Fuelling Your Fire: Motivation Tips for Freelance Creatives

The Why Behind the Work

This time a year ago I was struggling creatively.

I’d been kicking around the idea of launching a podcast for years, but it never seemed like the right time. This time, though, I was sure I’d hit on the right formula. A clear log line.

Except I also had all the excuses, recent car accident, family obligations, work…you know, life.

But the idea wouldn’t go away. Heck, wanting to produce a podcast is what got me into voiceover in the first place. I then diverged, quite happily, I might add, into commercial, narration and e-learning voiceover, but that podcast thing, because I’m such a big fan of them, never really left me.

The problem was, I always had some excuse not to take action:

• How am I even going to juggle this new recording project with everything else I have going on?

• How am I going to come up with new podcast topic ideas every week?

• What if it sucks? Isn’t it better not to try than be publicly messy as I navigate this new skill set?

I didn’t say these were good excuses.

And if you go look up my podcasts Freelance Fitness and Pigiste pas Figiste, you’ll see that it was an entire year more before the trailer dropped. I spent that time not planning or creating, just…wallowing.

What I wasn’t willing to face was that I lacked the motivation to begin my podcast project. I was taxiing around in circles instead of lining up with the runway and taking off.

It’s not just personal projects that can sit on the sidelines due to a lack of motivation. We can be unmotivated by client projects as well. Maybe it’s decent money, but we’re bored. Or maybe unforeseen snags in production have us feeling frustrated, so we don’t want to look at it. Or maybe we’re frozen in panic as the deadline approaches.

Especially when we have colleagues and clients counting on us to be reliable, to deliver on time, the fruits of our creative labours.

When we lack motivation, we feel guilty, we self-reproach, we feel overwhelmed and unproductive. We hide our heads in the sand hoping it will go away on its own because we are creatives! What’s wrong with me? How can I not be inspired at every moment?

Let me reassure you that you are not the first, the last, or the only creative freelancer who has felt this way. It happens to us all. It’s normal.

But it is a problem, so let’s try to get our heads around it.

Fuelling your Freelance Fire

What opportunities are we missing out on when a lack of motivation weighs us down?

• Growth. Learning new skills pushes us out of our comfort zone.

• A display of our creative skills that could resonate with other like-minded individuals, leading to a collaboration that benefits both.

• Connection to others. We tend to close in on ourselves instead of opening up.

• Joy! Creation brings me joy. Sharing my experience in voiceover and fitness with you all brings me joy (see the point about connection above)

What sorts of things might be holding us back?

Imposter Syndrome

• You’re waiting for the right circumstances to manifest before taking action for your next creative endeavour.

• Not comfortable learning and becoming in public.

I am constantly experimenting and evolving this podcast, seeing what resonates with my listeners, what’s working, and what doesn’t. I’ve made changes along the way, almost from day 1, because it’s a living, breathing work in progress.

Yes, I listened to many tutorials first and went in with a plan, but there are so many things that can only be learned by experience. Things that someone can tell you, but that you can’t really know until you’re doing it yourself.

If I let the fear of not being perfect on Day 1 get in the way of starting, I never would have started! And then I wouldn’t be where I am today! What new learned skills might I have missed out on? (Confession time: I didn’t figure out how to mix down in stereo instead of mono until episode 3! I didn’t even realize it was a thing I’d be able to do. But, I do now!)

I chose to have a video exercise guide accompany each audio podcast episode, so I’ve had to learn how to edit video (imperfectly–I like to think of it as naturalistic and charming) but I get to practice my voiceover video dubbing skills when I narrate the videos I’ve made!

By giving myself permission to play and experiment in my podcast, I gain voiceover performance skills for auditions and jobs.

So, even if all your ideas are terrible that day, at least they’re out of the way. It’s still progress, it’s still getting the juices flowing. In the end, it’s still an accomplishment, even if it’s a little ugly and rough.

This realization also helps me in directed voiceover recording sessions. I don’t fear feedback anymore. I’m not worried that when they ask me to do it again, but differently, that I’ve done something wrong. I’ve comfortable now to explore and experiment to find the right read without thinking about sounding silly or amateur. Because if I’ve gone too far (too loud, too pushed, too bright, too sing-songy, too…whatever) I know that after we laugh it off, we’ll just try something else.

It’s part of the process.

You can always pull it back, but if you’ve never explored your edges, you will never know how big a space you really have to work in. Allow yourself a child’s grace of experimentation and evolution. How can you get better if you don’t practice? Each person is unique. Each space shape will be unique. You’ll have to discover your shape by yourself. No one can tell you what it is.

And what an invaluable tool it will be for you!

Lack of Inspiration

• You’ve run out of original ideas.

• Just thinking of this project drains what energy you have left.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t even motivated to write this post. There was a sense of obligation, of course, I have a publication schedule I do my best to respect. But I didn’t sleep at all well the night before so it was really tough to get my thoughts organized.

Besides coffee and exercise to wake me up. I had few other tricks I could lean on to help get this post going.

• I keep a running list of ideas. A document of random thoughts and ideas that might make for a good post or podcast subject. Some weeks I’ll add five to it, other times I need take one or two out because I’m drawing a blank. So I always have a pool to draw from if I need to.

• Proper sleep, proper breaks like weekends, evenings, and vacations are great ways to recharge your batteries and allow you to get out of the home or office to engage in experiences that can inspire your work down the line.

• If time is short, a quick walk around the block or a trip to the local cafe might help shake things up a bit. Inspiration comes from connection, openness and grounding. Get out of your head. Look, feel, sense around you, the other people sharing this space with you, observe and respond.

• Be inspired by music. I sometimes use music I feel matches the tone of the script I’m reading. I also have a have a feelings wheel, and list of archetypes to try on for different reads.

• If all else fails, pick your ideal customer, agent, whoever you want to be engaged with this idea of yours. What do they need from you? I use this trick all the time when voicing commercials and narrating videos. I speak to one specific person out of my imaginary audience. Someone I know needs to hear what I’m saying. I’ll even make up some extra dialogue that’s not in the text to help me get into the right tone and style for the read.

What about you. Who needs to hear your message the most? Imagine yourself talking to them. The conversation will flow naturally!

No Time for Creativity

• Too many tasks on your plate so there’s no time for anything but a template cut and paste.

• Too many tasks and not knowing where to start.

• Tasks that are part of your job, but are your least favourite so you keep putting them off.

I’m juggling a lot of responsibilities, voice-acting, podcasting, marketing, family life, etc. It’s a real balancing act to organize my day. And an unexpected event can easily upset the balance.

Staying focused is a challenge, especially since I work from home and so does my husband, because we share an office. There’s a lot of distraction around me above and beyond even the other voiceover business related tasks clamouring for my attention.

And speaking of those other voiceover business tasks, you know, the ones that aren’t the creative, fun recording jobs and auditions ones? I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post how I feel about them.

Sometimes I’m just not motivated.

OK. So you’re so choosing to take action, and not wait for motivation. Perfect. Because we don’t always have the luxury of time. Now, which of the 18 tasks should you focus on first? What to do when your motivation problem is an overwhelm problem and that clock is ticking?

Here are some things that work for me.

• Schedule things even if you’re the only one involved in the task. Book it out like it’s a meeting. It always makes me feel more accountable somehow when I see it in my calendar.

• Leave extra time for the unexpected. If you get it done faster, great! If not, at least the tasks won’t start piling up like a log jam.

• Small, quick tasks first, checked off and out of the way, leave me feeling more productive! Instead of doing the long one first and running out of time for the others.

• Have a process. I know I’ve mentioned this before regarding hiring external help, but this is still true for the tasks we must do ourselves. You should have a process to triage your various tasks to help you choose which to do first so you don’t waste time having to figure it out each day.

Turn Energy Into Action

We stall when we don’t feel like we’re making progress. But holding steady, grinding it out works most days. Inspiration comes in fits and starts; some days it flows like water, other days it’s like wading through waist-deep mud. I think only those outside the creative industry believe that creative life means staring at your screen while your muse flows through your fingers. I only wish that were true.

Whenever you’re feeling stuck, remember this…

• Lots of folks talk about making a movie one day, writing a script, or a novel, animated series, song, podcast, stand up special…but how many actually do? You are already doing it, you’ve taken that hardest of all steps, the first one.

• We have choices, because we’re the boss. We are freelancers because we like to decide our own fates. So choose your next challenge. If it’s boring, then maybe choose that first and reward yourself with a fun task later. If you lack inspiration, choose to shake things up. If you’re scared of disappointing your client, then choose confidence.

Life isn’t always filled with unicorns.

What else can we do to pull out of that stall and get soaring again?

Reach out to talk about your next project, to chat about voiceover or fitness.

Or, let’s schedule a discovery call so you can hear my booth in action!

Subscribe to my podcast for fun and functional business and exercise talk: Motivation: What to do when you don’t want to do