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writers Month—and boy, did it escalate from there.
I completed the 50,000-word challenge set out by NaNoWriMo and barely stopped writing.
Then I:
- Took a creative writing course
- Released my own eBooks
- Started a writing group
- Published my first paperback, and
- Toured schools & colleges with an author workshop
And that was before I got into copywriting, which came unexpectedly. You see, one day, I received the news I was being made redundant.
Devastating but also an awakening.
I knew I could write, but I was rubbish at numbers—it was time to do something about it, to become a freelance writer.
So, I studied copywriting, passed the course, received my Diploma and… stayed in payroll.
Oh well, you can’t have your cake before you’ve baked it, can you?
How I became a freelance copywriter.
Other than writing in the evenings and on weekends, I pretty much worked my day job until I was made redundant.
Again.
Balls.
But luckily, I landed a large job two weeks into my four-week notice period – and a retainer.
Holy hell, what a time to be alive.
By circumstances out of my control, I was thrust into the life of freelancing.
And the rest is history.
Until next time,
