Wednesday 14 August 2013

Busy are you? Where's the proof?!

Being a freelance writer is strange. Increasingly as I progress further into my current career I'm finding that I'm always super busy, with lots going on and I do a great amount of writing related work each day, but then at the end of the week when I think back over everything I've done, I ask myself: where is it all?

It's funny really, because I have more to do in a day than is possible to fit into the hours it offers (it's this excuse I'm using for why I've not updated my blog in over a month) and finally I'm getting to a point where I have enough writing work rolling in that I'm able to cover my London living costs. When someone asks me though, "what work have you got on at the moment?" it's sort of difficult to recall, or remember, or show them. It's not like I'm appearing in the printed papers, weeklies or monthlies, or popping up on an endless amount of mainstream blogs or online magazines to justify my increasingly steady income thanks to the world of journalism. Ironically, the largest web e-zine that I contribute to, I do so free of charge and it doesn't effect my earnings at all.

Unfortunately, the brutal reality of it is that a lot of what I do is sort of "background writing" as I like to call it. Copy and content writing that you don't put your name to as a rule. Sure you can use it in a portfolio to show as evidence of different styles of writing, but that's about it and don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking it. So far it has meant I've had the opportunity to work with and write for some really exciting businesses.

It's either that, or I'm writing porn. As much as I'd like to, I'm not the kind of person that when one of my Mom's friends, or my accountant, or a stranger asks me, "where have you recently been published?" to whip out the latest issue of Escort or Adult Sport. Of course I'm proud of the work I do for those titles, but I appreciate it's a niche area of journalism that not everyone wants to see or read. Still, I maintain it's a better level of sex writing than appears in many of the women's glossy lifestyles, but that's an argument for another time.

Writing social media is another funny one too. There are now a couple of companies who's Twitter and Facebook I look after on a daily basis. It's still writing, it's still journalism, but I have to admit that when I was studying my journalism degree, I didn't think it would be such a profitable aspect of my writing career. How times have changed.

Of course, there's also a massive amount of reading and research to be done. If there's one lesson about freelance journalism I've come to learn over the last year, it's that pitching is bloody hard. Trying to get a commissioning editor to take the bait and give you the green light is tough. Rookie journo Rose was trying to knock pitches out every day with just a minimal amount of research to support my idea. Honestly, I look back over some of my early proposals and shake my head. There are some, of course, I maintain are good ideas and editors missed a trick...or oddly enough my ideas appeared in the not so distant future. Blokes Guide To Surviving Sex Shopping was one that coincidentally surfaced. Shame you can't copyright an idea, eh?

The lesson I've learnt though is the more you put in to start with, the more likely your idea will come out of the other end in the form of a printed/published feature and a pay cheque.

Anyway, I suppose I'm typing this to some how appease my conscience that I am, actually, doing enough. There is evidence of this here, here, oh and right over here too. Not to mention I am all over this. And so it continues. Where there are more shiny new PDF's I can add to my website, I shall make sure you're the first to know.

Rose -x-