For the last five years, I’ve made a living as a freelance writer. This week, I shut down my professional website so that I can finally move towards becoming the writer I want to be. 

(gulp.)

There are two things most people who want to be writers will tell you:

1. They don’t remember a time in their life when writing wasn’t their dream job.

2. But they also learned from an early age that writing wasn’t a “real” job. 

I’m no different, which is why when I first decided in 2019 that I was finally going to go after this dream job of mine—even if it wasn’t a real job—I was determined to make it work no matter what.

Fast forward a year later, and I was moving abroad as a full time freelance writer. 

I lived in Mexico, Guatemala, and Morocco, with briefer stints in India, Fiji, Vietnam, Thailand, and Spain. I wrote about diving in Guatemala’s Lake Atitlan for Scuba Diving Magazine, where to find the best egg coffee in Hanoi for Thai Airways, and deleting the email app from my phone for Business Insider. In a lot of ways, I was living out what I had once only dreamed of.

But there’s something curious about being a freelance writer—at least the kind that I was. 

Most of the time, the words you are writing do not belong to your voice, your vision. Like any freelance creative, the bulk of the work (aka the money) is in client projects. 

And so most of the writing that paid for my rent money and plane tickets required me to shape shift into different personas. To become more of a marketer than a writer. To busy myself with brand voice guides, SEO keywords, and (I’m giving myself PTSD just typing this acronym) KPIs. 

Sometimes, it was a beautiful and interesting work life. I wrote websites for nonprofits, sales pages for pet energy-workers (ask me about that one another time), and blog posts for sustainable clothing brands.

It was also sometimes a strange and unsatisfying one. I ghost wrote affiliate link-stuffed articles for a travel blogger about cities I’d never been to. I penned cringey blog posts for a #girlboss coach who paid pennies on the word. I edited articles with titles like Sweaty Vagina? How To Treat Vagina Sweat for an underwear brand. 

This went on for five years. 

Each time I tried to start a new business or figure out a way to make freelance writing more fulfilling, I’d hit a financial wall. Then an old client would reach out, my eyes would desperately flash dollar signs, and I’d be right back where I started—crafting headlines like 7 Reasons Girls Wear Boxers. 

Essentially: I had made my creative passion my hustle, and obliterated the joy out of it in the process.

In her book Big Magic, Liz Gilbert says, “to yell at your creativity, saying ‘You must earn money for me!’ is sort of like yelling at a cat; it has no idea what you’re talking about, and all you’re doing is scaring it away.”

I decided this summer that I am done yelling at my creativity. I am done telling myself I need to write in order to feel fulfilled… then turning around and making myself write SEO content for uninspired brands.

For so long, I thought giving up client work would mean I had failed as a writer. I had managed to etch out a living doing the thing that I loved. So what if it meant I had to write keyword-stuffed drivel? 

But now I see it differently:

And so I have shut down katielemonwrites.com. I have stopped looking for new clients, and am looking for other kinds of work instead. I’m teaching English online again. I’m on Rover and Care.com. All the gig work I once feared marked me as a failed writer, I’m now running towards with open arms.

I’m trading the security of client work for the wild unknown of creative freedom. It’s a leap of faith that feels more like a homecoming.

And you know what?

I have more creative energy than ever. My brain is bursting at the seams with ideas for ways to move forward with The Honeycomb and as a creative facilitator… 

More on that next week though ;)

This week’s Creative Input & Output includes: 

• what existentialists believe we must embrace to live a good life

• your new favorite Instagram poet

• the most atmospheric hour-long healing guitar set to play while you make breakfast

• a free and creative way to get a natural boost of serotonin right now

• a juicy guide to make the internet feel more like a scavenger hunt!

***The following are three pieces of creative input. Consider them inspiration to refill your creative cup. I encourage you to give your inner artist a sweet treat this week—even when you don’t think you deserve it, even when you’re hesitant to call yourself a creative person.