Know Your Limits

A lot of folks who get into freelance writing think that the sky is the limit. If the grammar is good, the prose is readable, the voice is engaging, then everything will fall into place for a long and fruitful freelance writing career. It’s a nice thought but it’s not exactly steeped in reality.

Limits are part of our world. This is true with writing just like it is true for most any artistic medium. Every writer has their limits and it’s important to know what your limits are. Where is your “stop” sign? The good news about not knowing your limits is that sooner or later you are going to figure it out. Unless you insist on beating your head against a wall.

It’s taken me a few years worth of steady writing to figure out my limits and I suspect I’ve yet to uncover them all. Here is an important point: I didn’t figure out what my limits were by thinking, Oh, there’s no way I could take on that project. Nope, I determined my limits by trying different things and turning the other way after a few times getting my hat handed to me.

Every one has different writing skills and every writer has a unique voice and style. Not all voices and all styles work with every venue. The owner of a blog I write for asked if I would like to start submitting articles for one of her client’s blogs. I jumped at the chance. It is a fairly well known blog, the money was good and the exposure would be excellent. I fired off the first batch of articles and waited with bait-like breath for the response. I got response all right. She was very good about it but in essence, my particular writing style was a bit too informal for the site owner’s taste. They would take what I submitted, but only after an editing job that would essentially kill my voice and turn the articles into something that I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling my own. I begged off the rest of the assignment and let the blog owner know exactly why. She wasn’t angry and in fact appreciated the candor. I had figured out one of my limits.

I wrote for Examiner.com for about a year. In a lot of ways it was an excellent experience. I had reached the point however, that coming up with anything new or fresh was increasingly difficult. In short, I ran out of gas. Deciding that no work from me was better than piss-poor work from me seemed like the fair thing to do for the Examiner. I learned yet another limitation.

I had a somewhat traumatic experience early on in my writing career. I had an article accepted for a magazine and the assigned editor insisted on changes that were not designed to fix grammar or enhance readability. The only thing the changes would accomplish would be to have the article published in her voice – not mine. I guess that has stuck with me because now one of my limits has to do with not tolerating ultra nit-picky editing from anyone.

Put your thinking cap on and identify your limitations – they are one of the surest ways of helping you grow as a writer.