You can never stop doing that. Whether you’re just starting out or whether you’ve been doing this for 21 years like I have, self-promotion is integral to success. You have to get your name out there. You have to let editors and markets know that you exist, but it really boils down to what you have to offer them. Experience is very valuable. The fact that I’ve been a professional writer for 35 years and a full-time freelancer for 21 years carries a lot of weight, but I get work only if I have good ideas.
As far as self-promotion, you can’t be shy in this business. You have to get out there. You have to sell yourself. You have to let people know you are a writer. Even if you’ve never sold anything, you have to start identifying yourself as a writer; otherwise you’ll never gain any kind of traction.
9) What three pieces of advice would you give to someone who wants to become a freelance writer?
1) You need to take a moment to evaluate whether you’re a good work-at-home personality. It’s not for everybody. A lot of people find it very distracting and they never get any work done. You really have to hone your focus in your home office.
2) The second piece is that success comes with perseverance. I wish I could put that on a plaque and give it to every beginning writer because it’s true. You can’t take rejection personally. This is a very rejection-driven business. People will say ‘no’ to you many, many more times than they will say ‘yes.’ You can’t see those rejections as a critique of yourself as a person or a critique of yourself as a writer. They aren’t. You just have to keep plugging away. Once you make that first sale, the second sale is a little bit easier, and the third sale is a little bit easier still. After a while you get into kind of a rhythm of selling and writing.
3) The third thing I think is networking. I’m a strong advocate of networking. I encourage people to take advantage of any opportunity they find in which they can talk to writers, agents, and editors. Those are the people that really can open doors for you and make things happen in a good, professional way.
I think that’s one of the nice things about the Triangle Area Freelancers writers’ conference. It gives people the opportunity to meet fellow writers, but we also try to give them the opportunity to meet and talk with other professionals in the field who might be able to benefit them.
Networking has been very good to me and I try to pay it forward by opening doors for other writers whenever I can.
10) You’ve said this is your dream job, but if you had the chance to start your career over again, is there anything you would do differently?
You know, not really. My career has kind of fallen into place in a good way. I mean, I made a lot of mistakes very early on in my career because I’m relatively self-taught. There were a lot of errors that I made before I became a professional writer — sending inappropriate ideas, not writing evocative queries — those common mistakes that beginning writers tend to make. Other than that, my career really has gone quite well. I’m very pleased with it and pleased with where I am right now. I’ve sold over 1700 articles and have written, co-written, ghostwritten, or contributed to 35 books, so I think I’ve done fairly well. There are certainly a lot of writers who are far more successful than I am, but I’m happy with where I am in the profession.
A lot of it was a learning experience, but I’m glad I had that experience and I learned from all the mistakes that I made, which any good writer should do. All things considered, I really wouldn’t change anything at all. I consider myself very lucky.
11) Tell me then about one particularly satisfying or memorable event or moment in your career that made you think, “Wow, I love my job! I’m so happy I’m doing this.
Oddly enough, a lot of people, when they ask me that question, think it’s going to be the first article I sold or the first book I sold or something major like that. The truth is the biggest, most fun moment for me in my 21 years was the first article I sold to MAD Magazine. I took a course called Mass Media when I was in high school. It was essentially a freelance writing course and one of the things I did as part of that class was send some ideas to MAD Magazine. In retrospect they sucked and of course they were rejected because I was young and I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I’d been a long fan of MAD Magazine since I was a child and it’s such an iconic publication. So when I made that very first sale it was the most exciting moment I could remember. I pretty much stopped working at that moment and called everybody I knew and let them know, “I did it!”
I’ve sold about ten articles to them over the years. It’s not been a huge market for me, but it’s been a really satisfying market and something I’m really proud of.
12) How do you define success?
I’m making a good living at what I’m doing, so there’s that degree of success, but I think more importantly my success is the fact that I truly love my job. So many people out there hate getting up in the morning and going to work because they just dread what they do for a living, but I love it. I wake up every morning excited at the prospects. I like the editors with whom I work. I like the diversity of the stuff that I write about, so I really like freelance writing. It’s something that I actually look forward to. I think that, more than anything, is the strongest definition of success, when you actually enjoy what you do for a living.
13) The field of publishing and writing is changing a lot. How do you envision the future of freelance writing? How do you see yourself fitting into that vision?
I think some things will change, but a lot will essentially stay the same. I think freelancing opportunities are expanding. What I’m not seeing are opportunities that pay well. There is a lot of Web writing where people are basically looking for content and I hate that phrase. I don’t consider myself a “content provider.” I’m a writer. The words that I produce have value and that’s why I stay away from most of those kinds of opportunities because there’s no value in doing that kind of work.
I think there always will be print media, but I think what we will see in coming years are more Web opportunities for freelancers — hopefully well-paying opportunities. I don’t blog. I don’t have time for blogging and for what I do, I don’t think there’s value in blogging. It wouldn’t generate income for me, so that time that I would be spending blogging would be better spent doing something else.
As newspapers continue to shrink, that throws more and more writers into the pool, which is a bad thing. The more competition you have, the worse off you are. What I’m finding, too, is that these people, once they are in it for a few months, realize freelancing isn’t what they want to do, so they climb out of the pool and look for other opportunities. There’s kind of an ebb and flow of a lot of people and then fewer people.
The fact of the matter is that a lot of people who consider themselves freelance writers really suck at what they do, which is good news for people like me and [fellow freelancer] Mark Cantrell, and others who have established themselves as professionals who give editors what they want. That’s really all you’re supposed to do, is make an editor’s job as easy as possible. If you can do that you will always work.
I’ve talked to editors about this. Really they would consider only about 10% of the writers that they work with on a regular basis true professionals — meeting deadlines, adhering to word counts, making sure the facts are correct — all the things that everyone should be doing, but not everyone is doing. If you can do that, then editors will love you, and if an editor loves you, you establish that relationship; you become the go-to person.
14) So you don’t really see things changing much for you personally, 10 years down the road.
I always worry about losing markets. One of the things I learned after 9/11 is that it’s dangerous to put all of your eggs into a small number of baskets. When those baskets go away you’re in trouble. What I’m trying to do at this point in the game is really expand my market base. I’m putting a greater emphasis on approaching new markets while still working with my established markets.
My goal this year is to hit some larger, better-paying magazines. Even though I’m an established writer, breaking into new markets is just as difficult for me as it is for someone who’s brand new. I come at it with some experience and some attractive clips, and with what I think are good ideas, but a lot of them already have their staff or they already have their corral of freelancers that they’re happy with. I have broken into some new markets, but they’re smaller markets, not the larger markets that I’m putting my focus on. Hopefully I’ll be able to do that, and then I’ll be in an even better place professionally.
15) Tell me about what you are working on now.
Mark Cantrell and I are putting the final touches on a bookazine on special operations. Earlier in the year he and I had done a similar book on natural disasters and extreme weather and we’re doing the special ops book for the same people. I think it’s supposed to come out in September. That’s been a lot of fun. It’s been a really educational thing.
I’m also working on a handful of magazine articles. I just got an assignment from Cure Magazine to do a piece on metastatic cancer. I just delivered a feature article to Military Officer Magazine on SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) Training, which is what the special ops guys all have to go through. That was really interesting.
I also did a short on a hospice program that hooks veterans up with dying veterans because of that special relationship.
That’s about it. Most of the things I have in the pipeline right now are for Military Officer Magazine.
16) So were you able to overlap some of the research you did for the SERE Training article with the bookazine?
A little bit. I did take some of the information I gleaned from my research for the SERE article and incorporated it into the bookazine about special operations. Similarly, I included a sidebar in the bookazine about the Navy Experimental Diving Unit, with some information from a feature article I had done for Military Officer.
See, that’s the thing. A lot of beginning writers write an article and then put it aside. A professional writer finds success by reworking that article as many times as he or she can, refocusing it for different, non-competing markets. A common mistake that beginning writers tend to make is not beating their horse as much as they can.
So, fellow and aspiring freelance writers, there you have some free, valuable advice from a veteran writer. Expanding on Don’s desire to broaden his market base, which markets do you think you would like to tackle that you haven’t already? Do you have any additional thoughts or your own pieces of advice you’d like to share? Be sure to leave a comment below.
