It’s December 1st, which means that I have been freelancing full-time for 11 years, can you believe it?! Normally I celebrate with a day pass at the nicest coworking space I can find and break bread (well, cupcakes) and sometimes bubbly with strangers, but it’s still a pandemic! Instead, today, I enjoyed Wicked Good Cupcakes at home and tweeted out 11 pieces of unsolicited advice I’ve gleaned in my freelance journey. I wanted to post those here, too.
11. My first piece of counterintuitive advice is… don’t meet with every editor who asks. Especially if they just want to vaguely discuss stories they might consider assigning you or another 10 writers. (Unless you just want to grab coffee or something; that’s okay, too.) People often take these meetings with bright hopes but sometimes it’s editors feeling out your best ideas that they don’t end up using, AKA two hours of your time that should have been a rejection email.
10. Another counterintuitive piece of advice: carve out time for yourself unabashedly. It’s one of the few perks you get as a freelancer that you’ve exchanged institutional support, a steady paycheck, benefits, etc. for and you should use it. For a year I would go to the gym in the morning and was in the best shape of my life. (My coach tried to convince me that walking barefoot pulls free electrons from the Earth into the body and wanted to talk about my attitude when I called bullshit, but whatever.) I literally was gone from 9am to noon, the best work hours of the day, three days a week, because I could. I recommend this level of self-care, or something like it. Also, people for the most part don’t notice if you stop working 12-hour days, or whatever.
9. Any organization that is shocked (shocked!) that you want to discuss a bad contract provision is one you don’t want to be working for. They may not make changes, but they should at least check. It’s a serious red flag when they lose their shit simply because you brought it up.
8. This is a no-brainer, but I don’t think you can really push yourself as a freelancer without constantly seeking out education even when it doesn’t seem to directly tie into your beat. Think MOOCs, video courses, conferences, in-person classes (for credit or not), coaching, eading industry books, watching panel discussions and screenings (like this one!) and just soaking up knowledge. If you’re sick of your beat, find an interesting new angle to explore or switch beats.
7. I was lucky in that I didn’t get this pushed on me until after I’d already been freelancing for a while, but you don’t have to pretend to be neutral or hide details of who you are or default to the lived, white, cis, male, American experience that’s considered “objective.” Fairness and accuracy are important. Pretending that something abhorrent or factually inaccurate deserves equal consideration is not. And I don’t think responding to bad faith accusations of bias by doubling down on blandness and feigned neutrality is the solution.
There’s actually some pretty amazing writing about this from people like Wesley Lowery and Lewis Raven Wallace and others that I’m happy to share with anybody who has a pulse and is interested. Find organizations that share your values or have missions you support. And not just on paper. (Yes, easier said than done, but they are out there.)
6. No matter what editors tell you, simultaneous submissions are the norm and nobody will get mad at you. (Well, one person got mad at me in 11 years). If I pitched and waited for each story idea, I’d write one piece a quarter and be well below the poverty line. I mean, I’ll give editors who respond quickly and who I have a relationship with first dibs sometimes, but after that it’s a matter of trying to place a story and what I think is the best and quickest way to do that.
5. People tell you not to be friends with your sources, which is generally good advice, but it’s…complicated. Having trusted contacts who can share key pieces of information or point you in the right direction is not something any editor will complain about. It’s complicated, but personally I would much rather have to tell an editor I’m not the best person to write a piece now and again if I’m too close to it than try to sequester myself rather than being part of a brilliant community.
4. This one ties into what I wrote about carving out time for yourself but I really think hobbies that have nothing to do with journalism or with your beat are so, so important. (For me that’s been guitar and hiking and jiu-jitsu and weightlifting and cooking and baking… I also take nature photos that are unrelated to work, have done random TV podcasts, want to get really good at stargazing and I play a lot of board games. I read books about philosophy…., etc.) If you must find a way to tie a hobby into work to justify it to yourself, realize that it can help improve your observation skills, give you a way to connect with sources, give you new ideas, etc. For me it’s given me desperately needed perspective. I went through years where I would literally eat, sleep and breathe work and I’m really glad they’re over… sometimes the first step is going on a walk or picking up a novel or watching a documentary about trains.
3. Trust your instincts. I can come up with a million stories about this but a recent one was when a Pulitzer prize winning professor told me I spent too much time thinking about security, which would negatively impact my career and stop me from getting scoops and stories… About 60-70% of my income in 2020 was related in some way to security. And I can’t count on both hands the number of times an editor rejected a story that was published (by me or someone else) and did tremendously well. Advice is good, but sometimes you’re best to ignore it.
2. Keep pushing. Push yourself and push the industry. Join groups like IWW FJU, NWU, and even Study Hall, groups that who have a vision and a dream of what the industry could look like. But also push yourself to do and learn more than you ever thought possible. That means to stop bragging about how you’re “bad at math” or “bad at scheduling” or “bad at showing up to meetings when you say you’re going to” or “bad at spelling.” But it also means to really work on your areas of weakness in a serious way. Take a statistics class and a data journalism class if you’re “bad at numbers.” Take a narrative writing class if you’re better at reporting than the craft of writing (hand raised). Don’t settle for mediocre or get too comfortable; this isn’t an industry where you can coast. This can also be about pushing yourself to collaborate more meaningfully or to build community or to humanize the team you’re working with. (I send holiday cards and gifts to editors every year, and it’s one of my favorite traditions.) We all know what we need to improve.
1. And my final piece of advice before I go back to demolishing this Wicked Good Cupcake and trying to think of what perfect mid-day cocktail I should whip up to accompany it might be… Keep pushing for your dream byline or dream job. There are always organizations you’d drop everything to work with, whether it’s freelance or staff or some other arrangement altogether. I’m sure you can think of a few…I’ve been lucky to write for or work with many of my dream organizations (honestly too long to list here) over the past 11 years but I still have The Markup, ProPublica, etc. in my sights. Dream big and reach for the stars.💕✨
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