How Do You Become One of *Those* Freelancers?
Since starting my freelance career, I’ve met a lot of other writers, many of whom make decent careers doing what they do. I’ve even met some that make six figures or more from freelancing. We all know that clips beget clips and so on and so forth. But I have yet to see a freelancer I’ve met or even heard of featured as one of those glossy, fancy contributors in the glossy mags. I wanted to know: is it possible to work one’s way up to that level of freelancer? Or do you simply have to know someone or be someone’s kid or concubine in order to be a major byline contributor to Vanity Fair or Vogue or what have you? I posted this question on Ask Metafilter. Some thoughts from readers:
1. Write a (published) book. Fiction or nonfiction, doesn’t matter. You could also be a screenwriter. Your reviews and your agent will help get you the magazine gigs.
2. Be a good journalist for a daily newspaper, local or national. Your editors and friends will know people at the magazines you want to write for, and your clips will get you a shot.
3. Write lots of little things for lots of little mags and pitch your way up to the top. The hardest route of all.
Someone else thinks it’s all about location:
I think you write for Nick Denton for a while for peanuts, without ever even meeting him. When visiting a friend in New York, you find out there’s a party, and scam yourself an invite by dropping the name of the site you’re posting for. At the party, you stumble into one of the associate editors for one of these rags just as you’re leaving. You don’t recognize the guy, but after a few other people greedily eyeing this homely old guy who’s clearly not a hot indie-rocker, you start to quietly think, “I wonder who that guy is!” Sadly, you’ve got places to be (crashing on your friend’s couch with the laptop, reading MeFi!) so you stumble out of the party and back home.
A good amount of time passes. Maybe it’s 18 months. You’re not settling for a Gawker pittance anymore, you’ve got your own gigs, modest though they may be. But you’re back in the city, and this time it’s a different connection — you’ve scammed your own place on the guestlist. You see the same homely old associate editor, just after you walk in the door. But now he’s more gray, and more importantly, now he is the EIC. Bingo! A quick stop at the bar for some liquid courage, and you’re there to make the pitch.
“Remember me? From that party a while back? We also share our good friend name drop, name drop — she keeps saying we should talk! So hey, listen, it’s a good thing I ran into you; I’ve been meaning to email you about this piece I’d been doing on spec. It felt like New Yorker work when I started, but honestly, I think it’s a little too… broadly appealing for them. Damn elitists. Can I shoot you a quick outline next week to take a look?”
And then we all bask in the glow of knowing you back when you still had time to read AskMe. Or do the classic: Blog for an alt-weekly or on your own, make the leap to one of the “serious” sites, graduate to Slate or Salon as a stringer, parlay into 3 to 5 pieces for the inside pages of the Times, do some throwaway work for an in-flight airline magazine, get spiked at the last minute on what you thought was a serious shot at the Sunday Times Magazine, and then rework the piece to reuse it elsewhere and ask your editor for an introduction to one of these magazines’ editors as a consolation prize. At some point along the way, you should definitely get a book deal, but it’s easier if you just get the deal, flake out on the book, and return the advance.
Either way, you should move to New York.
Other responses here, but they’re the kind of things you all know: build clips, be patient. Do any of you know? How does a freelancer reach that rarified air? If you think you know the key, let me know.
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