Freelance workspace on the cheap
Co-working spaces are pretty dang cool, but I do not “think” I afford them. I am in a special circumstance. I have been writing professionally for, well, goodly chunks (good chunks?) of two centuries. You do the math (calculus required, so good luck). I will get into the “think” part after I roll through where I work. My special circumstance is that I am now writing mystery novels and short fiction. Like most fiction writers, I make next to nothing for my work. I have been a journalist, a public affairs specialist, and co-founder and managing partner of a creative services company, but now I am on my own, spinning yarns, making up stuff.
I have several spots to work in my (sort of) “retirement” condo: my bedroom-office-hamshack (my recessive nerd gene finds its outlet with Amateur Radio); the lanai; and the recliner in the living room. However, I have cabin fever the minute I hit the deck in the morning, so I am often out the door, usually to an indie coffee shop. My other offsite workspace is, tada, the public library. There are many in the Denver area, all over the city (including some old ones with creaky wooden floors and nice dark oak wood trim), and the adjacent county, Arapahoe, has erected a series of class-A libraries as well. The really nice part about the library as a workspace is it is FREE — right in the middle of most writers’ price range.
Here is where the “think” comes in — co-working space versus coffee shops. I like coffee shops. I like working in them. I like the clattering noise that comes with them, probably because I started out as a reporter working for UPI and then the Rocky Mountain News, both of which offered noisy newsrooms, so I am used to the racket. Working in coffee shops, however, comes at a price. Writers must pay “rent” in the form of coffees and nibblies, so when the costs are added up over the course of a month, this “office expense” can run to, say, a hundred bucks (and probably more if you are a sucker for the nibblies like me). Eat a meal with the java and daily rent can run to ten, twelve bucks. That adds up over the course of the year, especially if you have a fixed pension and minimal royalties or are just starting out, and the tax man discourages writing off these types of expenses.
So, “think” about the monthly cost of coffee shop “rent” and compare it to the monthly cost of a co-working space that offers free coffee and even a few free nibblies. Such a space with a monthly “membership” fee (their word for “rent”) of, say two hundred bucks, might equal the costs (don’t forget gas or bus or train fare) spent moving around town from coffee shop to coffee shop, as I do. Plus, that membership fee is probably tax deductible. I happen to like the diversity o different java stops; I observe folks from different parts of the Metro as character studies; and, I see different places to set scenes in and around Denver. Yet, if I want to re-manage these expenses (like to write them off against royalties), there are other ways to find locations and people-watch.
When you co-work, it is the same place, the same faces, the same neighborhood, the same set up every day. However, that might be what you need, especially if you are not an old fart writing fiction, but a young enthusiast starting up a general freelance writing business. When I ran my agency, for a quarter century, I wanted one single place to go to every day for work.
Bottom line: just “think” through what kind of space works best for you and keep the monthly budget within reason — stable consistent work space/free/coffee/free nibblies versus diverse coffee shops around town with rent paid by the cup and nibblie. Starting out with no budget? PB&J, coffee in a thermos, and the public library.
Go write!
Richard J. Schneider spreads his limited money around to indie coffee shops in the Denver Metro while plugging away on the third book in his mystery novel series, FRACK: A Vic Bengston Investigation. Click here to see his previous novels and novellas at Amazon.
