Notes from a Hired Pen: 10 thoughts on 20 years of full time freelancing

Readers!

 

I have now been a full time freelancer for 20 years. Wow! When I quit my last full time job to freelance, I said I’d do it until I crashed out. I never expected it to become a life-defining career. Of course I have some thoughts on the experience, and I’ve written a lot of them in my ebooks. But as I thought about what I wanted to say to celebrate, I came up with 10 overarching thoughts that I haven’t articulated in quite this way before. They might ruffle some feathers, and that’s fine. I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve earned the right to say what I want.

 

Not everything is copy. I’ve written too many personal essays to count, and yes I wish I could take a few of them back. I’m mostly fine with sharing my experiences, but in a few cases, I prodded myself to do so for the money. I also had editors ask me to write about a topic, and I forced it instead of asking myself if I really had anything useful to say, and if I might be better off just saying it to a small group of friends.

I got much better at deciding yes or no over time, and I don’t write as many personal essays anymore because of it. There’s just too much that you have to give up sometimes to make a point. Figuring out out can be hard, because sometimes it is worth it, even if it’s draining. When I wrote about my first dog dying in 2017, it was a physically and mentally exhausting process, but I still get emails about how it’s helped other people. I’m proud of it. It’s probably the most important thing I’ve written in my life.

 

Don’t read the comments. Don’t read them on the article, don’t read them if the article is posted to Facebook, and don’t read what people have to say about your books on Amazon and Goodreads. I don’t even know how many stars my books have because I absolutely refuse to look. There is nothing good that can come of reading people scream about how much they hate you. Are there some well meaning comments on my work? I’m sure there are — and I ask my editors to tell me if they see a comment they think I’d appreciate. But most of the time people comment to lash out, not necessarily because they didn’t like what I said, but because they’re mad they’re not in the position to be saying something a lot of other people will read. The comment section is one of the few platforms platform they can grab, and they will use it to try to burn you to the ground. This is especially true if you are a woman writing about sports, because how dare I.

You can tell me to brush it off, it means nothing, but think about how those “nothings” compound over 20 years — or even longer because the first form of a comment I got was in 1998, on one of the first pieces I ever wrote for my college newspaper. The anonymous letter writer said I deserved to be pushed out of a plane (and yes I figured out who wrote it, and yes he admitted that he wrote it because he was jealous and wanted to knock me down a peg).

These people already invade my inbox, usually using make up email addresses and names in an attempt to scoop out the bottom of their bowels and throw it into my face. I don’t need to be seeking out what they’re also saying anonymously on public platforms.

I was writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer at a time when they didn’t moderate comments, and a social media person there tried to tell me I should read them anyway. I told her they didn’t pay me enough to endure that kind of abuse (she also tried to tell me that sometimes I should write for free, so what does she know). The same is true now.

 

Do not write for free. If someone can’t afford to pay you, they can’t afford to publish. And a lot of the time? They can afford to pay you, but they just don’t want to. Remember when the Huffington Post started out by begging people write for “exposure?” When Ariana Huffington sold the site for $135 million in 2011, those writers got nothing. Some of them tried — but why? We TOLD you not to write for free, and we TOLD you this would happen. An already rich woman got richer off of your labor.

Begging writers to work for anything but money is a scam, nothing more, nothing less. Don’t fall for it.

Here’s the worst example of someone who tried to pull this on me: When I was promoting my second Jersey Shore book, a local TV station wanted me to do live hits every Friday afternoon from a different spot along the shore. They offered me $0 — no money for travel costs either, nor would there be any help with the wardrobe, hair and makeup that TV requires. I am surprised they didn’t combust upon reading my response.

Of course there are some exceptions. I’ve done some editing for a local animal shelter, where I also walked dogs, in my capacity as a volunteer. But if I’m writing for free, it’s going to be on this website and newsletter. That’s about it.

 

Opportunities will be better, and worse. About 10 years ago, a mentor told me I should really try to get a feature writing job at a newspaper, because that would help me develop as a writer. I think he was right, but there were really no good, stable newspaper jobs to be found. There haven’t been any stable magazine or newspaper jobs in the entire time I’ve been a journalist. I graduated college in 2002 into a recession, and I was told not to bother applying at the local paper because I didn’t have a journalism degree.

Jobs have come along since. I was later recruited to apply for a job at the same paper but was told I’d be starting at the bottom despite my experience so I passed (and the person they did hire was subsequently laid off). The last time I was approached about taking a full time job at a major publication, I was told that the salary would be on parity with what I made now, but I wouldn’t have much vacation, and I’d have to work in Manhattan, despite the paper not having returned to office yet after working from home during the worst of COVID. I didn’t even bother to apply.

Freelancing has gotten me around some of the bias against anyone who didn’t go to J-School, and I’ve had a lot more flexibility to stretch and write a lot of different kinds of pieces — reported features, essays, and goofy stuff. I’ve also been able to just stop working for an editor who was inappropriate with me, or not work with one at all, as happened when one such male editor followed me back to my hotel room at a conference. But I sometimes look at the cliques that have formed from people who started out the same time I did who managed to stay in it as full time employees, and I can be a little jealous. Would my books have sold better? Would I have gotten support to make runs at national magazine awards? But also, I didn’t want to live in New York or Washington, D.C., and some of the people in those same groups have lost their jobs one, two, even three times. And those who are still in it? Yeah, mostly white males.

I can think about what my life would have been like otherwise, but I’m still glad I’m in journalism, working in a way that gives me the kind of work/life balance that I don’t think I could have otherwise.

 

No one will care about you, or your money, as much as you do. If you’re paid late, if someone tries not to pay you, if someone tries to pay you less, it’s going to be on you to get your money. Because no one — not your editor, not the publisher, not even some group pretending to be a union for freelancers — is going to care about you getting paid on time as much as you. Your editor may want to help, of course! But at the end of the day, the onus of making sure money is deposited into your account is yours. This is why I don’t tolerate chronically late payers. If they’re not going to respect me as their business partners, then they are not worth my time.

I learned this with book publishing too. Generally when you write a book, you get an advance, part of which is paid to you at the start of the project. Then you can also get a payment part way through, and a final payment when you submit the full thing. With my memoir, I’d turned in the full manuscript but because the lawyers were dicking around, I hadn’t been paid one penny. My editor and my agent kept saying they’d figured it out very soon, which stretched into months. When the publisher wanted me to start revising the manuscript, I refused and said I wouldn’t do one more goddamn thing until they paid me. I did this against the advice of my agent, but I got my money. And it turns out that agent didn’t really care about me anyway, which is why I fired her, and have a different one now.

 

It’s not a competition. We all come into freelancing with different skills, experiences and ideas. So the idea that we’re in some kind of pitched battle with each other for story spots is foolish. I have learned so much from my fellow freelancers, especially those who write for the same outlets and editors as I do. Any freelancer who thinks this is a competition is not going to be someone who will help you along in your own career. I haven’t encountered many of these guys (and yes they were all guys) but they’re almost always mean, petty and think more of their abilities than how far those abilities will carry them. We’re all in this together, and best practices will lift all freelance boats.

Also, story stealing by publications is very very rare. I’ve only had it happen three times in 20 years, and in one case, it was so blatant (I was CCed on the email saying they were going to assign it to another writer) that I was given a profuse apology, and a much easier assignment to make up for it. If you’re pitching these big publications, they are getting a zillion pitches a day. Editors at different sections can’t even agree on what to pay their freelancers let alone share who is pitching them what ideas. For example, if you send a pitch to the general inbox, and something on that topic runs in the health, it’s extremely unlikely that your email ever got to the health editor, and it’s probably one of 25 such spins on that topic they’ve gotten that week (also: don’t pitch the general inbox if you can avoid it).

I had a man ask me what to do because he said a publication stole his idea about running an essay on single parenting. How on earth is single parenting a narrow enough idea that someone can claim an essay about that experience was taken? If you do think your story idea was stolen, take a breath and think about the logistics of what it would take to actually happen before yelling about it on social media. I saw one freelancer just about end his career that way. He made such wild and insulting accusations for what was, again, a very broad idea, that he put himself on a lot of peoples’ ” do not assign” lists.

 

Write what you want to read. In the early 2010s, I took a shot at writing narrative non-fiction because that was The Thing to do. I was good at it and won a few small awards, but I realized that I didn’t really like it. Plus, trying to do so as a freelancer was a huge financial drag — and no one was then or now is trying to fix it. When I went to a conference in 2012 for freelancers about narrative non-fiction and asked if we’d be talking about the money angle of it, the organizer laughed. And when I asked about it in a panel, I was told by an editor at one of the biggest magazines in the world “you have to figure it out on your end.” I guess generational wealth is supposed to tide you through! Aside from the money part, I also didn’t read narrative non-fiction. It just wasn’t a draw for me. So why was I trying to write it? Because other people told me to? What a waste.

Do I like reading business news? I do! But one of the reasons I took a shot at writing a novel is because that’s what I like to read. I don’t know if it’ll work out, but I had a lot more fun trying it than I ever did working on a narrative non-fiction magazine story.

 

Use, but don’t abuse, your flexibility — and protect it from other people too. Being able to control my time is one of the best things about being a freelancer. But it’s also easy to let things slide. If I don’t want to market, I can just take a nap or go to the movies, but the marketing won’t be done. And if I take too many trips, I can spend too much money without also working to pay for that travel. It’s a dance you’ll figure out over time. I’m helped greatly by having a daily routine that I pretty much stick to. If I want to change it? That’s my right. But I need to do so while getting the work done.

You also need to set up boundaries with other people. At the beginning of my career, people in my life thought I didn’t really work. They assumed that because I wasn’t going into an office every day, my time was mine and therefore my time was also theirs. Perhaps this is somewhat gendered, as I am the oldest daughter in my family and am not married and have no kids, so there were (unfair!) expectations of my role is in that framework. But I know all kinds of freelancers who are the first person their friends and family tap if they need a ride to the airport or the doctor or want to go day drinking on a Thursday. So you must set boundaries. I found the easiest say to do this is say no and not give a reason why. You don’t need to justify why you can’t take time off to run their errand. Because guess what: if they assume your time is their time, they’re not going to “buy” your excuse either. No is a complete sentence. Use it.

 

Editors will lie to you about what’s “competitive.” I went to a conference once where an editor said they only paid $100 a blog post because that’s what the New York Times did. I raised my hand and said that’s not true, and I knew it because I was being paid $1,000 to write blog posts for the company at the time. He didn’t really have a response, but he snubbed me at the cocktail hour.

He’s just one of many editors who will lie to you about what’s fair pay, what’s considered competitive pay, and what’s acceptable in a contract. Why do they do this? Because they want to get you to work for them as cheaply as possible. Sometimes they do so willingly; other times because they don’t know any better or because their bosses have told them what to do. One editor asked me to stop being such a “problem” because I wanted to negotiate my contract. Protecting yourself and your work isn’t being a “problem.” It’s being smart. This is why I like writing for editors who have freelanced. They know what bullshit they’re expected to let flow downhill, and do their best to stop it.

For example: When I started writing for Runner’s World, back when it owned by Rodale and not click bait trash, I negotiated a contract so that they would buy first rights, and I’d get a fee anytime any other Rodale publication re-used it. Years later, I found out that one of Rodale’s websites was using my stuff, but I hadn’t gotten reprint frees. I reached out to their contracts person, who put me in touch with the editor of that website. She told me that everyone else signed all rights contracts, so they hadn’t checked. And besides, the stories had run a while ago, so they weren’t going to pay me anything. She then wished me happy holidays. Do you think I let that stand? Hell no! I got the contracts people back involved, and I got my reprint fees. Happy holidays right back!

 

Not everyone is meant to freelance full time — and that’s OK. When I talk about how to be a good freelance writer, I tend to focus on all the things you can do to be better at running a business. I’m guilty of sometimes forgetting to mention that just because someone isn’t stellar at the business end of this, doesn’t mean they failed. It usually means that they are not meant to freelance. Does everyone want to take on the risk of being self employed? No. Does everyone like marketing? Of course not. Does everyone like having to go out and bang on doors in order to be paid on time? Well, very few people like that, but some of us are more comfortable with it than others.

A lot of people are shoved into freelancing when they’re laid off, and for many, it’s a stopping point until they find something new. And that’s totally fine! It’s not for everyone, just like I don’t think I’d have been very good working a desk job for the last 20 years. What I stress, though, is that if you’re seeking out freelance advice, look to those who have been doing it for a long time, are good at it, and like doing it. It is very easy to try freelancing, make a half-hearted, don’t seek out any advice on how to do it well, and then write an essay about how it’s impossible and no one should do it — and I say it’s easy because I’ve seen more than a dozen versions of that essay over the last 20 years. I don’t even get worked up about how asinine they are anymore. Instead, I shrug them off, put my head down, and keep sharing how I have been able to make this work. That’s probably how you wound up here. And I’m glad out did.

 

Until next time,

Jen A. Miller

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