The Winds Of Change

Currently I'm experiencing something new in my freelance career: the (potential) cancelling of one of my regular columns. It sort of came as a surprise, but not entirely and I have mixed feelings about it. Columns, contributions and commissions get cut all of the time I'm sure, but it's yet to have happened to me and I'm what? Two years in at the most? That's not bad going really.

At the moment I'll avoid saying which publication may be canning the feature I write as it's not 100 percent confirmed, but when the issue was raised last week I felt a little bit crestfallen to begin with. They had sort of thrown it open to me, in a very round about way, asking if I'd like to continue writing it and part of me did and part of me didn't. In the end I decided to think on it for a few days.

So I took the weekend and stewed it over. Mostly I've come to the conclusion, depending on the editor's final decision, that this particular feature has run it's course. Realising that actually gave me a bit of a thrill. It's been a while since I've approached any new publications - online or print - and flexed my digits around some different writing styles. There are a couple of projects that appear to be drawing to a close at the moment and on the whole, rather than feel panicked, it's actually quite refreshing.

I apologise for sounding hugely clichéd right there.

Pretty much since my freelancing career began I've been writing for the same titles. This is partly for financial security reasons, partly because they've been on-going projects that have afforded me opportunities to develop a few new skills. It would have been silly to stop any of them in their tracks just because I'd been working on/for certain companies for a year or so.

On the other hand, part of the beauty of freelancing is having the chance to chop and change and test the waters with lots of different publications should I desire to do that and I definitely think that's one area of this whole freelance journalism malarkey I'm yet to really put to the test and experiment with. Although it's sad to loose a regular column - and one that I actually really enjoyed writing - I'd rather see this as a positive. It will free up a bit more of my time each month so I can explore other avenues.

So, it's a little bit out with the current and in with the new and so far the breeze seems to be fairly warm and inviting. Will have to 'watch this space' though.

Over and out for now.
RoseC -x-