Freelance Writing For A Living

FREELANCE WRITING

FOR A LIVING

By

Mark Terry

© 2011

OROX

BOOKS

FREELANCE WRITING FOR A LIVING

Copyright © 2011 by Mark Terry

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

A Day In The Life, November 12

Chapter 1: What Types of Writing Jobs Are There?

A Day In The Life, November 6

Chapter 2: What To Write About

A Day In The Life, July 26

Chapter 3: Where To Find Jobs

A Day In The Life, September 13

Chapter 4: On Research and Interviews

A Day In The Life, January 3

Chapter 5: How Much To Charge

A Day In The Life, January 5

Chapter 6: Treat It Like A Business

A Day In The Life, January 6

Chapter 7: The Attitude Of A Freelance Writer

A Day In The Life, March 1

Chapter 8: Evolution

A Day In The Life, March 8

Chapter 9: Long or Short, Fiction or Non-Fiction

A Day In The Life, March 9

Chapter 10: Contracts

A Day In The Life, March 10

Chapter 11: What’s A Living?

Author Bio

Introduction

I HAVE BEEN a full-time freelance writer since 2004. For quite a number of years — since 1993, as a matter of fact — I have been writing and selling nonfiction pieces. My first paid publication was in 1993, a little essay I wrote on the spur of the moment called Blue Heaven that I promptly sent to a regional magazine in Michigan called TRAVERSE. They accepted it. I was paid a whopping $50.

In what is certainly grand irony, they forgot to pay me and I had to nag them for the check. A fact of life for a freelance writer is that sometimes you have to go after the money. It was a lesson I learned on my first paying gig and unfortunately I have needed to exercise that knowledge occasionally ever since.

If the fact that you sometimes have to be your own collection agency was one of the first lessons of being a freelance writer, it was not the only lesson I learned and which I hope to pass on to you. If there is one thing I hope you get from this book it’s this: good writing has value and there are people willing to pay good money for it.

So my goal is to open your mind to the possibilities, to look around the universe of the written word and realize that for a person with some writing skills, some persistence, and hard work, it’s not only possible to make a living as a freelance writer, but to make a good living as a freelance writer.

Before I get to what a good living might actually be, let me share a little bit of what my particular journey has been like. My story is typical in many ways and wildly atypical in others.

* * *

ALTHOUGH LONG A lover of books, I never really considered becoming a journalist. Even though I had been reading newspapers and magazines from a young age — my first job was as a paper boy for the Davison Index, my hometown weekly, then later The Flint Journal — I never wanted to be a reporter out flagging down stories. Yet I liked to write.

In college, I majored in microbiology and public health. I wasn’t deeply in love with science — far from it. When I first changed my major from medical technology, I looked at several other potential majors that would fit my personality and tastes better, including music, German, communications, and, oh, more irony, technical writing. But my parents had hammered into me the idea that I must major in something practical. And I had witnessed my parents’ battles with my older brother, Pete, who changed his undergrad degree from music education to music performance, then went on to graduate school to focus on music composition and theory. Those were battles I chose to avoid by majoring in something my parents might approve of.

My grades should have been a reminder — barely passing in my science courses, but acing all my English, history, and other non-science courses. In the summer between my junior and senior years, a perfect storm of influences struck me and I discovered my true north.

First, my roommate, Andy, took a summer internship in Detroit, so he lived at home with his parents in Oak Park, leaving me to myself. Second, my girlfriend, Leanne (now my wife), graduated and moved home with her parents until she could find a job. I was working part-time in a mailroom and in a laboratory and otherwise, with my two best friends away, I spent a great deal of time hanging out by myself, reading and watching TV.

One day at the local bookstore I picked up a copy of a book of essays about Stephen King edited by Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller called Fear Itself: The Horror Fiction of Stephen King. It was an entertaining enough book, but the real bolt of lightning for me was a Foreword by Stephen King himself, "On Becoming a Brand Name."

In it, King talks about his early attempts at writing short stories, occasionally selling them, and how after several failed novels he sold Carrie to Doubleday for $2,500, and then, in 1972, the paperback rights to NAL for $400,000.

Right then and there I decided I was going to become a novelist — and strike it rich!

Yes, I was an idiot.

* * *

I STARTED WRITING. First a short story or two or three, and sending them out to magazines. I began collecting rejection letters. Then I jumped in on writing a novel.

Then I graduated, got married, and found a temporary job at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan working in infectious disease research. This was in 1986. The job paid a whopping $8.75 an hour. It lasted for six months. I found another job, this one in the clinical cytogenetics laboratory at HFH. It paid $10.00 an hour. It isn’t much now and it wasn’t much then, but it was a steady job with excellent benefits.

I continued to write novels, quite confident that I would be able to quit that job and be a full-time novelist.

I had a great deal to learn.

As I wrote novel after novel that failed to get published, I would from time to time write a nonfiction piece for one publication or another, typically for no pay. Then, after the Blue Heaven piece, I started occasionally writing short pieces for a magazine here or there, usually horrible-paying markets — $25, or $35 each. What I was doing, but didn’t realize it at that time, was two-fold: I was gaining experience writing nonfiction, and I was gathering published clips.

* * *

THERE WERE THREE major turning points in terms of nonfiction, for me. First, my boss at the hospital laboratory suggested I write an article about cytogenetics for a well-known publication for medical laboratory readers called ADVANCE for Medical Laboratory Professionals. The thinking apparently was that it would focus on the laboratory and result in good PR.

So I submitted a query and the editor responded with an Absolutely. As it turned out, the article turned into a two-part article — clinical genetics is a complicated subject — which was double the fun, because they paid me for each part. And at that time it was the best-paying market I’d ever written for, paying something like $100 or $125 per article. I liked that a lot better than $25 per article, although I couldn’t fathom how someone could make a living writing articles at that pay rate.

I pitched the editor on another article, then another. Then, after a few months, I suggested they really needed a regular column on genetics. Which is how I ended up writing a column every other issue — they published twice a month — for several years for the magazine. In fact, I wrote for ADVANCE for MLP for about eight years.

The second major turning point also revolved around genetics. A woman I worked with in the laboratory had been asked by the editor of the Association of Genetic Technologists’ association journal, then called Karyogram, if she would review a book about genetics. For some reason Lucy said yes, but the minute she got the book she handed it to me, said, You want to be a writer, here, review this.

So I did. And I reviewed another book or two, then I suggested to the editor of Karyogram, that what they really needed was someone to act as a Book Review Editor. She said yes and I suddenly had a title and job responsibilities, but no pay. And I added some other duties to the job as well, bringing on a regular column called Abstracts in Review. No pay, but I got a large number of clips and a pretty interesting line item on my resume.

Eventually the editor retired and I was considered for the editor’s job, although I told them I would not do it for free. They offered the job to someone else, who totally botched it for a year. I remained as book review editor during that screwy year, but stepped down right before the editor was basically fired. Then they brought on Marilyn Arsham, who did an outstanding job for about two years before she stepped down. Although I did occasional pieces for them, mostly I acted as an unofficial advisor to Marilyn during her tenure. This time, when the association was looking for an editor, not only did I get the job, but they decided to pay me for it. I’ve been doing it for over a decade.

Although by this time I wasn’t making a living as a writer, I was nonetheless pulling in somewhere between $6,000 and $10,000 a year on the side through my writing. I had used my experience reviewing technical books to convince an editor of a mystery magazine to allow me to review mysteries. I later reviewed books for a paying magazine, then even later for The Oakland Press, a daily regional newspaper. In addition to book reviews for The Oakland Press I occasionally wrote longer profiles of authors and the occasional feature piece, things like covering a local dog trainer, a yoga class for teenagers, things like that.

This went on for a couple years. I got a contract for a novel with a small press that went bankrupt six months before my novel’s publication date. I self-published a collection of novellas. I sold a few short stories. I got another novel contract, although there was no advance and sales weren’t exactly setting the world on fire.

But I was regularly bringing in money my through my nonfiction. I had been writing a number of columns in ADVANCE for MLP about gene patents, and while browsing around looking for possible nonfiction markets I came across a publication called Drug Discovery & Development. They were open to freelancers and so I pitched an article to the editor about gene patents and biotechnology intellectual property issues.

Somewhat inadvertently, I had made a real leap and entered a significantly more rarefied level of publication. I got the job to write a long article of about 2,200 words. Up until that article, I had typically been paid by the word, and that per-word rate was about 10 cents per word and most articles I wrote ran 1,000 to 1,200 words. Not only was the Drug Discovery & Development article twice the length of my typical articles, but their going rate was 85 cents a word. I was paid almost $2,000 for a single article!

This led me to at least think about the possibility of freelance writing for a living. I wrote another article for DDD, then two more rather wonderful things happened. First, on the Drug Discovery & Development website they ran a brief news item every day. The woman who wrote them was taking several months off for maternity leave and they were going to have freelancers continue it in her place. I was one of them and I was paid $100 per story, which I often did three to five days a week.

The second thing was that Drug Discovery & Development had a sister publication called Genomics & Proteomics. And they, too, needed a freelancer from time to time. So I pitched them a story idea and got the gig.

Convinced that I stood a real chance of making this work, I went to my supervisor and asked to work part-time. On some jobs, this would not be possible, but the cytogenetics laboratory had a long history of part-time employees with flexible shifts. I changed to two ten-hour days, Monday and Tuesday, and on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I stayed home and wrote. My first day writing was June 20, 2004.

One day in October of the same year I put in my notice. On October 21, 2004, I was done with cytogenetics and had become a full-time