Freelancing in voiceover is a hard f*#kin slog… how do we cope?

Aah, the sad, lonely life of an artist… [cue haunting melody from the tiniest violin]

I, and the majority of my voice actor friends, work mostly from a home studio. There is no studio receptionist, there is no engineer, no cast-mates, no commute to set amongst a gaggle of entertaining strangers.

As a creative profession, as well, there can be a hell of a lot of quiet days, quiet weeks, times when the work seems to be slipping away and we book nothing and oh yes, the doubt starts to take hold: Am I no good at this? Am I a complete failure?

We’re creatives, we feel big feelings, okay?

This topic came up recently in the Aussie Voice Over discord group – how do we, as solo freelance voice actors, keep going through the tough times when there’s no team to help out, and no one to give us a thumbs up on the way to the office lunch room on a bad day?

My two answers were:

I keep going because I HAVE to. 

In the past, in a couple of different situations with my personal life, I gave up on acting. I figured I could be happy without it. I had beautiful kids, plenty of money, hobbies to practice, etc etc…. 

Friend, no. I was not happy without some kind of acting in my life. Giving up on pursuing the thing I’ve absolutely LOVED TO BITS for decades was a bad plan and I was miserable.

So now I know that even if the hard times and months of slow bookings feel soul-destroying, giving up would be worse. That’s whatcha call motivation.

I remember to enjoy and savour every little moment of recognition, joy and validation.

Last week, I submitted a voiceover audition that I wasn’t quite sure of (something a bit different than what I usually book), and then lo-and-behold, my agent sent an email saying “This is a beautiful audition, Sumara, thank you.” Like, wow! That doesn’t objectively mean a lot but, well, it absolutely means a lot! I celebrate it because every little reminder that I’m good at this shit is one step forward.

There are always plenty of small moments in between the rarer big moments of success. Being shortlisted on a pay-to-play site. Seeing the website traffic jump a few points. A VO friend saying “hey I love that voice you did!”. People on LinkedIn laughing at a silly post.

Making people laugh on LinkedIn is bigtime success actually, if you ask me. Those people are a tough audience.

The other key ingredient: community.

The online voiceover community has its issues, like any group, but it also has love, support, celebration, friendship, advice, and gorgeous gorgeous people to laugh and cry with. I have a Zoom every week with two VO besties who cheer me on and keep me accountable while also just being awesome friends and providing some much-needed social contact in the middle of a work week. I have another Zoom once a month with another group of VOs called my Accountabili-buddies. (Groups work better if they have a silly name.)

There’s also Discord channels, facebook groups, and – if you can contain the doomscrolling – there’s a lotta joy to be found in the creative communities on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Insta etc.

So when my whole life feels like a failure and I’m tragically moaning about the chance that I’ll never ever see another voiceover booking ever again in my whole terrible miserable existence…. there are people who understand and can remind me to stop being so darn melodramatic.

Then the good times will return, I will feel like the champion of the world for a little while, the bank account will be blessed with abundance, and I’ll forget the melodrama for a minute because I’m doing the thing I was always meant to do.

That’s how we keep going. 😁