make a freelancer account on a website for content writing and see what happens . Who knows , it could be a good sideline .” Well , I didn ' t expect it to do much of anything , but within a couple of weeks I was getting some pretty steady work through there . Not even a year later , we ' re able to travel and pay for it with the money we get from freelancing . The only issue is that freelancing alone doesn ' t pay the hefty bills that one can encounter in western countries like Canada , England or even much of Europe , so in order for us to live off writing , we need to live in cheaper , slightly wilder countries . My husband and I have been living in the Republic of Georgia for the last few months . Prior to that we lived in South East Asia for three months , and up next - after another pop to England for Christmas – we will be heading to Macedonia . letters for Harry Potter and ' Game of Thrones ' was once worth ten cents in a discount bin . That and the fact that no one is going to do anything horrible to you if the answer is no when you ask about showing work or submitting a novel . The answer is just no . Taking on this new mindset helped me take chances that I ' d probably never have taken before – and sometimes the answer was yes .
Keep the faith . Try new things with your work . You never know , it might work better than you could ever imagine !
So what can I say about never giving up ? Well , pretty much that . Even if it doesn ' t seem like it ' s not going your way now , changing something about your approach or even where you live or work can have profound effects on your output and your work . If you ' re shy , taking a class can help bring you out of your shell with regard to your art – truly seeing people who thought they weren ' t good enough as well really helped me realise I wasn ' t alone and it encouraged me to pursue my dream . Even though now I ' m often so busy writing for other people that I can ' t work on my own stuff , it doesn ' t matter . I ' m still writing for a living , which in itself is a blessing . If you ' re like me , you can always try turning your work into different versions as well – online art , graphic art , or turning your novel into a graphic novel ( which is what I ' m doing now – combining my love of visual art with writing !)
And if all else fails , I often remind myself that some authors and artists didn ' t get truly going until they were in their late thirties or forties , JK Rowling received something like 10 rejection
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