Words Per Mile

Shipley’s Dictionary of Word Origins doesn’t have an entry for the specific word freelancer, but it does have this (text in brackets are abbreviations spelled out by me for clarity):

free. The man that calls himself heart-free is not talking in terms of origins. Free ([Old English] fréon, to love, cognate with [Sanskrit] priya, dear: thus [Old English] fréond, whence Eng. friend) meant beloved…

lance. See launch.

launch. There was a [Latin] lancea, perhaps itself of Celtic origin, which as the name for the hurled spear passed into all the [Teutonic] tongues…From the [Old French] lance was also formed as a verb. [Old French] lancier, [Old Norman French] lanchier, whence Eng. launch; this first meant to thrust, then to drive forth, to leap forward.

Now, sometimes a compound word is more or different than the sum of its parts–a hotdog certainly isn’t made from cooked Dalmatian! Over time, the words free and lance meandered their way through the Germanic languages until they combined in the early 1800s, according the Merriam-Webster. Around this time, the word freelance was “used to refer to a medieval mercenary who would fight for whichever nation or person paid them the most.”

So basically, freelancing should be happy happy forward motion at all times, right? We should be bouncing around, offering our services to the best among several that are bidding for us, right?

According to some statistics, there are over 76 million freelancers working in the U.S. in 2024. That’s enough to assign one freelancer to every 105 people worldwide! That number is expected to keep growing for the foreseeable future, and with recent layoffs across the SEO industry, many of us are nervous about the current competitive state of the market.

(To say nothing of AI. Personally, I’m less worried than I was two years ago about AI taking all of the writing jobs. What I am concerned about is AI eroding the general public’s trust in the written word; I think this, more than the actual writing skill of AI, contributed to the recent market shifts that led myself and others to be laid off. This may be its own post eventually.)

And to be honest, it does feel like it sucks out there right now. With lots of layoffs, end-of-year slowdowns, and companies revising their strategies, there’s a lot of opportunists and not as many opportunities. I wish I could offer some magical solutions to help you become the best content-knight-for-hire in the land, but all I can do now is remind of us some common-sense tips:

• Keep writing good, authentic content, even if it’s just for you (see: this entire post).
• Always take contracts and payments through trusted methods, and be wary of jumping on offers that seem too good to be true.
• Support your fellow freelancers by passing along opportunities or dropping their names in conversation. It’s karma, it’s networking, it’s kind.
• Spend some time most days looking for opportunities–with remote work and weird holiday schedules, you never know when or in what time zone you’ll get an opportunity.
• BUT…don’t spend hours a day doomscrolling through LinkedIn or making tiny tweaks to your Fiverr page. Tying your brain in knots isn’t good for your mental health, your physical health, your sleep, or your writing.
• Be good to yourself. Some of the best writers and editors you know are going through the same thing.

Best of luck to all of us out there! And don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to collaborate, need some writing or editing services, or just want to commiserate.