What do essay writers do with their time during the off-season?

it looks like it's slowing down for the next few weeks. i was wondering what everyone did with their time during the off-periods? last summer i took a grad class and got a lot of reading and fitness stuff done. has anyone gotten into copywriting or something different like that?

I write other things year-round, but this work tends to be the most lucrative (especially when it comes to any sort of guaranteed payment) so it's my focus the majority of the year. I also have other interests and hobbies, and I spend time with family and friends as much as I can because I'm so busy during the academic year.

JohnsMom, how much off-season is there for you, typically? How dead are the dead months, and how many of them are there? Are you mainly working with companies, or private clients?

I've been doing this for a bit under a decade, and honestly no year has been exactly the same. There are so many factors involved that it's tough to make accurate predictions, but generally I tend to think there are six really busy months, three in spring and three in winter, with sudden ends and slow beginnings. There are some weeks that are totally or almost totally dead (about to hit one), but for the most part I have a steady amount of work all year. In the busy months, the work is more than steady.

If you've been in the essay writing industry for this much time, I am wondering what took you so long to find/join this forum?

Secondly, though I am not invited to this question, I'd like to add that if you're working for a particular group of clients (say they come from institutions in a specific geographical spread), the work pattern seems to yield similar patterns. However, if a writer has clients from different regions (as I work for both native and ESL/EFL student spreading far and wide), honestly work is a 12-month thing. Any writer working in similar niche to that of mine can confirm it.

You don't find things you aren't looking for, MeoKhan.

There are many writers that have been doing this for many years that don't have any presence on this forum, and I'm not sure why you think it's odd that I didn't know about it until recently.

Secondly, it seems to me that all writers were "invited" to this question, so your input is as welcome as anyone else's I would assume.

I don't entirely agree with you, because I work with clients all over the world and still definitely have busy months and slower months.

There is work year-round (although the week or two surrounding Christmas and New Years is almost entirely dead unless I happen to have a large long-term project I'm working on), but the work is definitely busier during the standard (North American/European) academic year. It changes for worse, though, as more students use automatic grammar-checking tools; in result, there are very few proofreading or document editing job these days.

OK, so, to anybody ... what percentage of the year's total essay income would you expect to come from the six or seven busy months? I mean, obviously it's going to be more than 50 percent, but would you expect it to be as high as 75 percent? 90 percent?

In a "dead" month like August, would it be reasonable to earn a tenth as much as in, say, November? Or 25 percent as much?

It all depends on how much you want to earn and how hard you work to earn it. I lead a pretty normal and stable (as much as I can manage) lifestyle, so I work as much as I can in the slower months (which means putting more work into getting work, too). I could easily see someone only working during the busy seasons and taking January and the summer months off entirely, though, if they were willing to live at a slightly lower standard or if they were in their early twenties and still carefree. Sometimes during the buys months I daydream about those days.

Still, I would estimate that I earn about 2/3rds of my annual income during the six months of the extremely busy season, with the remaining third primarily coming in the months before the busiest times of the year but with at least a trickle of income running all the time.

Yes, that is approximately the revenue projection that I have mapped out, too. If I were in my 20s, and without responsibilities, I would probably work six or seven months, then go globetrotting in the off-season. But somehow, the wherewithal to be an essay writer seems to develop at a later stage in most people. Maybe it's an issue of self-discipline or problem-solving skills. Or mortgages.

Mortgages do change things considerably. When I think of what those high-earning months could mean if I didn't need to plan for my summer mortgage payments...

I didn't say that there are no slow months. There sure are, and yes around the time you have mentioned.

I hope that no one quits their day job.

Do you have a second job (other than being a wealthy published author), editor75? This thread seems to be filled with people who do this full-time for their living, so I'm not sure what this comment is supposed to mean unless it's one more bit of nonsense through which you are trying to insult people who are simply better at what they do than you are.

I'm generally thankful for a break. I've been at this about 2 years now and although slow times make me anxious, busy times make me tired. Finding the right balance between work and leisure can be tricky and I often intermingle the two (so that I can't tell if I'm working too much or idling too much). ...So far, the income has been (mostly) steady and the jobs (mostly) interesting.

you unleash a comment like this, and then you expect me to answer your question? if you're really curious about what all I do for a living, try charming.

I'm sorry I "unleashed" a comment you found so offensive, editor75. Given your open derision for anyone else here, though, I thought it was pretty spot on. Tell me, how would *you* characterize the majority of your posts here?

another question already? I thought we were still on the first. anyway, maybe you didn't pay attention-- keep trying.

and yes, "unleashed"-- not quite barking, or snarling, but far from charming! good luck.

You and th63 have the same style. You get very angry and self-righteous when you feel affronted, but are apparently incapable of replying in a substantive manner to direct questions. It might work well with your horses, but it doesn't do much for you here.

strike three! but don't let it get you down, kiddo-- keep swinging for the fences.

I'm not swinging, editor75--I have no desire to "charm" you. You work in an industry you claim to hate, you offer almost no concrete advice or information, and you insult people for no other reason than they disagree with you. You are not charming yourself, nor are you worth any effort to be charming towards.

As for who is "striking out" here, that's three chances you've had to clarify what your snide and cryptic comment meant, and three times you've left us to assume that it's just more of you being an impotent whingy assh*le.

What name did you use on here before October 2012?

You're the one who always insults and attacks everyone else on here, and it sounds very familiar.

No, I don't think you just showed up here in October.

I get along fine with most people here, and we've had many constructive discussions. You are confusing yourself (and possibly editor75) with "everyone," when in fact you're the two people that no one here seems to get along with. I'm just more vocal about questioning your motives.

As you have already asked and I have already answered, this is my first and only username here. Now as I have asked and you have yet to answer, why do you come here if you are no longer in the business and hate everyone in it, customers, writers, and companies alike?

I find I don't really have an "offseason." People are in school year-round these days.

When I was still actively participating in model paper writing, I found that I did not really take any down time during the off season. I kept myself available to the office just in case a regular client or important order came in that required my attention. If I were to think of what other things I did too augment my income at the time, I would have to say it was working as a ghost writer for some regular clients and publishing my novels. I manage to work for a regular blogging service for a period of time. It was just launching its services and required regular writers to work for them. So the down time afforded me an opportunity to expand my work horizons in a way. I did use the time for some R&R like getting regular massages and hanging out with friends, which I could not normally do during the regular season as I was one of the top writers of the company and could not really afford to take more than half a day off at any given moment of the active school year.

I have two sets of writers who gain benefits from being a part of my writing company during the off-season. Those who have proven to be truly talented writers who can handle just about any assignment I can throw their way find themselves working on projects for specific companies, blog sites, and writing services that have partnered up with us for specific projects. During the off season though, since they are not working on academic projects, I place these writers on a set salary to make sure that I do not deplete my company income.

The writers who are new to the company or are part of the junior writing staff undergo additional training in various writing avenues to help them move up the ladder from simply being an academic writer. These writers receive an allowance from me during the training season, that usually lasts about 2 weeks out of every month. When the season picks up, I test out the newly trained writers to find out who deserves to be promoted after completing the training sessions.

I think that one of the key, unforeseen advantages of being an academic writer/researcher would be that your time rolls in and out in accordance to the academic seasons. I ensure that I take up a handful amount of orders (ergo overworking myself) during high season to optimize my writing time. This will make certain that whether or not I accumulate extra work during the off-season, it would not make much of a difference because I'd have a little bit saved up in the meantime. I still do other forms of writing for other companies (blog posts, marketing tasks, etc.), so I would still have a stream of income flowing in from other online jobs that I have.

I haven't really encountered much of an "off season" since roughly 2010. People go to school all year nowadays, especially online. That's obviously a good thing, but it also means that with the exception of a two or three-week stretch a few times a year, we can be very busy with work all year long. I've only taken three real vacations since 2007 and I ended up writing some projects every time, whether to avoid leaving a regular customer in the lurch or to avoid (possibly) losing all the future business of a new customer. Probably my favorite thing to do with any down-time I do have is simply nothing.

From my viewpoint, one of the most dragging parts of working as an academic freelance writer (or freelancing in general) is that you take the work that you can get; getting burned out is definitively an issue that would be faced in the long-run. While it's true that there are no off-seasons, it's vital to take advantage of periods of time that work is barely around (ie. less orders moving around the systems). This is usually due to the general academic calendar. However, I do agree that academic calendars do not play that much of a role anymore albeit they do slightly impact the flow of work being accumulated.

Down time often sees me overhauling the office. I attend to the hardware and software needs of the administrative staff since that is the only time we have to get any IT work done on the computers. I conduct staff meetings with my writers and attend scheduled writing seminars with them, even though I rarely write for clients these days. It is important that I brush up on my writing skills and gain insights into the latest writing software and research tools that can help my company remain competitive in the market. Only when all of these errands are done at the office do I allow myself to enjoy some down time. I normally throw a small get together with my staff and writers overnight, company sponsored of course, just to make sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to working for me. It's nothing flashy, just a simple weekend where we forget about work and focus on friendships and repairing any work related issues between employees.