In many ways, being a magazine writer involves existing in a vacuum. Most magazine writers work from home offices, where their only social interaction on any given day may be with the family dog. Magazine writers have little worry about office politics, since they're rarely in an office, and their schedules vary along with their workloads. Sometimes, 12- to 15-hour days are required, while at other times, you can simply take an entire Wednesday afternoon off and head out to a movie.

There are good and bad things that go along with this scenario, all of which create psychological demands and rewards. Whether the rewards outweigh the demands in your case is a question only you can answer.

Solitude, or Solitary Confinement?

For starters, take the notion of working from a home office. Many magazine writers find this a liberating experience, one that allows maximum freedom and creativity. A laptop with wireless Internet access is literally a portable work space that you can take to the nearest Starbucks, beach, or local park, wherever you find the most inspiration for your writing.

Since the only way that editors can reach you is via telephone or e-mail, you can literally shut out the world if you need a few hours to write. Nobody will come knocking on your office door to interrupt you. There simply isn't anybody else around.

On the flip side for most magazine writers is that working from home comes with new demands. Personal calls in the middle of the day typically increase, since your friends and family know you are at home instead of in an office, where it is harder to talk about private matters. Spouses may assume that since you are home, you will handle more of the domestic chores that need doing, such as laundry washing and lawn mowing.

Even your stay-at-home-mom neighbors, while trying to be friendly, can become challenging distractions when they invite you to join them for midday gatherings when you otherwise would be typing a feature article on your computer. If you're a mother or father yourself, your children may have a tough time understanding that even though you are home, you cannot play with them, feed them lunch, or walk them home from the bus stop.

All of these things can add up to an intense pressure to defend what you do — writing magazine articles — as a “real job.” Yes, it is a good job, one that comes with the ability to do your work from Starbucks or the beach or the local park whenever you choose, but that degree of freedom is not a secret to the people in your life. The resulting changes in their behavior may become a drag on your productivity.

Insider Versus Outsider Status

Another psychological challenge that comes with working from home is the feeling of being “out of the loop.” No matter how many assignments you receive from any given magazine, and no matter how much loyalty you may feel toward a certain title, you will never be on par with its staff members when it comes to knowing what's going on inside the office.

A lot of magazine writers enjoy this situation, since it frees you from office politics in all its forms. You can't get caught up in all the employee gossip, for instance, unless you have someone to gossip with. Unless you make the effort to pick up the telephone and involve yourself in that kind of behavior, it will rarely become part of your life.

On the other hand, some magazine writers find that being out of the loop is a bit disconcerting, especially writers who have left regular company jobs to begin new careers as freelancers. When you work in the office, you often have more say about the final product, whatever it may be, while as a writer at home, you rarely even see the final product before it goes out to the public.

By the same token, you hardly ever know about the comings and goings of key staff members — meaning you may have trouble figuring out where your editor fits in the pecking order, and whether he can actually support you and your continued assignments should problems arise. Again, these kinds of psychological demands and rewards are problems for some magazine writers but are considered benefits by others. Such is also the case with varying work schedules.

Varying Workloads

When you work as a magazine writer, you are likely to have assignments land on your desk at varying paces. Some weeks you will have more work than you can do in a string of eighteen-hour days, while other weeks you may have just enough work to keep you busy for a few hours. There will be times when you send out a dozen query letters and receive rejection after rejection, and then other times when your ideas seem to hit the mark with every pitch.

Many successful magazine writers enjoy this ebb and flow because it gives them a chance to “go hard” at their work for a while, and then to slow down and recharge their creative batteries when necessary. Most successful magazine writers also like to use their downtime constructively, either to work on ideas they previously had to put aside or to market themselves to new editors and magazines.

Other magazine writers, however, find lulls in their schedules to be an open door to the vices of procrastination. Some of the many distractions writers working at home say they fall prey to when there is not enough work to be done include:

• Overeating

• Watching television

• Sleeping

• Playing video or computer games

• Surfing the Web aimlessly

If you're the type of person who needs a constant stream of work from a supervisor to remain motivated, then you need to seriously consider whether you can handle the psychological demand of having to close the fridge, put down the television remote control, and get back to work on a daily basis — all because you know you have to, not because somebody else is telling you to.

It can be very easy to call watching CNN all afternoon “research” if you aspire to write for a magazine like Newsweek, but planting yourself on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and listening intently to Lou Dobbs is not going to help land you any assignments.