Rules for taking holiday as a freelancer
Including whether or not to pause your Substack payments when you aren't creating content for a period of time.
I recently shared a note on the fact I would like a week off from Substack, but can’t afford to do that right now.
I’m writing a book and it’s consuming all my thoughts, which - on one specific week - started to affect the time and energy I had to write anything else.
However, having been a freelance writer for 13 years, I understand three things:
I’ve committed to publishing two essays a week and so that’s what I do.
There is a deadline and I never miss a deadline.
If I don’t work, I don’t get paid.
So I did the work.
But I also explained how I’d been feeling and some sweet people said I should take a holiday from Substack if I want to, without pause payments.
This is very generous, as this is coming from people who pay a monthly fee to read my weekly words.
But if I were to take a holiday from Substack, without pausing payments, people would be paying me for work I wasn’t doing.
And that doesn’t sit comfortably with me.
However, I saw recently that someone else on Substack was taking a holiday and wasn’t pausing payments.
You know what I thought?