How I Almost Destroyed My Writing Careeer

I almost ruined my writing career. However, there were many factors that came into play that led me on a path of involuntary self-destruction.

It was in January 2009 that I found out I was pregnant. My husband and I were overjoyed because we wanted a baby for the longest time. It was finally happening for us. However, running a freelance writing business that consisted of me outsourcing my work to others and taking a cut became difficult. I also carried my own load of assignments, which was heavy. I was tired all of the time because pregnancy does that. I also became quite weary at the fact my writers would not do their work or not do it right, resulting in me having to fix the mistakes in addition to doing my own work.

 And so the downward spiral began.

I decided I needed to cut down on the load so that I could rest. Yes, it is natural for a pregnant woman to feel tired and rest as a result. However, this is a difficult thing to do when you rely on writing as your income. How much you work determines how much money you make. In addition to needing rest, I was constantly sick. The sickness did not go away by the second trimester like it does for most pregnant women.

By May, I had reduced my work load to the point that I started reducing the number of writers I had. I went from 21 to 5. In June, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and had to go to three doctor appointments per week. I would see my doctor once and the hospital’s PerinatalCenter twice. The time these appointments consumed took a toll on how much time I had to work. By the time my daughter was born in September, I had one writer working for me.

And then it happened…I ended up with postpartum depression and that made it virtually impossible to work. By this point, we had no money left in the bank and were living from my husband’s paycheck to the next. We were barely making our due dates on our bills and had a new baby to worry about.

After the depression passed, I had been down and out for so long (in freelance writing terms) that I had a hard time jumping back onto the wagon. Christmas had come and gone, we were worse off financially, and I was suddenly the financial missing link in my household.

Before I knew it, I was on my knees hoping a former employer would hire me back after years of being gone. Luckily, they did very quickly. They were actually quite happy that I was coming back, as I was always a hard worker. But after a week of being there, former clients started contacting me! Yes, they were contacting ME!

After a week and a half, I was actually losing money working a day job. On days where I was making a mere $66.40 a day, I could have been making $100 a day. Finally, I had to call off one day. That day I made $120. It was this that recharged my batteries.

I suddenly began thinking of what I had done and what I hadn’t done with my writing business. I started finding new ways to make the business grow. I also started amending bridges that had been burned during my very exhausting pregnancy. I didn’t mean to burn them, but between being exhausted, being sick, and then dealing with a high risk pregnancy, it was hard to meet the demands.

The next thing I knew, I was stuck with the dilemma of quitting my job after just three weeks of being back. I knew I had to do what was best for my family and what was best was for me to not be shuffling my daughter around all of the time, sometimes at 6:30 in the morning so I could go to work, and to be available. However, I knew I had to make sure the time to write was there since it is a time consuming job.

So what did I learn? Well, I learned that going back to my former job for a mere three weeks was not a mistake. It allowed my husband and I to take a step back and see what needs to be done to make my career work. It allowed myself, my husband, and my whole family to see that the grass is not always greener on the other side. Knowing that me working out of the home is not what we want, we have been able to execute a plan that works for us so that I can pull my weight financially. We have also made adjustments financially so that we can build our savings again for those times when the writing world runs a little slow, particularly in the winter (November-February).

So if you find yourself in that place where you don’t know what else to do, sometimes it does take doing the extreme for you to step outside of the situation and look at it objectively. Sometimes when you’re in so deep, you can’t pull yourself out far enough to see what you need to do and what you need to stop doing. Writing is not an easy profession, nor is working at home. You do have to love it in order to do it day in and day out. Just don’t EVER let your passions slip through your fingers. Everything works out when you are proactive, so never give up.