Your Freelance Writing Bucket List

Your Freelance Writing Bucket List - All Freelance Writing

With this month's focus being on getting started as a freelance writer or revamping your freelance writing business, let's talk about long-term goals and aspirations. Namely, let's talk about your freelance writing bucket list.

If you're a planner (and I highly recommend always having a plan to guide you), you probably set yearly goals. They give you direction when tweaking your quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily plans. Everything you do is about getting you one step closer to those big goals.

Your freelance writing bucket list is even bigger.

What is a Freelance Writing Bucket List?

When you hear the term "bucket list" you know it means a list of things you want to do or accomplish before you die. But those things often focus on your personal life and passions.

Your freelance writing bucket list is all about your career; it's what you want to accomplish before you retire or otherwise put freelance writing behind you. And the start of this new year is a great time to come up with a longer-term wish list like this.

Why?

Creating a sort of bucket list for your writing career lets you move from dreams or fantasies about your future to something more actionable. Once you commit it to writing, it's like going from saying "wow, wouldn't it be nice if..." to "I can do this someday."

Once you admit to yourself what you really want out of your freelance writing career, then you can start figuring out how to get there. That bucket list can be translated into yearly goals, quarterly checkpoints, monthly steps, weekly planned tasks, and daily actions. Any big dream can be broken down into smaller actionable steps.

So before January passes and you get too caught up in the day-to-day routine of it all, consider creating your freelance writing bucket list.

What Your Freelance Writing Bucket List Might Include

Any big dream can be broken down into smaller actionable steps. - All Freelance Writing

I'll admit it. I don't have a freelance writing bucket list specifically (yet). I have a broader one for my career, which involves freelancing, my network of blogs and other sites, and publishing projects. If you have a broader-focus writing business like I do, go for something more like that. If you're focused exclusively on freelancing though, what kinds of things might end up on your bucket list?

Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

  • Work with [insert your dream client].
  • Get a paid byline in [insert your dream publication].
  • Hit one year where my freelance writing income exceeds [insert your yearly income target].
  • Publish a book about my specialty niche to cement my reputation as a respected expert.
  • Have my freelance writing income let me work while traveling to [insert a target location] for [a set amount of time].

Those are just some basic ideas to get you started. You might also add things like taking on a specific type of project you don't feel confident about yet. Or maybe you want copy you write for a client to hit some grand conversion or income target you can boast about later.

What do you want?

What scares you?

What would make you happy?

What would make you feel like your freelance writing career was time well-spent?

Answering those questions can help you come up with a freelance writing bucket list all your own. And once you admit to yourself what you really want, even if those things feel lofty now, you can start figuring out what you need to do to make them happen.

What's on your freelance writing bucket list?

Profile image for Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern is a professional blogger, freelance business writer, consultant, and indie author. She runs numerous websites & blogs including All Freelance Writing, Freelance Writing Pros, NakedPR, and Kiss My Biz.

Jenn has 25 years' experience as a professional writer and editor and over 20 years' experience in marketing and PR (working heavily in digital PR, online marketing, social media, SEO, new media, and thought leadership publication). She also has 19 years' professional blogging and web publishing experience (including web development) and around 18 years of experience as an indie author / publisher.

Jenn also writes fiction under multiple pen names and is an Active member of the Horror Writers Association.

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2 thoughts on “Your Freelance Writing Bucket List”

  1. Consider what might happen, once you have completed some piece that you had on your bucket list. More than ten years ago, I felt inspired to change a narrative poem I had written into an short story. After I had completed it, without knowing what I would do with it, I read a request for pieces that could be used in an anthology.

    I sent the publisher my short story. She included it in the anthology. That got me interested in book promotion. Consequently, I created a blog, and learned a lot about writing blog posts.

    Reply

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