Roll up. Freelance copywriter explains how to become a copywriting expert. Or is that copywriting expert explains how to become a freelance copywriter?
Hmm. We’ll go for copywriting expert explains how to become a freelance copywriter… on the basis that you’d have to be a copywriting expert before you ever became a freelance copywriter.
So what’s the magic freelance copywriter formula? Well, here’s my secret. You wait until your little boy is six weeks old and then get made redundant. No, wait. Rewind. Let’s go back to 1990.
I’m 26 and I’ve exhausted nearly all my career options. I’ve been a tennis coach; an HR person; a tax person; a leisure-centre attendant; I’ve swept glass off the floor in a soft-drinks factory. At this point, I’m about as far off being a freelance copywriter as you can get. And the only career I want is the most competitive one in the UK at that time. It’s the start of the media explosion and I want to get into PR.
All UK media types will know what that means. It means buying The Guardian every Saturday. You know that supplement. The one in which every job has 234 applicants, all with exactly the same qualifications. It’s all press officer this, media relations exec that, copywriting expert this, and they’re all within the sound of the bloody Bow Bells.
So, I get down to the last two at the British Medical Association, on the strength of the course I’m doing – CAM Foundation Diploma. Three interviews later, bit of blagging and I’ve taken the first step down Freelance Copywriter Road.
But being a copywriting expert at this stage was the last thing on my mind. Ahead lay years of hard labour writing 2,000 words a day with a 4pm deadline, as an internal journalist. That hones your skills. Teaches you how to get to the nub of a story. How to pare your sentences to the marrow.
Four years of that and I was ready for something more creative. Oh, and pretty much ready to immerse the bloody Bow Bells in the Thames, too. I was ready to take step two down Freelance Copywriter Road.
Reeling off the train smelling of beer at Manchester Piccadilly on Christmas Eve 1993, I embraced my new girlfriend (now my wife) and a new job as Copywriter at Marconi. Eight years of national and international ad campaigns, brochures, sales lit, websites and direct mail followed. Then came the redundancy rumours - and a great opportunity for a copywriting expert seriously considering a radical move to jack it all in for a career as a freelance copywriter.
Voluntary redundancy.
Yes, put your name forward for the scrapheap and get half your salary, tax-free, in one lovely lump sum. One problem. I was ‘too valuable’. Bugger.
Next best option: find a new job. Worst possible scenario: a new job 50 miles from home around the other side of Manchester, beyond the airport, down Europe’s busiest motorway. A job… editing medical material. A job that was about as productive and enjoyable as gargling in superglue, and that paid even less money. One step back down Freelance Copywriter Road.
Fortunately, 16 months later, I was about to get laid off. Walking away with three weeks’ pay (tax-free) and four kids to feed didn’t seem like the greatest feeling at the time. But I’d made it. I was the copywriting expert who became a freelance copywriter.
And now, here I am. Two-and-a-half years later, 383 jobs as a freelance copywriter behind me, an in-tray full of cats, and I’ve done all my best work as a freelancer. You can check out my portfolio here.
t: Nigel,
+44 (0)1772 435827
m: 07527 954394
e: nigel@mightier-than.com