Q  What do you do?  A  I'm a freelance magazine journalist, which ­ in my case means I do everything from writing features to reviewing software, books, films and CDs. I'm also in the process of setting up an independent record label, and I design the odd Web site too. I've been working from home full-time for just over a year now.  Q  What was the deciding factor to help you to decide to work from home?  A  I crashed my car when I was on holiday, so I was stuck in the house with nothing to do. I did a lot of thinking about things and realised that I hated my job to the extent that it was making me miserable, so I decided I needed to do something about it. I'd wanted to be a journalist since I was a kid but had never really tried to get into it, so I decided to try a bit of brass neck and contacted a magazine with some story ideas. I ended up with my first commission and had enough work to quit my job and go self-employed within six months.  Q  Where do you work at home?  A  I've got a wee room at the front of the house, stacked to the ceiling with computer equipment, CDs and reference books, and I've got assorted portable bits and bobs so I can work from more or less anywhere. I've finally caved in and bought one of those Psion Organiser things, it means I can work from the garden on the rare occasions that the sun shines in Scotland <g>.  Q  Do you manage to keep your work and home life separate?  A  I don't, really, with writing it's just a case of locking yourself away when you're busy and catching up on other stuff when you're quiet. I think it's different for different types of people - a lot of writers find that discipline works for them, they'll sit down and write at the same time every day whether they're busy or not, which keeps their life nice and straightforward. I'm just not that kind of person, I'm a lot more chaotic <g>.  Q  What is the best thing about working from home?  A  Freedom. If you're not feeling particularly inspired, you can jump in the car and head for the beach, watch a film, sort out the garage or do any one of a million different non-work things. And you don't have to wear a shirt and tie, which is a definite bonus.  Q  What are the negative points about working at home?  A  You can say goodbye to your social life, holidays and time off when you're sick, especially when you're starting off. I always imagined spending the day in bed and then scribbling the odd article in the afternoons, but the reality is that you tend to start work first thing in the morning and keep going until the wee small hours, seven days a week. The other thing is what I call "freelance panic", where you don't want to say "no" to anybody in case they never offer you work again. If you're not careful, you can end up taking on far too much work it's not really worth it, there's no point earning sacks of cash if you're stressed and grumpy all the time. It can backfire, too, because there's a limit to how productive you can be. You're only as good as the last thing you wrote so, if you start submitting rush jobs, you can quickly lose your reputation with editors. If you do computer work you need to watch out for RSI (repetitive strain injury), too. It's definitely worth looking at some sort of voice recognition software if you're going to be using a PC every day. If that doesn't suit you, make sure you've set up everything in a safe, ergonomic way, or you'll soon end up in agony.  Q  Does your homeworking pay the bills?  A  The writing does, yes, because I tend to write for the bigger publishing companies and they tend to want biggish features (a commission to write four to eight magazine pages is fairly typical). I used to do some Web design and graphic design work for smaller local firms and got completely stiffed, either by late payment or non-payment. Setting up a record label is a money pit, though, I've just worked out all my costs and, even if we sell all our records, we're losing stacks of cash.  Q  How did you manage financially when you first started working at home?  A  I didn't really have any problems. I didn't take the plunge into self-employment until I was getting a regular amount of work from a few different magazines, and to start off with I supplemented the freelance writing with Web design work, a bit of freelance computer training, basically anything to bring in a few quid. One thing I did learn the hard way is that you shouldn't do work for your friends' businesses when you go self-employed. Taking someone to court for non-payment of invoices is a good way to ruin a beautiful friendship. If you're self-employed, you need to be really disciplined about tax. If you don't put money back for your tax bill from day one, you're storing up a lot of trouble. If you can't make head or tail of the Inland Revenue stuff, get an accountant. They'll save you a fortune, and they're not as expensive as you think they'll be. Don't forget about a pension, either. And spend £8 on the Lloyds TSB Tax Guide, it's a wee gem if, like me, you have problems counting to ten :-)  Q  What sort of work did you do before you worked at home?  A  I drifted, to be honest. I ended up in computers, then became a computer trainer, then ended up managing a division for a training company. Just ended up in the wrong job, I'm not the managerial type :-)  Q  How do you manage your time?  A  Very, very badly. I'm writing this, but I'm supposed to be working ;-) Over the last few weeks half of my time has been spent in recording studios, so I've had to bring a lot of deadlines forward to make room for that. The stuff I write tends to be last minute, "can you do this for Friday?" stuff, so I need to do things pretty much the minute I get the commission. I don't mind, though, I like the pressure. I do find that, if I'm not under pressure, I don't work - I need to have a bit of a crisis mentality, that's where I get the motivation from. You need to find something that motivates you, or you end up watching dodgy television programmes instead of working <g>.  Q  How do you cope with distractions at home?  A  People tend to assume that, if you're home, you're not working. You just have to be firm but polite, people soon get to know your routines. If someone calls and you're up to your eyeballs in work, arrange to call them back or pop round when you know you won't be busy.  Q  How do you cope with the isolation of working at home?  A  I don't find it isolating at all - most of my friends live miles away, some of them on different continents - so we communicate by E-mail anyway. I'm in touch with most of them every day. To start off with I did nothing but work, that was pretty isolating, but it's the old cliché of "making room in your life for your life", you need to make time to meet up with friends and catch up on gossip, or just go to the pub and have a night out.  Q  What two pieces of advice would you suggest to someone considering working from home?  A  Do something you love doing. If you don't enjoy your work and find it a struggle, then homeworking will rapidly turn into a living nightmare. It's the cliche of "working to live, not living to work". Do a lot of research before making the break. Put together a business plan, learn about tax, research your market. All that kind of stuff is desperately, desperately dull but it makes you think seriously about what you're doing. If you still think going it alone is a good idea once you've done your sums, then you're probably right.  Q  What else needs to be said?  A  If you're leaving the security (and the monthly salary) of a full-time job, going it alone is probably the scariest decision you'll ever make. No matter how well prepared you are, you'll wake up on your first day as a homeworker thinking "Oh nooooo! What have I done?" But it can also be the best decision you'll ever make. I've gone from a job I hated to one I absolutely love. I wish I'd done this five years ago. If writing's your thing, there's no shortage of magazines looking for journalists, but you have to be realistic about it. Top Gear magazine isn't going to give you a Porsche to review, and Q magazine won't commission you to interview Oasis. They're not exactly short of people who want to do the glamorous stuff, so you need to find your own niche and find magazines that will be interested in what you want to write about. If you fancy magazine journalism, analyse the magazines you want to write for: they all have a particular way of writing, a particular approach to stories and so on, and that's something you'll need to take on board. Compare a tabloid with, say, an Internet magazine. Both might run a story about Internet movie sites, but the tabloid will take a completely different approach than the magazine would. They'll use different language, too. Newspapers tend to write using short sentences, short words and simple ideas, whereas magazines tend to be more in-depth and written for a more literate audience. Even magazines aimed at the same audiences will be different. One might be serious, another one sarcastic, another one cynical. If you don't have a track record in journalism, consider submitting pieces to some of the on-line magazines that are out there. The good ones, not the sites that will take anything from anybody. You won't get paid but it means you're getting your work published, and that's a good start.

Thank you Gary for sharing!