The Beginners Guide To Freelance Writing

As a WAHM/SAHM

When I had my first child (now a strapping 5-year-old) the thought of going back to full-time shift work as a nurse almost had me in a full-blown panic attack. The idea of leaving him for 10 hours at a time 4 to 5 times a week was unbearable.

As much as I love my job as a nurse, I am a mum first and foremost. I am replaceable at work, but not at home.

I started thinking about how I could stay at home, be present for my family and still contribute to our finances. Enter the fabulous world of freelance writing! To this day I still work as a nurse, but only part-time. It is a way to ensure I have a consistent wage, keep my nursing skills up and I do still love being a nurse.

As great as freelance writing is, it is a job. You need to work damn hard at it.

So how can you be a freelance writer as a work-at-home-mum?

How can you balance everything?

How can you ensure that your freelance writing business does not take up as much (if not more time) than if you were working away from home each day?

Whilst it hasn’t been an easy journey caring for my kids (we now have 2), running the household and still working a few shifts as a nurse, I have learnt a few strategies along the way that make balancing everything easier.

Everyone has the same amount of hours each day, however, it is how you use these hours that count. The more efficient you are, the more work you can produce in less time. This means more money in the bank and more time with your family!

Set realistic goals.

It would be AMAZING to have a sparkling clean house, a highly successful home-based business, a healthy home-cooked meal on the table and a solid 8 hours of sleep every single night. I mean, isn’t that what we all want?

But is it realistic? Is it achievable?

For us mere mortals it is more about setting feasible goals. Smart goals. Goals that make running our business and house easier and help to achieve our dreams.

As a nurse and a mum of two young children, I know that my time is limited. I cannot take on every single client who comes my way. And as of right now, realistically, I cannot be a full-time writer as amazing as that would be!

You need to look at your current situation. How much time and effort can you dedicate to a new business? How much income do you need to provide? How can you balance family and other commitments? Use that to set yourself REALISTIC goals.

Set yourself 30, 60 and 90-day goals. Or monthly, quarterly and yearly. Small. Medium. Big. Whatever works for you, just set them!

These goals will help drive your business forward. Don’t forget to break those big goals down into smaller actionable chunks. Those smaller pieces help maintain your motivation and productivity.

Create support systems.

Before you start your business, you need to have a solid plan in place. And I am not talking about a boring business plan.

I am talking about a plan for support systems that will help you manage all your responsibilities whilst allowing you the opportunity to grow and develop your business.

I wish (I really do wish) that this is something I did before I started my business.

Instead, I jumped in without thinking about how much time, effort and energy it would consume. I did not think about HOW I would achieve my dreams, I just thought about my WHY. It wasn’t until my husband sat me down and told me he was struggling that I realized the pressure I had put on those around me and myself by not planning properly. He said that he found it hard with all the extra chores and responsibility I was piling on top of his already stressful full-time job.

It was a real eye-opener for me.

I had to sit back and re-evaluate HOW I was working. I had to scale back my big goals and set a more feasible time-frame for them so that I wasn’t working all the time.

After all, the reason I wanted to be a work-at-home-mum was to be more present for my family, not permanently attached to my computer or phone.

So where were my realistic goals? Not just realistic for me, but for my family and support systems.

Where were my support systems? Where was my plan to be able to work with support from my husband but without overburdening him (or myself)?

After much discussion with my husband I have re-set my business goals and worked out a better working schedule, time-frame and plan to achieve those goals. Each Sunday we sit down together and plan out the week ahead. What nursing shifts I am doing, who is exercising when, what appointments and other commitments do we have, when I will be writing/working on my freelance business etc. We can work out a plan of attack for the week and support each other to achieve everything we set out to do.

Just remember, that you cannot achieve everything straight away. These things take time.

So, my biggest piece of advice before you jump into a freelance writing career is to set up your support systems and discuss with your family what working from home will look like and how you can manage it as a team.

Write a Business Plan.

Part of setting realistic goals should be writing out a business plan. It does not have to be complicated or super long, just one page will suffice! I am a huge fan of keeping things simple.

Set out a basic business plan with what you want to earn from your business each month, the actionable steps you need to take to achieve that and realistic timeframes to do it in.

See…simple!

It will save you time and angst later. I wish I had done this from the start!

Organisation is key.

Balancing everything in life, work and starting a business is super hard. But if you are organised it makes everything easier.

I love a schedule and a good to-do list! I use a combination of a paper planner, Asana and spreadsheets to stay on top of everything and keep home, social and business life on track.

My husband loves to joke that I have a to-do list for my to-do list…I don’t, of course. Kind of. Maybe.

Anyway, moving on.

Organisation is what will help you balance EVERYTHING! And the first step to being organised is a…you guessed it…to-do list!

I would be so lost without one. I have a running to-do list that I write things down on as I go so I do not forget anything.

My running to-do list is like a brain dump. From this list, I can see what needs to be done during the week or month and can allocate a day and time to do it.

Create a Schedule (and STICK to it).

The next step to creating and maintaining an organised business and life is a schedule that works for you and your family. This is where a good planner, diary, online calendar or whiteboard come in handy.

You need to write out your schedule, and stick to it as much as possible. Obviously, things happen such as illness or teething babies that throw a spanner in the works. But creating a schedule gives you structure and organisation to your days.

There are chunks of the day and night where I know I can generally work relatively uninterrupted….depending on my children of course!

• before an afternoon shift at work when both kids are in childcare and kindergarten
• early morning before my children wake up
• after my children have gone to bed
• roughly one hour mid-morning and one hour in the afternoon when I use activity such as painting, playdough or drawing to keep my children occupied so I can work.

Using this I have an estimate of how many hours a week I can dedicate to work. This is important to help you set those realistic goals we spoke about earlier. There is no point taking on projects that need 10 hours of work a week if you only have 5 available hours. You will only be setting yourself up to fail.

I try to ignore the housework and folding during nap times so I can focus solely on “work”. This may mean I do not have a sparkling clean house or neatly folded clothes put away, but I am productive! I can always fold clothes when both children are awake, or delegate to my husband.

Put it this way, if you were working outside of the home you wouldn’t be stopping your workday to fold a load of laundry or to vacuum the floor. So when you are working, work. Protect that time and use it wisely.

Using batching to create a schedule.

Once you have worked out your working hours for the week and put those into your schedule it is time to figure out WHAT you will be working on during those hours.

To help with this, I absolutely LOVE batching tasks. It is a time management system that has boosted my productivity and streamlined my week. I have found that by using batching I feel more organized and less overwhelmed.

I allocate batched tasks to each time window I have during the day and pencil those into my schedule.

How you may be asking, does batching work?

Simple. You “batch” like tasks together.

For example, on Mondays, once I have dropped my kids off to childcare I know that I have about a 2-hour window before I need to get ready for a nursing shift. I like to outline and research blog posts and client work in this 2 hour window. No writing, editing, social media or emails. Just simply outlining and researching.

This way your brain is not switching from task to task. You can focus on what kind of skill, in this case outlining and researching. You will be more productive and efficient.

Try batching out and let me know how you go! It has honestly been a life-changing hack for me.

Keep your client assignments organized.

Whether you use an online project management tool like Asana or Trello, Google sheets, excel, word document or a simple paper and pen the key is to keep your projects organized!

You MUST know what each project entails, timeframes, workload and when they are due. Otherwise, the poop will hit the fan. You will miss deadlines. You will forget the integral parts of the project. So, whatever method works to keep you organized and on track make sure you use it.

Decide on HOW much you will work.

I work PART-TIME in my freelance writing business. Not full time, just part-time hours. That is roughly 20 hours a week (sometimes more, sometimes less depending on my workload).

This helps with maintaining balance with family, nursing and everything else. So whilst some people will be able to dedicate a lot more time to their freelance writing business, I decided to keep limited hours.

This means I need to be strict with what projects and clients I take on and when.

You may be able to handle more. Or you may need to decrease the amount of time you spend on your business. You need to find the balance that is right for you, your family and your lifestyle. As your children grow and circumstances change so too will the time (and energy) you will have to spend on your freelance writing.

The key focus here is to decide how much you can and want to dedicate to your budding freelance writing business and make it work!

Ask for help with your children.

We send our children to childcare. And yes, initially I hated it. I didn’t want to send them and have someone else look after them. I didn’t like not knowing what they were doing, especially after having grown accustomed to knowing where and what they were doing every minute of the day.

However, once I saw how much they love childcare and how much they get out of it, it made me feel better. I also need that time. Time not just to dedicate to my business and nursing shifts, but time to feel like just me. Not a mum. Not a carer, provider, entertainer, chef, housecleaner or wife. Simply me. It has been paramount to my mental health.

You may think that working at home means you should keep the kids at home with you too. But you will have days where you need to just focus on your business. Don’t feel guilty. It is all part of the process!

If you cannot access childcare, then use friends, family members, nannies, babysitters, or the next-door neighbour! Anyone that you trust enough to look after your children, even if it is for just a few hours. Trust me, you will need it.

Even if you can only arrange help for a few hours, it is worth it. It is amazing how much work you can get done when you have a short amount of time. When you put your head down and focus on client work or pitching you will smash it out.

What do you do when you have no one to help?

On days where we don’t have the children booked in for childcare and I need to get work done my options are limited. I do not have family, friends or babysitters close by.

So what do I do?

I use “quiet time”. My youngest no longer naps (sigh). So I enforce a quiet period after lunch from 1–2:30 pm. Both children go to their rooms and they can play quietly, read books or lie in their bed. The point that it is quiet. They may not last the full 1.5hours, but usually long enough for me to shoot off a few emails or edit some work.

When I want to sit at my computer to get work done, I set up activities for my kiddos. Anything like playdough, coloured rice, Lego/Duplo, colouring, activity trays, basic art and craft (that doesn’t need a lot of supervision) and water painting are always winners! If the weather allows I also set them loose in our backyard and sit outside to work. They love snail hunts (eww), water play, digging, sandpit, riding their bikes and just running around.

And failing all of that, I will put the TV on. Screen time is amazing!

I aim to get up earlier in the morning before my children wake up, and I also work in the evening when they are down for the night. So if I use my time wisely that is roughly 5 hours of productive work a day. 5 whole hours! There is a lot you can do in that time as long as you stay focused (which means no scrolling Twitter or Facebook).

Use processes and templates to work more efficiently.

If you have templates and set processes for tasks it takes the guesswork out of it. It means that you don’t need to fluff around and can simply get down to business.

For example, every time you send out a cold pitch to a potential client are you drafting it from the very beginning? Why not develop a cold pitch template and tweak it to target the person you are sending it too.

What about a blog post template?

Processes for onboarding clients?

Templates for contracts, LOAs, invoices and quotes?

Templates and processes help boost your productivity and avoid wasting time. And as we know as work-at-home mums, time is one of our most valued commodities.

Learn how to type faster.

Really, the best way to learn how to type faster is practice, practice and PRACTICE.

Many people also swear by typing games and other online typing practices. If you go to Google and search for something like “type faster” so many options pop up.

Personally, I just like to practice by typing, typing and typing some more. But others like to play games and competitions. What floats your boat?

Set boundaries and protect your working time.

Sometimes it is hard for others to understand the nature of freelance writing and running an online business. Especially when you are juggling it with children at home.

You need to be clear with your partner and establish boundaries and working time so that you can have uninterrupted hours to focus on your business and writing. You need to protect this time; otherwise, you will find that you will never get anything done.

People need to understand you are WORKING from home. It isn’t just a hobby or way to pass the time.

You need to chat with your partner and work out how, when and where you will be working. You need to discuss that when you are working you are not to be interrupted unless necessary (think missing limb, violent illness etcetera).

This is fundamental to your business. You need this time. Otherwise, your focus will constantly be split and you will never get anything done, or it will be sub-par.

Separate your “mum” role from your “business” role.

To be honest this is something I struggle with constantly. Not the least because I do not have a dedicated home office. I am usually working at the kitchen table or in the lounge room — both spaces are the heart and soul of our home. Noisy. Busy. And I can always see what chores need to be done.

However, if you do not learn to keep these roles separated then you cannot give your full concentration to either and you will feel like you are not doing either one well.

So, to separate mentally from your business role, turn off your computer. Put it away. Put your work stuff away. I also find a brain dump before I need to switch back to the mum role is handy. This is where I simply grab a pen and paper and write down everything on my mind in regards to my freelance writing business. Anything that I need to research, pitching ideas, client ideas, areas I need to focus on and to-dos. I leave this is my work folder and then try to put it away when I am done working.

To get into work mode I usually spend the first 10minutes at my computer doing the same. I brain dump everything…but this time I don’t just focus on freelance writing, it will be EVERYTHING. What appointments need to be made, what chores need doing, catch-ups that need organising, birthday presents etc. It helps to clear my head so I can focus on writing.

Freelance Writing as a WAHM

Crazy as it sounds, we manage to balance it all and have some semblance of social life. Granted that social life looks very different now to pre-kid times, but that was always going to happen!

It can be a precarious balance and sometimes doesn’t take much for it to crumble. But we pick ourselves up, shake it off and keep going. We make it work for us. I couldn’t do it without the support of my husband, and I am grateful that he is pushing me to achieve my dreams.

A favourite saying of mine:

“You can do anything, but not everything” — David Allen.

David Allen created the “Getting Things Done” productivity system.

It is a great reminder that whilst we can do ANYTHING we set our minds to, we are limited by the hours, time and energy we have available. We need to prioritise and delegate so that we get all those things done that we need doing without burning out. We cannot do everything.

Rachel Maree is a writer, mum and registered nurse. Bringing you the real truth to parenting, nursing and writing (even when it is downright ugly). You can read more articles or hire her to write amazing content for you — Rachel Maree.

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