Thoughts on Starting a Business

I am a sole proprietorship! By which I mean, I have a sole proprietorship! By which I mean, as soon as my official letter from the tax agency comes in the post (next week I hope) I will have had a sole proprietorship since the end of February. And some people claim that time is linear.

I’ve been wanting for some time to start a business, and I finally got the guts to do so. Scary stuff! I’m not sure why it’s so scary; I’m not actually investing money in it, only time (which I was already investing in my writing anyway), but it was scary all the same. It still kind of is. I bought bookkeeping software a few days ago but haven’t entered anything into it yet.

My business will have two main parts: writing and freelance translation. Although the writing is the “point” of the business and central to my long-term vision, in the beginning the bulk of the work (in terms of money earned, that is) will come from the translation. I have no ambition of actually making a living with it at this stage. The translating makes a nice extra income, which I have no doubt I could increase if I made more of an effort to find new clients. The writing will start out as spare change no doubt, but little by little I hope to see it become the major feature. This is long-term. Like, very long-term. Maybe that’s why it’s scary.

Anyway, I’m quite excited and more than a little nervous about this venture. I think it will be challenging, but I also think it will be very rewarding for me, particularly in the “take yourself seriously as a writer”-department. Wish me luck!