What the…?
One bit of advice that I hear given to budding freelancers over and over again is to find your specialty, to find your niche. But how does one do that when they’re starting out? You have to explore to find what you’re good at, and that means trying new topics. Plus, if you’re lucky and you find an editor who likes working with you, you might get assigned articles, rather than pitching them. So, Kind Queen Editrix assigns you an article and you heartily agree, excited to have the opportunity and her trust. Only one problem: you have absolutely no idea what you’re writing about. Do you throw in the towel and hope for a different assignment that might be more in your realm of knowledge?
No! If we all knew everything we were writing about, we wouldn’t ever have sources, would we? “I was once asked to give a class on researching articles for my state’s writers association, because, as my friend, the association president, said, ‘You’re always writing articles on subjects you know nothing about.’ (I said, ‘I’m going to assume that was a compliment.’)” says Madeline Bodin, a freelancer in Vermont. “When I was the editor for a trade magazine, where the entire staff was expected to be subject-matter experts, I would drive my boss nuts by telling him, ‘I don’t have to know anything, I just have to find out. That’s journalism.’ In fact, I’ll bet that folks with a newspaper background (which is not me) don’t even break a sweat on these kinds of things. Newspaper reporters do this almost every day.”
You research the stories you write, even when you are familiar with the subject matter. Find good sources and make it clear to them that you’re a newbie and that they need to break down the topic in layman’s terms. A good contact should be happy to explain the matter at hand.
“Ask me about the week I spent in Houston covering a conference on a software program that I couldn’t make heads or tails of,” says Julie Sturgeon, another writer in Indianapolis. “On top of that, it was for the military, so I had no idea which were words and which were acronyms pronounced as words. I spent every evening locked in my hotel room crying, and then next morning I’d grab my stuff and hit those break-out sessions like I belonged there. Two standard questions I found though that get you through anything are ‘What problem did this solve for you?’ and ‘What does this bode for the future?’”
Now, if you research your story thoroughly and STILL feel like you don’t have a good enough grip on the subject matter to string a sentence together on it, have a chat with your editor (but make sure you do this early.) Your editor might give you some thoughts on where to find more information, or appreciate that you’re being honest and not wasting her time and deadline turning in something that you know is sub-par, and assign to somebody else. As long as you don’t waste time finding this out, your editor hopefully will appreciate your honesty.
Just know your limits, though. It’s unlikely that you’re going to be assigned an article on microbiology from JAMA but in the odd occurrence that you are given something extremely specialized that you don’t think you have enough time to learn about, again, tell the editor you’re flattered but that you don’t think you’re the right person for the job. Don’t worry about losing that contact. You’ll be in better for being honest and saving time rather than trying to fake it.
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