HAZEL DAVIS is a leading UK freelance, working on a variety of jobs for clients including broadsheet newspapers and specialist magazines. Recently, she flew to St Petersburg to report on its famous conservatoire.
I OFTEN say to people that I work much harder as a freelancer than I did as an 'employee'. In fact I say it so often, 'people' are tired of hearing it. But it's true. The main thing I have found since going permanently freelance two years ago is that people who work in offices 'faff'.
I, on the other hand, wake up before 7am, more or less the same time as my partner, have a nice cup of coffee, walk the dogs for an hour (more if they're lucky and I'm not busy) and lock myself away in my study for the duration. That's the theory anyway.
Living semi-rurally in West Yorkshire – one of the benefits of being freelance – anytime I need to escape the confines of my study, I can run round the moors shouting for Heathcliff.
Thanks to various networking sites (Journobiz, Facebook) I do manage to arse around a fair bit during the day, but nothing approaching the few hours' waste I used to engage in, including a two-hour journey door to door to the office, an hour's lunch and at least a couple of hours' worth of chinwagging. The difference these days is that much of my social networking often translates into work or work contacts rather than pointless ebay-surfing or bitching about the boss.
I down the first coffee and invariably immediately fill up with another one. Because I am a prissy little twit, I have to have an espresso made in a stove-top machine. This makes me feel like Will Self.
As I write on a variety of quite disparate topics (music, property, careers, sex, travel), I might find myself calling the president of the law society for a ten-minute phone chat followed by the writing up of a first-person feature on a woman with a balloon fetish. Occasionally I spend a significant amount of time chasing facts and figures from people who don't want to disclose them on behalf of a business-oriented magazine which absolutely needs them or it will spontaneously combust.
There are times when I might find myself unexpectedly in St Petersburg, courtesy of a classical music magazine, or watching penguins in Australia for a travel article. These occasions are few and far between (I would never make a living if I spent all my time jetting around the world and I usually spend more than I earn on cakes and coffee anyway) and for these I am happy to spend hours above and beyond the average working day trapped in a small room in a 30s semi with only a laptop for company.
Being freelance DOES mean I am boss of myself. It also means that 'it's my own time I'm wasting'. So for every hectic Huddersfield Primark trolley-dash I am well aware of what needs to be done to finance it. Everyone goes through phases of not being bothered and when that happens, I try to take the dogs for a long walk and think of some ideas. Unfortunately, ideas aren't my strong point. I would much rather just write and have someone else think up the ideas. Unfortunately, being a writer is much more than that so I do try and find some time to get pitching, either by conversations with PR companies, catching up with the news online or (gasp) reading the papers.
As I don't have children, generally, my working day ends when I have to go out or my partner plonks my dinner in front of me. It often resumes again when I return but that's a small price to pay for infinite flexibility and the privilege of watching the birds out of the window as I work.
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