Katy Rank Lev

I have had a crazy week, workwise. In the span of 24 hours, I went from the promise of a contract for a feature with a major national publication…to a revoking of that promise. And then got a, “now hang on! Don’t pitch it elsewhere til I check with our sister publication!” And then I got the chance to try for another assignment…

The bottom line? Nothing is final until you have a contract. Nothing! Every time I get a whiff of a big breakthrough story, I get so excited, plan out my summer house, imagine spotting folks reading my stuff on the bus. Most of the time, I end up crushingly disappointed.

This is, of course, all part of the game and I need to either learn to slow down my excitement-reflex or go into a new line of work. I would have to say that the hardest part about freelance writing is this part. The holding period. The time when you KNOW you have a great story, but you just don’t have a venue willing to pay you money to research and write the story.

I could always post the story on my blog, right? Sure! But then I’m putting in many, many hours of work for zero dollars and, let’s face it, a super small audience (comparatively!).

I have no idea what is going to happen to the publishing industry or what shape it will take as the world evolves. I do know that there are still great stories to be told and that I am a good writer who knows how to tell them. I have faith in this and a very official-looking diploma reminding me when I feel gloomy.

But none of these things take away from the fact that pitching sucks, dancing with editors sucks, and the emotional roller coaster sucks even harder.

All I can do is dust the chocolate crumbs off my lap, take a deep breath, and keep on working. The right venue is out there. The paycheck is out there. I just need to find it.

*Uplifting story to make this a less depressing picture of the writing life: I worked for three years to sell and publish a story about the abandoned turnpike in central PA. I finally sold that story not once, but twice! I published it as two features with two angles and two lovely paychecks. So hard work does eventually pay off. It’s the hard work part in between brainstorm and paycheck that tries the nerves.

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Despite professional advice that freelancers should avoid it, I am in a constant state of feast and famine when it comes to my work. I almost never have a nice, steady diet of projects. Instead, I’ll have a month of stressful emptiness followed by a quick rush of work due rightnow. I can’t decide which is worse!

During a famine, I have no idea what to do with my days. I go on facebook too much. I tweet endlessly. I use my babysitter time to run errands and get my hair cut, feeling blissfully decadent leaving my child home with someone else while I go pretend to be a non-mother. But then, instead of enjoying my strolls through Home Depot or stints at the coffee shop, I focus on the money I’m not earning and the healthier, more affordable things I should be doing instead. It keeps me up nights. Plus, I feverishly seek work during these famines until I find myself trolling for such things as I haven’t considered since I was a teenager.

I actually clicked on a craigslist ad seeking a leaf-raker the other day. There is, of course, a lovely and admirable living to be made from leaf raking. It’s just that I spent many thousands of dollars and seven years of higher education pursuing a career that did not involve a rake.

So then, feast time happens. Of course, feasts only happen while I am preparing for something else important. Like a big trip or a family visit. Last week, a transcription gig landed in my inbox. It was a whopper of a gig. Bunches of lovely money, interesting material to partially listen in on as I typed. But I had so much else to do and so little time in which to do it all that I got massive amounts of armpit sweat just thinking of the work.

I went to sleep each night last week thinking about the keystrokes or shortcuts I could set up. Worrying about how many hours it would take me to type and do laundry and pack for our flight to visit Corey’s parents. Having to actually depend on my husband to do laundry and pick up the toys and feed Miles breakfast unsupervised! I made tiny lists of things like, “eat breakfast, brush teeth, print MW birth certificate,” and then lost them when Miles ate them from my pockets, forcing me to do it all over again, compulsively.

Plus, I had to choose between making myself nuts/exhausted finishing the work before I left or dragging work with me on a vacation. Neither option is any good, but I chose the former.

This is all to say that the life of self-employment is lovely, but involves very little sleep, great bundles of stress, and spastic gobbling of proffered work for fear that none will ever come again.

Of course, the goal is to establish myself as awesome so clients think of me as a go-to gal (to misquote Jack Mosely in The Cutting Edge). But we’re in an economic downturn, the publishing industry has gone crazy, I only work part-time, and I’ve recently diversified. Nobody knows who the heck I am and right now, I simply don’t have steady work. So I snort up every project I find and take my stress out on my patient husband. Now, universe, if you could just tell all my clients to space out their needs I could potentially map out a budget for myself, get some sleep, and have fewer pit stains on my t-shirts.

Meanwhile, I am in the middle of a rare and bounteous feast. Enough procrastinating! Time to get out the fork and dig in.

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As I practiced my AWP presentation with my husband (the worst audience member ever, by the way), he continually made comments about the economics of my discussion. He cited obscure tax laws and other things that only an accountant would notice. And then he asked me, “Aren’t you just creating competition for yourself in discussing all those venues for beginners?”

Someone else pointed out in the comments that I am giving away all this information for free in posting my AWP presentation online. I guess both Corey and this commenter are correct. I am, perhaps, creating competition for myself and I am certainly giving away information for free. But it feels right to do this.

I went to a great panel about women memoirists while I was at the conference. Writer Melissa Febos talked a little bit about how writers, especially women writers, need to stick together, to unite. The message I took away from her conversation was that we will all gain more from sharing and networking and pooling our resources than we will from clinging tightly to our small slivers of pie.

When I was in graduate school, I swayed back and forth on the pendulum of sharing information. My first year, I worked really closely with some of my classmates to put together a handbook of shared information about freelance writing and getting funding for graduate school and just generally how to be a writer. The business of how to be a writer (we learned the craft part in class!). It felt really empowering to work together in this way, gather information and then share it with one another.

As the years went on, I started getting bitter and angry about this or that and I started guarding my writing tidbits closer to my chest. I went through some lonely, unlucrative years. Now? I’m back solid in my opinion that only good things can come from offering advice and pooling resources.

Call me naive, but I totally believe that I am building positive writerly karma when I answer questions rookie freelancers ask or when I act as a sounding board for colleagues struggling through a pitch/estimate/email to an editor. When I pass on a job lead or tell people about general markets where they might find success, I might be creating competition for myself, but I just feel so much better at the end of the day. I just know that the boomerang will swing back my way. Some day, one of those folks to whom I was totally generous will drop my name at the right moment, the stars will align, the right person will click on my website, and the juiciest client imaginable will grace my inbox.

I just know it.

And if not, I’ll still be a very bohemian freelance writer. But I’ll sleep better at night.

So yeah. I share information.

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In this bonus, fourth part of my presentation, I’ll talk briefly about ways to maximize your earnings as a freelancer. To read more about the earlier presentations, click here (where I discuss good venues for beginning freelancers) or here (where I do a quick primer of corporate communications) or here (where I talk about the crucial importance of making writing your business).

So, by now, you’ve read a lot and worked really hard to develop yourself as a writer who takes the business of writing seriously. You ask and receive a good per-word or hourly rate in exchange for your work. Wouldn’t it be great if there were ways to get even MORE money for the same (or similar) amount of work?

My greatest piece of advice as a freelance writer, which I would love to pass on, is to reshape and then resell your story ideas. Let me elaborate. When you write about a topic for one magazine, you should try to think of another one that would run a similar story about this topic, but from a different angle.

Here is an example. I got an assignment from one outlet to write a story about a really cool, eco-friendly pizza joint. I researched the story, wrote the draft, and sent it in. And then it ocurrred to me that a local tech mag might be interested in some of this pizza joint’s technological innovations. I was right! In the end, I did the research once, wrote two drafts, and got two paychecks with little more than a follow-up phone call.

Ever since, I’ve made it my point to reconsider each and every assignment, no matter how wee. Even when I write for corporate clients, I try to find a venue for a creative piece about each topic. Maybe there is an alumni magazine from a key player or a hometown monthly glossy interested in a profile!

The point here is that no idea should be finished just because you’ve submitted your draft. This is not cheating or (likely) breach of contract. You are not submitting the same material to the new venue. Rather, you are writing a whole new story with a different spin or focus. You’re just not repeating the research part of the work.

Which leads me to my second piece of advice. Find a niche. Find a few areas you love to research and write about those repeatedly. I resisted this at first. I thought, heck! I’m a generalist. I can write about anything and fake writing about the stuff I know nothing about. And this was ok for awhile.

But then I started taking more and more assignments related to environmental sustainability and parenting. Each time, I had to do less work before the interviews because I already knew what questions to ask and had something smart to say on the topic. I also enjoy writing about these topics because they mattered to me personally, and I like getting to say I’m an expert in these areas.

My initial fear in choosing a niche was that it would limit my opportunities. I had this fear that all sorts of opportunities were going to come my way and I’d have to turn them away or something. In reality, I get more work in these areas because I am beginning to establish myself as a motherhood/mother nature writer. Niches open doors rather than close them!

Those years spent as a generalist were not for naught, either. The editors I already know come to me with the same sorts of assignments we discussed before. Plus, I write about all sorts of stuff in corporate communications gigs (bounty hunters, even!).

As a parting word of wisdom, this job is all about hustle. Daily, daily hustle even in times of feast, because you need to make sure you have work in times of famine. And there will be famine! There will just be less of it if you are maximizing your profits.

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In this installment of my AWP presentation, I’ll talk about conceiving of your freelancing writing as a business, which it most certainly is. Check out part 1, where I discuss some good starter venues for freelance writers, or part 2, where I talk about corporate communications and briefly outline ways to get started in that field.

Once you have attempted a few freelancing writing projects or corporate communication gigs, been successful, and decided you want to do this again, it’s really time to learn about the business of writing for a living. Even if you only earn a few hundred dollars a year, failure to organize and “businessize” can create nightmares for you along the way–definitely at tax time. I had absolutely no idea how to do this when I started out, which is why I relied (and still heavily rely!) on MediaBistro and freelance writer/guru Michelle Goodman’s book My So-Called Freelance Life.

MediaBistro is a members-only, online space where you can find job leads, articles discussing stuff like how to pitch editors, how to delve into new markets, how to use social media…anything writing related. Also? The site has a directory of mastheads complete with contact information, articles about how to pitch specific publications (which detail exactly what the mags are looking for and what specific person to contact). Bottom line, this will be the best $49 you’ll spend each year. I have earned that cost back every single year and then some. Plus, it’s a business expense. More on that later.

The other source, Goodman’s book, is subtitled, “How to survive and thrive as a creative professional for hire.” That pretty much sums it up. Goodman walks you through everything you’ll need to set up a business plan, set your rates, calculate your budget, pay your taxes…all kinds of stuff you never imagined you’d have to think about.

Essentially, you should stop reading this blog, go buy the book, read it, and then go forth and write for a living. But if you want a quick and dirty low-down of essentials to writing as a profession, you’ll need to do the following:

1. Buy some good freelancing software. I use a program called TaskTime, which is for Mac. It keeps track of all my clients, all my projects, and what phase each is in. Have I got a deadline coming up? Is an invoice past due? Have I invoiced a client yet? When precisely did that company pay me? TaskTime tells me all this stuff. Then, each quarter, it tallies what I’ve earned so I can figure out what I owe the tax man. TaskTime makes wipe boards and scraps of paper seem dingy and antiquated in comparison (which they are). A crucial feature of TaskTime is that it tracks how many hours I spend on specific tasks and projects. When I’m done with an article, I know just how many hours I spent researching, organizing notes, revising, etc. Granted, much of my more creative writing happens in the shower or the wee hours of sleeplessness, but for the most part I get a good picture of my time allocation.

2. Set up a savings account for your tax money. This might not be news to you, but you don’t get to keep all the great money you earn as a freelancer. You will have to give about 30% of it to the government. My practice has been to open a separate savings account. Then, immediately upon getting paid, I transfer exactly 30% of the check into that account. It’s not ever my money so I’m not ever tempted to spend it. When I have to file my quarterly taxes, I don’t have a stroke when I see the red number I owe Uncle Sam. I just breathe easy knowing that dough is safely stashed in my tax account, as I call it. The piddly interest it earns just helps me feel more confident in case I have underestimated.

3. Get yourself some folders and learn to use Excel. You’re going to need to keep track of all your expenses. If you are going to be a freelance writer, you need/get to write off expenses like Goodman’s book, MediaBistro subscriptions, new laptops, TaskTime software, the miles you drive en route to a meeting with a client, etc. You must keep fastidious records and save all your receipts. If you don’t like having physical folders, buy yourself a scanner and make virtual ones. Then save the receipt for the scanner and mark the purchase on your spreadsheet as an expense.

4. Figure out your bottom line rates. Whether it’s a per-word rate or an hourly rate, you need to figure out what rate you can’t dip beneath. Then, once you’ve figured this out, you must NEVER work for less than this. To do so means you are paying to work. Many people don’t consider that you will not get paid for any of the time you spend pitching, setting up interviews, filing an invoice, scanning receipts, etc. In any given week, you’ll do about 14 hours of this “business” stuff. That adds up over the course of a year! Your rates need to reflect this if you want to live above the poverty line.

Disclaimer: I have strong, strong negative feelings about those bottom-of-the-barrel writing gigs you see plastered all over the internet. Taking those gigs does all writers a disservice because it encourages clients to think this is what writing costs or should pay. Do not work for a rate less than your bottom-of-the-barrel rate.

Here is an example. I was recently offered $75 to write a mid-length piece for a magazine. If I were to take this sum, I would immediately lose $22.50 to my tax savings account, meaning I would earn $52.50 for my time spent writing. It will certainly take me at least one hour to do unbillable things, like schedule research interviews, file paperwork, track expenses, etc. Probably I’d spend 5 or more hours researching and writing the article, then a few more hours revising. That means, for $52.50, I’ve worked 8 hours (minimum). After paying my babysitter $80 for that time I worked, I would have paid $47.50 to write that article.

Setting a minimum rate per word or hour in exchange for your time spent writing does not cheapen the art. Rather, it is business. You are doing this for a living. It is your profession and you need to be compensated for your work. Never work for less than your minimum rate.

What is this rate? Goodman’s book, MediaBistro and lots of other freelance writing resources offer great equations and help in determining this specifically based on your expenses, etc. In general, as a graduate student with little to no experience, you are worth at least $20 per hour for writing. At least! Remember: writing is indeed an art and it’s challenging and not everyone can do it. Value your skill. Make it your business to earn money writing.

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In this second installment of my presentation from AWP, I’ll discuss corporate communications, what that means, and how you can get involved. (See this previous post for information on good starter markets for new freelancers) I learned all of this information through loads of help from local writers and folks at my university. Before I say anything further, I need to really emphasize that personal relationships are vital to making any sort of money in corporate communications, because a lot of these opportunities come up in verbal discussions rather than posted job advertisements. So make sure you are spending a lot of time talking to people about your interests in writing for a living! With that important business aside, the next question you might have is what the heck is corporate communications and how could I ever become qualified to do something like that? Simply put, corporate communications is just fancy talk for writing you’d do for a business. This can look like any of the following: newsletters, text on menus or placemats, press releases, grant proposals, website copy, etc. It’s sometimes also called public relations writing (sound familiar?) or marketing copy.

The answer to the second half of the question is that if you’ve come this far, you’re definitely qualified to do this kind of writing. A lot of it is desperately unsexy. I started by writing a newsletter for a seafood company. I’ve also written presentation packets for mechanics, web copy for chiropractors, and how-to manuals for nonprofit boards of directors. The key is to give every client your best effort at crafting a narrative that sends the appropriate message in an artful manner. So, where do you get started with this kind of work? There’s no easy way to answer that. Usually, you’ll see a gig posted on craigslist or hear about something through your contacts at the alumni magazine (remember, those are usually published through the public relations departments of universities!). You could try cold calling or writing to local businesses, offering to help spruce up their newsletters or print materials. You could ask around to everyone you know to see who might need a press release or help writing the “about us” section of their website.

Something helpful I did was link up with a graphic designer and programmer who is a wonderful website-maker, but doesn’t have the time/interest in writing copy. If a client needs help wordsmithing, I’m just an email and estimate away. Which brings me to an important distinction: Corporate communications differs slightly from, say, magazine or general interest writing in that you usually bid for the job. Instead of sending a pitch letter to an editor, you send a proposal to a project manager. This generally begins with a introductory note to the project manager, unless you already have an established relationship with the client.

When I was just starting out, I’d emphasize that I was an MFA candidate in nonfiction writing. I felt like this showed I was a creative writer, yet my status as a graduate student demonstrated that I was a hard worker and a serious student of writing. I started emphasizing my experience working with public relations writing (having a major university as a former client can never, ever look bad, right?) and talked about how I work hard to shape my writing to meet the specific needs of my audience. Suddenly, all that practice tweaking my 250-word stories until they matched the look and feel of specific publications seemed super useful and important. By emphasizing these things in my “application” note, I was skirting around the fact that I have no experience in business and no experience in the specific industry at hand. Which doesn’t matter anyway, right? As writers we all know how to research and master the unfamiliar. This finely crafted note will most assuredly lead to a face-to-face discussion (if not for your first application, surely eventually) where you’ll get to learn more about the client’s needs, talk about rates (more on that in part 3), and submit an estimate.

An estimate (also called a bid or proposal) is just like any other proposal you learned about in your business writing class in college. They can vary drastically in length and amount of detail, but you will essentially discuss your qualifications, identify a timeline for the project and what this specifically includes, then give a rate. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you are specific and not cloudy about what your bid includes. One round of revision and discussion with the client? Do you bill for meetings or phone calls? Do you charge for research interviews? (you should do this). A quick google search of sample proposals could be very helpful in showing you some standard wording and what to include, depending on your project or client. In terms of estimating your time, when you first get started you probably have no idea how long it takes you to do something.

Hopefully, you’ve been keeping track of your hours for your other writing gigs (see part 3 discussion of writing as business) and have a good guesstimate. A great rule of thumb is to think of how many hours something will take, double it, then multiply by your hourly rate and bid this to the client. If you really have no idea how long something will take, you can propose to bill hourly, keeping the client informed of the cost along the way in case you skirt a “do not exceed” amount. Once your proposal gets the greenlight, you’ll be sent away to get cracking.At this point, it’s just another writing assignment you’ll devote your best effort into. Only you most likely won’t get a byline.

Important note: Just because you don’t get a byline on a piece of writing does not mean you can’t still submit it to editors/potential clients as a writing sample. Even if the text contractually belongs to the client, it’s still your writing and you should feel proud to brag that you penned your corporate copy. Stay tuned for the next installment, where I’ll talk about how to think about your freelance writing as a business and discuss some of the basic logistics of that (setting rates, invoicing, taxes, etc.).

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I have been freelancing for about 5 years now, a practice I started to supplement my “stipend” in graduate school and a business that has paid my bills since I graduated. While the entirety of my income has never come from writing alone, I have been able to be completely self-employed since graduation and have loved the freedom! This presentation discusses the practices that worked for me. Along the way, I had great help from writers like Elaine Vitone, Jeanne Marie Laskas, and Rebecca Skloot, among others! I, like them, love to help new freelancers learn about ways they can pay their bills while producing quality writing, ways to really conceive of this writing as a business, and ways to maximize the profits you earn from your writing.

Part 1. Accessible Venues for New Freelancers:

A) I started my work writing for alumni publications. These magazines (usually quarterly, sometimes bi-monthly) are generally produced by the public relations departments of universities and colleges. They tend to pay really well and, more important, they give you great experience learning to work with a specific audience and writing style. The editors of these magazines really have a strong vision for how they want their writing to look and feel. It can never be a bad thing for writers to learn to meet the goals of different clients.

My first clips with these sorts of magazines (like this one, “Par Without Pain,”or this one) were really short, too. I think it’s wonderful for writers to learn to tell a scene-based, detailed narrative in around 250 words. This is almost harder than writing a feature-length piece because you must be so careful with your word choice. Writing short pieces for alumni publications is lucrative and great practice in these aspects of writing. Plus, once you establish a relationship with the editor, he or she will likely come to you with story assignments.

So how do you get involved in these gigs? Whenever you hear a great story idea, jot down the subject’s school and pitch a story about it to that alumni magazine. Whenever you meet someone interesting, think first of his/her school’s alumni pub. Check out this fantastic article on MediaBistro (membership required) for more information about pitching these magazines, but don’t forget your current university or your undergrad institution. Sometimes, all you need is a well-written introduction letter to get in an editor’s good graces.

B) Once I had a few clips with these mags, I branched out to local and regional magazines. These either paid way better or way worse than alumni magazines; it was hit and miss. But these sorts of magazines are fantastic because they help you establish relationships with local editors and other local writers. They also teach you to be constantly sniffing your area for interesting stories and help you become super familiar (perhaps an expert even!) with your area.

I have found that local magazines tend to be on the search for writers they can come to again and again. They often have a set idea of what they want each issue to contain, but need a cache of writers they can rely on to get the goods in on deadline. At the same time, they tend to pay a bit more for ideas that you pitch.

The way I broke in was to email an editor just introducing myself. I attached some alumni mag clips and said I was full of ideas, would love to establish a relationship, and asked for a meeting where we could swap ideas. The editor asked me to come in with ideas and (gasp) I had to come up with some quick. I ended up writing for him for about 2 years and produced some clips I still use today. *the specific local magazine I regularly wrote for is now defunct

C) The final venue I would suggest any new freelancer pursue is the world of in-flight magazines. These magazines publish the same sorts of stories in their front-of-the-book section as local and regional magazines do. Plus they pay super well. I got to write really cool restaurant reviews and some profiles and even a feature for in-flight magazines.

Another good part about establishing yourself with these publications is that the editors will eventually move onward and upward. If they know you as a punctual, reliable writer, they might just take you with them to their next venture.

To break into this market, I would always steal the magazine from the seat pocket or ask a friend to do so on flights with various airlines. Then, I’d look at how the stories in the front are laid out and figure out a contact person from the masthead page. A well-written pitch about something in my area, and I soon was getting paid to bake bread or get pedicures.

As an example, even though I had never written for US Airways magazine before, I researched their front-of-book sections, found out the editor in charge, and sent her the following successful pitch:

Dear [Editor]:
My name is Katy Rank Lev and I am a freelance writer based in Pittsburgh, PA. I have an idea for the All Over the Map section that I thought might interest you and your readers.

Tucked into the depths of Pittsburgh’s South Side, two blocks behind the main drag and away from the bustle of franchise chains, shines a tiny vegetarian cafe called The Zenith. This combination thrift shop, art gallery, and flavor paradise tastes so good you’ll wonder why you ever thought you needed meat. On Sunday mornings, locals line up before the 11am vegan brunch in order to secure a seat as live musicians tune up and massage therapists set up shop on the sidewalk. Customers lucky enough to be first in line get their pick of the best tables–beneath the giant fish sculpture, or perhaps the retro dining booth by the window–and hope a browsing shopper does not decide to buy their seats out from under them. The only buffet in town where everything from your fork to your tablecloth is also for sale offers a cold spread of pastas, salads, fresh-baked breads, and decadent vegan baked goods. The hot entrees range from sinfully rich French toast to Texas-spicy portobello stir-fry. From the shelves of religious iconography to the racks of vintage clothing Gwen Stefani would die for, The Zenith offers a cultural experience no visitor–or native!–of Pittsburgh should miss.

I think US Airways Magazine readers would find the cafe interesting, particularly on days they feature live belly dancers and Arabian musicians. I have been eating there every Sunday morning for the past year and can never grow tired of the peanut linguini or the green potatoes containing an amazing mystery of delicious ingredients. I completely agree with the owners that the Zenith is the best kept secret in Pittsburgh. I can’t wait to spill the mung beans.

I have been freelance writing for several local and alumni publications for the past few years. I have a website, which contains some samples of my published work, if you would like to get a better idea of my experience and background. You can visit it at www.katyranklev.com <http://www.katyranklev.com> . I very much appreciate your taking the time to read my idea and I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,
Katy

You can see I didn’t waste a lot of time talking about myself, but I jumped right into the story idea. The text I used there was largely the same text in the eventual story. I tried to emphasize why it was a good fit for the magazine (remember, their specific audience is travelers!) and it worked!

So, hopefully, at this point you feel ready to reach out into the world and get started with some clips while earning money at the same time. In the next installments of this presentation, I’ll talk about working in Corporate Communications, maximizing your profits as a writer, and learning to conceive of your writing as a BUSINESS. Stay tuned!

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