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Welcome to The RN2writer Show where we help nurses and other clinicians become freelance writers. I'm your host, Elizabeth Hanes. I'm a nurse and a former six figure, a freelance writer. And today I coach people like you on techniques and strategies that can help you thrive in a writing career too. Before I dive in, I encourage you to expand the description box below the video on YouTube to see all the resources I refer to in this episode. Today, I want to give you a snapshot of what my life was like as a freelance writer. Because nurses always asked me about this, and then often cannot believe it really was this fantastic. So let me step set the stage. This story takes place in 2015. I've got that calendar right here. After I had been freelancing full time for four years. I do want to clarify whenever I say I was freelancing full time, I really mean part time because I never worked 40 hours a week in my writing business ever. When I say full time freelancing, what I mean is, I relied on freelancing for my sole source of income, I didn't have any other jobs at all. So in 2015, I was living in Houston with my husband, my mother, one dog and one cat. I had a beautiful upstairs office that overlooked our backyard. So now the stage is set. And here's what a typical day look like for me as a writer in 2015. First thing, I never bothered to set an alarm clock, because I had the luxury of waking up whenever I wanted to. Usually though, I woke up naturally by 730. In the morning, I would go downstairs, get myself a cup of coffee, read the news online, spend time waking up, let the dog out. Sometimes I did a little yoga to wake up. I then would go in the kitchen, cook myself breakfast. Because I happen to like a hot breakfast I don't like Danish and grab and go and all that I wanted a cooked healthy breakfast for myself every morning. A lot of the time I would then throw in a load of laundry or do something else. And by nine o'clock in the morning, I would be dressed and then I would shuffle into my office and close the door. So once I was at work first thing, I would check my email and oh look, I got fan mail from a person who read my article on WebMD. And they're saying that article helped them get a diagnosis after 12 years of going through doctors. Amazing. What a way to start my day. Oh, and also in my inbox. There's a note from an editor that says this story far exceeds my expectations. I have no edits. Please bail me. Thanks. I'm feeling good now. I love this writing life. But then the next one, the next email is from an editor and when I opened it, it's like kapow. There's my draft with a lot of red ink on it. I better put that on my to do list for today to dive into those edits. Okay, so after clearing my inbox, it's time for me to check my calendar. I always used a paper calendar, I still use a paper calendar. And as I check that I see oh, I have two deadlines today. For me most of my career, I tried to limit myself to a maximum of two deadlines a day. I know a lot of trained journalists who will scoff at that, because they worked for newspapers and maybe did like 10 stories a day. But that was not for me. I find writing to require high mental focus. And so writing to deadlines was enough to leave me feeling a little fatigued. And I didn't feel like I could bring my best effort to anything beyond that. later in my career, I will say I did push myself beyond that because I had more practice. So for me a max of two deadlines a day and usually I tried to limit myself to eight to 10 deadlines a month. So I'm noticing I have a deadline today. So the first thing I do is sit down and write that. By the way, I want to mention you can purchase a real time video of me writing an actual $400 client assignment in less than an hour just by buying our ebook and there's a link to that in the description box. You might find it interesting to see how easy this really can be to make essentially for $100 an hour. So now that my deadline is written, I will invoice that editor who very kindly invited me to do so. So I take a minute to pop over to QuickBooks generate a $500 invoice for an article that took me less than 90 minutes to write. And I had no time devoted to edits, since the editor had none. Then I jot the invoice down in my paper calendar. Because that's what I always do. I track it electronically. And also on paper. I tallied up the running income total for the month and learned man, I'm expecting to build $12,000 This month, if it all goes according to plan, that's not too shabby, right. So at that point, I get up, take a break, go down, move my clothes, from the washer to the dryer, step outside, play with the pets for a few minutes, shake the cobwebs out, get some physical activity. And then I head back to the office. Once I get back in there, I spend an hour prospecting for clients. I ended up sending three ello eyes. And then I checked my spreadsheet. And I also decided to follow up on three letters of introduction I sent last week as well. So by now, I'm feeling a little mental fatigue. So I take a break, I pop over to the private community for freelancers I belong to, I read and comment on some of the interesting posts by my writer friends, maybe check out a market guide while I'm there. Then I'm gonna pop over to Facebook and waste a few minutes because what kind of writer worth their salt does not spend half their day on Facebook procrastinating anyway. At that point, it's lunchtime. So I go downstairs, I fixed myself a nice healthy lunch that's going to power me through the afternoon. No, because I rarely worked in the afternoon. So I take a half hour for lunch, I go back into the office for another hour, check email, again, reply to anything that's urgent. And I find out I received a creative brief from a prospective client who found my website and it looks like it might be a lucrative gig. So I respond to that to gather more information or set up a phone call to talk with them further. Takes me up to one o'clock in the afternoon. And that's it. I'm done for the day. Really, like I got all my stuff done that was on my calendar. So that's it. I decided I wanted to go out shopping that day. So I headed over to Chico's and and Taylor and came home with my bags with tissue paper in them and cute outfits. I probably picked up a bottle of good wine on the way home, came home around three o'clock. It's time for me to exercise in the afternoon. So I would take the dog for a half hour walk around the neighborhood, which by the way is good for your creative soul to getting some exercise. Come back to the house I decided I'm going to make shrimp stuffed shells Alfredo for dinner this evening. Because I love to cook cooking is my hobby. So I make that. And it turns out the wine will go great with that that I picked up. So I get started on that. And by then my husband's coming home. So I welcome him home after his day in his commute. We have our dinner, we watch TV together and hang out. And then the next day. I do it all over again. Now let me ask you, how does my day sound as a writer compared to your day as a nurse? Do you think you could stand to work for just a few hours a day while billing, you know, 10 or 12,000 a month? Well, you might be laughing or you might think that's outlandish, but that's exactly what I did. So that's what a typical day in my freelance life looked like for me in 2015. I loved my career because it gave me so much freedom to create the life I'd always envisioned for myself really having that balance. It also gave me financial security. One of those months and 2015 as I recorded here in my planner pad. I billed $9,696 I believe was the number. And my business gave me the ability to create a more affluent lifestyle than ever before, while helping people with their health issues, but using my nursing knowledge. What could be better than that?
Well, I thank you for Joining me on this episode of The RN2writer Show, don't forget to click the subscribe button on YouTube so you never miss an episode. And we have links to anything I mentioned in this podcast in the show notes which you can find on YouTube by expanding the description box below the video. And if you prefer audio, please follow The RN2writer Show on Spotify or Apple podcasts. I'm your host Elizabeth Hanes, and until next time, keep pitching
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
