by Priscilla Benfield

Created on: November 26, 2010

Any work from home position takes discipline and being a stay-at-home writer is no different. If you are going to succeed as a writer you need to devote time to your craft. You also need to take your writing seriously. Writing doesn't always come easily. There can be a lot of pressure involved especially when you have deadlines to meet and you wake up with writers block.

Managing your time is essential and although many people may think that you have all the time in the world being that you are not a slave to a timeclock, the truth is that writers often spend longer hours writing than a traditional office worker does. Between doing research, editing and then promoting your work, you can spend many hours doing work that is involved with your writing.

For many writers it can be difficult to avoid distraction because even though they may have their own office space in their home, getting their family members to respect their space can be a problem. Writing can be time-consuming. When you work from home people have misconceptions about what it is you actually do all day. Writing is not a 9 to 5 job. Many writers are at their computers very early in the morning or late into the night working on an article or doing the research they need to do.

Although there are many sites on the Internet where you can self-publish your work it doesn't end there. You need to promote your work and you also need to do the research to know that what you are writing will appeal to the masses. When you write on sites where you get paid based on the amount of views your work receives you need to make sure that you are appealing to what people are interested in reading about.

Even when you get upfront payments for your work, you still need to write about what the masses are interested in. Some writers who write because they enjoy writing can often get frustrated when they are forced to write about topics that they have little interest in. This is when writing becomes a job. There is more pressure when you get an assignment to write about a topic that you need to spend hours researching. Putting all that information together and making it into a good read takes talent and discipline.

Writing for a living can be a very solitary life. You need to be able to focus on your writing and you must be able to devote the time it takes to complete your assignments and search for more work. A writer cannot just sit back and ride on their last article, they are always working on doing more. A writer needs to constantly be selling themselves through their work and there is no time for slacking off.

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