Ever since I embarked on this little journey of mine, not once have I regretted my decision to become a freelance writer. There are certainly disadvantages to taking this career choice, but for me, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. That’s not to say that freelance writing — or freelance web design, coding, or whatever else — is for everyone.

Before you decide to give freelance writing a try, you may want to consider some of the questions that I outline below.

1. Do you have enough savings to endure your growing pains?
The reality is that you will not be making a full-time income right from the get-go unless you happen to be both really talented and really lucky. It can take several months, or even a year, before you secure enough contracts and clients to make up what you believe to be a regular full-time income. People won’t know who you are and you wouldn’t have established yourself as a niche freelance writer yet, so be prepared to dip into your savings for the first little while. Also be aware that you’ll need to survive the ebb and flow of your income, unlike the steady stream you get from a salaried position. Are you prepared for this?

2. Are you organized, motivated, and self-driven?
Because you won’t really have a set working schedule or a boss breathing down your neck, motivation becomes a huge factor in your success. It’s far too easy to slack off and not get your work done in the best and most timely manner possible. Furthermore, staying organized is of critical importance. Keeping accurate records, remembering which projects for which clients are due when, and staying on top of all the other menial tasks can be a challenge. You may think you’re motivated and organized, but that tune may change after a few months of working for yourself.

3. Are you comfortable with all the other roles you’ll have?
You may be an exceptional writer, but how are you with accounting? Customer service? Sales? When you run your own freelance writing business, you’ll be wearing a lot of different hats. In addition to the actual writing, you’ll need to keep track of all your customer’s invoices and payments (accounting), appease unhappy clients (customer service), and solicit new customers on a regular basis (sales). And then there are all sorts of administrative things to do too. By contrast, when you work for a big company, you typically get pigeon-holed into a few select tasks. With freelance writing, you do it all (unless you can afford to outsource).

4. Can you find a healthy life-work balance?
As mentioned above, motivation can become an issue, but so can finding a healthy life-work balance. Because you can make money at any hour of the day, you could feel like you should be making money every hour of the day. I don’t know about you, but an intense feeling of guilt can sometimes rear its ugly head when I’m not working. The laptop is right there. I could be making money. Don’t forget to take breaks (but not too many) and enjoy life, while staying as productive as possible. Burnout is really easy, so be careful.

5. Do you really love writing?
This sounds obvious enough, but you’d be surprised how many potential freelancers realize that they don’t like writing as much as they thought they would. When you’re blogging for fun, writing comes easy. When you’re producing countless articles on a daily basis, the task can get pretty exhausting. To be a successful freelance writer, you’ll really want to enjoy writing, because you’ll be doing a lot of it. If you can manage to update your blog on at least a daily basis, you might be able to handle the load of a freelancer.

These questions are by no means exhaustive, but I hope I offered a glimpse into what you should think about before considering a career as a freelance writer. It’s not for everyone, but those who love it, love it a lot.

Of the restaurants that I will be enjoying as part of Dine Out Vancouver, Sip Resto-Lounge is probably the one with the biggest gimmick. The idea is that every item on their menu has been cooked, marinated, or infused with some form of alcohol. Realistically, most of the alcohol burns away in the cooking process, but it’s enough of a gimmick to at least get a few people through the door.

Sip Resto-Lounge is also one of the cheaper Dine Out Vancouver restaurants participating this year, because their three-course menu is only $25, as opposed to the $35 being charged at places like FigMint Restaurant and Lounge. I can’t say for sure, but I think Sip was renovated from a casual burger or grill place, because the open kitchen is right at the front of the restaurant. The only things you’ll find in the back are washrooms and the dishwasher.

On with the food.

Beef Robata and Butter Chicken Drumette Duo: I enjoyed the flavor of the beef tenderloin satays (which were cured with Sapporo beer), as they were reasonably tender and seasoned well. Unfortunately, the butter chicken drumette (served with peach mango liqueur chutney) didn’t taste like authentic butter chicken. There was no curry-like flavor at all.

Blue Crab Cake and Grilled Prawn Duo: The crab cake — seared with Grey Goose L’orange mustard vinaigrette) had almost no crispness to it, falling apart a little too easily, but the fire-grilled prawns were fine. The sauce was nice though.

Pesto Tagliatelle: Although I normally like egg noodles, especially since they’ve been deglazed with Jackson Triggs chardonnay, the pesto flavor was a little over-powering and the pasta was on the drier side of things.

Blackened Sockeye Salmon: You can’t dine at a fine Vancouver restaurant without seeing at least a few salmon offerings. The Hennessey honey-like glaze made for a nice sweetness to both the fish and the rice, but they perhaps should have dialed back on the sweetness by a notch or two.

The Filet: Six ounces of AAA tenderloin, rolled in steak spice, and marinated in Jack Daniels whiskey. I asked for medium rare, but the beef came back a little closer to rare. I was fine with that, because I prefer steak that is slightly undercooked rather than overcooked. Nice and tender.

Triple Chocolate Mousse: Although they say that it was topped with white chocolate, I think all I got was a whole lot of whipped cream. The alcoholic content came from some Bailey’s Irish Cream and I was glad that the sweetness of the chocolate wasn’t overbearing.

Cheesecake Duo: Your eyes are not deceiving you. Those are the same ceramic tea cups as they use for dim sum. These cheesecakes, if you can even call them that, seem like something you’d make at home. They didn’t even pack the crust; the base was more akin to loose bread crumbs.

Sip Resto-Lounge feels much more like a bar or a lounge than it does a restaurant. The tables are very small and we were sitting on bar stools. The food also seems like slightly upper-class bar food with quality to match. I wouldn’t say that I’m displeased with the food or the service, but there’s nothing here that would make me want to come back for more… especially since I can’t taste the alcohol at all.

What do you get when you cross We Own the Night with Training Day? Somewhere in between, you just might find an upcoming movie called Pride and Glory. I came across the trailer to this film while flipping through channel surfing and then I stumbled across “Nothing But Trailers” on HDnet.

The main reason why I am interested in Pride and Glory is that it stars Ed Norton, one of the actors that I enjoy watching most. Edward Norton was absolutely brilliant in films like American History X and Red Dragon, so I fully expect him to steal the screen yet once again in Pride and Glory. (I hope it doesn’t bomb like The Illusionist.) It certainly helps that he has guys like Jon Voight (who was great in Varsity Blues) and Colin Farrell (exceptional in Phone Booth) to round the cast. Yes, Pride and Glory could just turn out to be another cop movie, but the trailer has me captivated. It looks simply brilliant.

The plot summary on IMDB reads:

A saga centered on a multi-generational family of New York City Police officers. The family’s moral codes are tested when Ray Tierney (Edward Norton), investigates a case that reveals an incendiary police corruption scandal involving his own brother-in-law (Colin Farrell). For Ray, the truth is revelatory, a Pandora’s Box that threatens to upend not only the Tierney legacy but the entire NYPD.

Pride and Glory is reportedly finished shooting, but no release date has been announced yet.

It goes without saying that the goal of my free video game contest is to increase the number RSS subscribers to this blog. I’ve been struggling to get over the 200 subscriber hump for some time now, so I figured a contest would be a good strategy to accomplish that feat. So, how has it done so far?

On Monday, we saw a subscriber count of exactly 200, but it was on Friday — the day after the video game contest was announced — that the Feedburner widget was giving us back a number of 207. On the other days, I managed to stay in the 190-200 range, but that’s just not good enough. I want it to stay over 200 on a consistent basis.

As you recall, I’m giving away a copy of Pirates of the Burning Sea, the latest MMORPG from Sony Online Entertainment. The swashbuckling themed computer game just launched this week and people are already starting to populate the virtual online world, upgrading their pirates and seafaring adventurers. You won’t want to miss out on this action, so be sure to enter the contest before it ends 11:59pm PST on February 14, 2008.

Entering the contest couldn’t be easier. All you have to do is subscribe to Beyond the Rhetoric by email. I won’t spam you, I promise! All you’ll get is a single email each day, featuring whatever post(s) I happened to write that day. Don’t worry if you’ve already subscribed using more conventional means; you can still enter by subscribing via email.

Although it’s not required, I’d highly appreciate any posts and speedlinks that you’re willing to do on your own blogs, letting people know about my contest. Who knows? Maybe the first five people to link back to the original contest post will get mentioned in an upcoming What’s Up Wednesdays post.

It’s Wednesday again. To help all of you (and me) get over that mid-week hump, it’s time to go for a brief spin around in the blogosphere to see what’s going on this week. One of the bigger tidbits serves as the inspiration for the title of this post and it is the last entry mentioned here. It just goes to show you that providing some free link love to me can result in some free link love back to you! It’s all about karma baby.

Jennifer Mattern is a freelance writer like me and she recently had the opportunity to interview a WAHM freelance writer, giving us a glimpse into the critical life-work balance that is needed for that kind of lifestyle. Make no mistake, the life of a work-at-home mom is far from easy!

Optempo pits two of the most popular blogging platforms up against one another, going through all the different aspects that may sway you one way or another. I think it’s obvious enough from my end which I prefer for niche blog hosting: Wordpress or Blogger. If you want to be taken seriously as a blogger, you need Wordpress.

Vandelay Design writes an article that is particularly timely for me, because it addresses 21 factors to consider before a redesign. I’m thinking of a new layout for both my freelance writing site and Beyond the Rhetoric, so I’ll be sure to keep these factors in mind.

Ed Lau is one of my buddies from dot com pho, but he does manage to eat food other than Vietnamese rice noodles from time to time. For example, he recently munched on some Taiwanese beef noodles with the root of all evil. That’s one tall glass you’ve got, Ed.

Contest Blogger’s Phil Van Treuren has launched another site! It has the same philosophy as Contest Blogger, except it highlights the advertising options. As such, Phil has called his latest creation Advertising Blogger. And get this, Beyond the Rhetoric is one of the first sites featured! Thanks for the free press, Phil!

Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in a Manhattan apartment earlier today. The SoHo apartment is owned by actress Mary-Kate Olsen (and presumably sublet by Heath) and police do not suspect that there was any foul play.

That said, Ledger was found naked in a bed, surrounded by several pills that were also scattered around the room. The cause of Heath Ledger’s death has not yet been confirmed by the New York Police Department, but this information will likely be forthcoming in the days and weeks to come. His approximate time of death was 3:30pm EST on January 22nd. This report comes via Slashfilm.

Although Heath Ledger is not one of the five actors that I enjoy watching most, he has been involved in several projects that I did like watching, including The Brothers Grimm, A Knight’s Tale, and The Patriot. He’s a part of a generation of actors who have shown a lot of promise, demonstrating enough talent that they may one day usurp mainstays like Al Pacino and Tom Hanks. You cannot deny the acting ability of guys like Heath, Matt Damon, Ed Norton, and Jude Law.

Rest in peace to one of the finer actors of our time. Heath Ledger is survived by his wife Michelle Williams and daughter Matilda. Look for Ledger as he stars as the Joker in The Dark Knight, which is currently in post-production.

Update (2/6/08): Here’s a quote from the Ledger family statement - “While no medications were taken in excess, we learned today the combination of doctor-prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy. Heath’s accidental death serves as a caution to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication, even at low dosage.”