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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 311420" data-attributes="member: 697">It's tough making a go of it as a freelancer fulltime. The erratic pay schedules, flakey publishers, and other issues make it difficult to pull off. I only managed to do it because I had to leave my old job as a computer programmer in the wake of the Internet's complete implosion. Had that not happened, I probably would still be coding fulltime and writing on the side.I had equal parts luck and perserverance. On one hand, AEG produces about 6 or so of those one word titles per year. I could bank on getting work on all of them, and AEG is good about paying writers on time. On the other, I was there for d20's initial surge. When there were only a dozen or so d20 modules out there and I had written one of them, there was a much better chance that people knew who I was when I approached them for work. Nowadays, that just isn't the case. But, with those two factors on my side I was in a good position to find lots of work fast.With the state the economy is in at the moment, I'm not sure I can recommend going fulltime unless you have to. I'm not married and I have rock bottom living expenses (beer, miniatures, and the occasional RPG book) plus I live in New Hampshire, which is one of the cheapest places to live in the US. I'd suggest trying to establish a steady flow of work. I produce at least 4000 words a day and can live off that. If you can keep up a thousand words a day or so while working fulltime, then I'd start seriously considering going fulltime. It's not something to do lightly. Maybe transition to a part-time job while writing more for a bit to see how it works out. If you have a steady stream of work coming in, then you can transition all the way.Also, build your savings to the point that you can get by for up to six months with 0 income from writing. That was a big help for me, since I had a sizable amount of cash squirreled away from my coding days.Writing fulltime is fun, but there are drawbacks. There's no bennies, you can go a little nuts without an office full of co-workers to kibbitz with (I miss that probably the most) and you can lose a lot of hair worrying about filling up your writing schedule. It's not for everyone, and in some ways it makes writing even harder since you now have to rely on it as a business. OTOH, my entire GenCon trip was tax deductible. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Good luck!</blockquote>

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