I’ve been writing a blog since the end of 2009. I’d been writing before that, but after years of writing assignments for school, the writing I was doing after I graduated was work-related. It wasn’t until I wrote my book that I sat down and dedicated every day for six weeks to complete my first draft.<\/p>\n
Before writing my book, a friend asked me to submit a piece to a magazine she was the editor of. I had never had a request to write for someone other than myself before, and I wasn’t sure what to write. The article I submitted ended up being the inspiration for my book, and it was the first time that I had people reach out to me in response to something I had done.<\/p>\n
Even after writing a book, I didn’t consider myself a writer. I remember years ago, at a networking event, saying that I would be a happy woman if I could get paid to write. At the time, I didn’t think there was a way for me to get paid to write. I wasn’t a writer, after all!<\/p>\n
Years later, it took the pandemic for me to entertain the idea that I could get paid to write. As a self-proclaimed introvert, the idea of working from home on my own was exciting. I was in another country when I experienced an uptick in requests from my Fiverr account, and before returning home, a company hired me for my first freelance job.<\/p>\n
It’s been almost two years since I started writing as a freelancer, and it’s been an exciting journey. I moved from writing about various topics a company requests, from Jet skis to the lifespan of a spider, to writing career guide articles for Indeed.ca. Now, I’m pitching articles I write for makeuseof.com with a focus on work and career. The bonus of the last job a company hired me for is that I get paid to write them, and I get paid based on how many people read them.<\/p>\n
I feel like I’m coming into my own as a writer. Grammarly has taught me to let go of using passive voice, and I appreciate the weekly reports on my activity and word usage that it sends me.<\/p>\n
They say it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. If you give a skill 3 hours a day, that means just over nine years. I’ve been writing more than three hours a day for the last two years, and I’ve been writing in some way, shape or form for the past 14 years. I don’t know if I’ve reached 10,000 hours yet, but I believe I’m getting close.<\/p>\n
If you’ve been on my mailing list from the beginning, you probably can say better than me if I’ve improved since I started this journey! \ud83d\ude0a\u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been writing a blog since the end of 2009. I’d been writing before that, but after years of writing assignments for school, the writing I was doing after I graduated was work-related. It wasn’t until I wrote my book that I sat down and dedicated every day for six weeks to complete my first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2359,596,597,936,619,613,609,2159,2362,445,2360,2358,537,1917,2361,2127],"class_list":["post-4453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughtoftheday","tag-10000-hours-of-practice","tag-accomplishment","tag-achievement","tag-author","tag-commitment","tag-embrace-your-destiny-12-steps-to-living-the-life-you-deserve","tag-focus","tag-freelance-writer","tag-ghostwriter","tag-goals","tag-makeuseof-com","tag-mastering-a-skill","tag-sandra-dawes","tag-sandra-dawes-chatha","tag-staff-writer","tag-writer"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4454,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453\/revisions\/4454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}