Opinion

Anchovies and Art Openings:
How to Be a Freelance Writer

Let's get one thing straight: Being a freelance writer isn't what you think it is. Your life is as much about business as it is about words, and real freelance writers don't go around dreamily spouting off about how much they love to write. It's hard work. You will have 10 to 20 ideas rejected for every one you sell—and that's by the time you get good at it. Because you will likely work at home, your Really Big Story That Will Change Life As We Know It will be disrupted by the most mundane things, such as thoughts of soup and cleaning the base of the toilet. Mortgage companies and reputable car dealers will laugh at you and tell you to come back when you've had a "real" job for a year. You will be broke. You will be alone.

If you can deal with all that, and have a modicum of talent, you might have what it takes to be a freelancer. I send my condolences and at the same time, throw my arms around you, for you are my sister and this is the most magnificent club you will ever join. You get to talk to the most interesting people and ask them all kinds of personal questions. You are granted the backstage pass to life. You can walk your dog in the middle of the day, and stop work to cook up a filet mignon with truffled mushroom ragout (see Feb. 2002 Bon Apétit, pg. 80) if you feel like it. Celebrities have to be nice to you. Marketers for a ski resort will trip over themselves and ply you with lodging and lift tickets and mulled wine to get you to write about their mountain.

You'll need to acquire the Elements of Style, Webster's New World College Dictionary, the AP Style Guide, the Chicago Manual of Style, and Roget's Thesaurus. Read them and treat them lovingly, for they will be your best friends for the rest of your life.

See if you can score a part-time writing gig. I work as the arts and entertainment editor for a local publication, which takes about 2-4 hours a day. I am also the writer for a swanky health club's bi-monthly newsletter. Those gigs don't make me rich, but they sure help out in the months that I don't have any other freelance stories coming out. If you can't get that, try a waitress gig or retail or something that you can do part time and that won't suck your brains out in the process. Or marry someone rich and wonderfully supportive.

I advise beginning freelancers to buy five magazines or newspapers they'd like to write for. (You'll have a better chance with small regional ones than big nationals in the beginning.) Take them home and study them, and come up with five appropriate ideas for each. This means the story on the didgeridoo-crystal healer will have a much better chance at a New Agey health publication than, say, one geared toward the vinyl siding industry. Find out who the appropriate editor is—a home and garden magazine may have one person for décor and one for food, for example, so it's good to do a little research. Then write a query letter briefly describing your story idea, using as many facts and numbers as possible to lend credibility. Include any published clips you may already have, even if they are small items from your college paper or from your building's newsletter. Do not send personal essays, poems or anything that comes directly out of your printer, as the editor will catch on to your amateur status and throw everything away. On the same note, query letters with typos, bad grammar and way-off-the-mark ideas will get passed around to everyone else in the editor's office for some light humor before being tossed.

You say you don't have clips? Get some. And yes, it is the old catch-22: you can't get clips without being published, and you can't get published without having clips. Stop whining about how unfair it all is and how you got an A in creative writing in college. Write for everyone you can, whether it's creating a newsletter for your favorite charity or contributing a profile on a community member for your neighborhood rag.

You say you don't have story ideas? Get some. Only about 10 percent of freelance stories come from editors—the rest come from the writers. Everyone you meet and everywhere you go is story potential. Call all the public relations firms in town and get on their press lists. Go to every art opening, theatre show and professional conference you can stomach for the incredible networking opportunities and inspiration. Attend parties. Be fabulous.

Editors like stories that are different, quirky, and have a time element. A story on an artist who does watercolors may not hold much weight on its own, but a story on an artist who does watercolors and is blind and traveling to Senegal for a charity project next month will be snatched up in a hot second. It's good to develop a specialty; that way you will be first on the list if an editor needs, say, a science story and you are a whiz at making complex concepts understandable to regular folk. But it's also good to be flexible and enhance your wide, shallow pool of knowledge. I remember once when I was an editor, I needed a writer to do a standard story on Christmas gift ideas. I called a food writer who had been bugging me for months to do a story, but she declined to do the Christmas one because it wasn't exactly up her alley. Although she is a decent writer, I never used her after that.

Prepare for the lean times with lots of beans, rice, frozen entrees, tea, and coffee. And always keep a tin or two of anchovies on hand. They dress up lettuce, pasta, and eggs like you wouldn't believe.

Vanessa McGrady is a Seattle-based writer, editor and actress currently discovering the buoyant joys and exquisite agonies of screenwriting. Her work has recently appeared in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Tekbug, and The Puget Sound Business Journal.