The Copyeditor’s Desk

Should I, as a freelance editor, be afraid of these shaky economic times?  In my personal life…perhaps. I could easily cut back on certain luxuries such as eating out and buying uneccessary items. In my work life…not really. Since I am not strapped to a desk in a cubicle (we all watch The Office and know how much work those folks get done) I have the power to control my hours, workload, and business expenses. Despite the lack of a structured bimonthly paycheck, freelancing may be a great way to survive an economic crisis.

And here’s why:

• The flexibility of hours permits picking up extra work; it won’t kill me to work a fifty-hour week and I don’t have to juggle to jobs’ schedules. I make my own!
• Less driving; freelancing allows me to work almost exclusively from home
• Minimal overhead; I don’t have an inventory of goods that I am unable to unload as people slow their spending; I don’t have a staff that I must worry about paying.

Freelancing, by its very nature, has times of feast and famine. There are weeks that we have more work than we know what to do with, and others when we are quite bored. Freelancers, at least successful ones, must learn to plan for the future and spread the earnings over time, until the next big job appears. This planning and anticipating for the slow times has prepared me for the current economic crisis, one that we hope we will weather sooner than later.

-TM