I’ve had some people tell me that I’m being taken advantage of as a writer by ghostwriting for cash, but I see it as honest work, almost like a paid internship.
I had this blog post drafted nearly two years ago, but at the time I knew I hadn’t worked long enough as a ghostwriter to be able to discuss it appropriately; I hadn’t paid my dues, in a sense.
Now that I’ve been doing ghostwriting for over two years, I feel I can give some insight into entering a freelance career as a former “nine-to-fiver”.
I lost my Administrative Assistant job at a small company that did union benefits back in March of 2020. I was not upset over this (in truth I was giddy) because I had already seen multiple integral employees of the small office find new jobs, and rumors had been circulating that the office wasn’t going to be open much longer. At the same time the earliest reports of COVID spreading through China had been all over the US news for the past three months; everyone was getting pretty nervous that it was going to jump the Pacific and come to America, and no joke, the morning I was let go was the morning I awoke to news that COVID had spread to the US and that people in hospitals had tested positive.
Before working at that little office I had never gone longer than a month without working, working at a student loan call center for nearly six years beforehand and doing consistent retail work before that.
Getting let go from that little office for really no reason outside of them finding someone cheaper to do my job allowed me to stay home and collect the unemployment I had been paying into for over ten years while the world seemed to fall apart.
I spent that year and a half on unemployment earning my certificate in Copy Editing from ACES and Poynter while also writing three more manuscripts; bringing my total of manuscripts up to five. These are the books I’ve been holding on to, waiting to polish and publish under my own pen names, one of them being Anastasia Frost.
It was when I was notified that unemployment was ending that I began to look into freelance editing and ghostwriting. The consistent payouts from my unemployment was more than I’d be able to make initially while just starting out, so, I held back until it ended to begin. I did research, though, I researched the best freelance websites, and began taking scenes from the manuscripts I had written to create samples to send to jobs.
Admittedly, breaking into my first client was the most difficult aspect; the ghostwriting field is competitive and the editing sphere even more so; we’re talking 20-50 applicants per job at times. One must hone their craft by reading writing books and learning how to create characters and stories so they don’t receive constant rejects, or worst, get a job over their head and make a fool of themselves. Reviews are king; and having good reviews is what brings in new clients.
If a freelance career is began with a one-star rating, one may as well give up entirely.
My first client was a sweet girl who had an entire story written but wasn’t comfortable writing the sex scene and needed the ending finished up. I wrote the scenes for her and she gave me my first rating: a perfect five out five with a glowing review.
That review has been responsible for every other contract I’ve sealed. That’s not to say I haven’t had a less than stellar review; I have (and I’ll explain that in another post), but I feel for certain that had it been subpar, I wouldn’t have had as much work as I have.
Consistency, is key, though, and so to maintain getting new work I need to maintain stellar reviews going forward.
Transitioning to freelance work has given me the freedom and liberty that I never had at any other job; no longer do I have a boss attempting to micromanage my every move.
Not everything is greener on the other side, however, as my fears of being fired for not doing my job have been replaced with fears that I’ll be seen as a failure and a loser if I don’t succeed as a freelancer.
After all, success as a freelancer is directly relative to the person themselves. There is no boss to blame, no co-workers. Your work speaks for you, and if it’s not good enough, you’re not good enough.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to roll and show your belly all the time. I’ll be documenting the ins and outs of all clients, including how to politely tell a client to fuck off; like I had to very early in my freelancing career.
But that is for another day.
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