Write you are…

Following on from part 1, here are some more tips I picked up in my freelance career.

Write about what you know

As I explained in this post (scroll down to grumbling), your traumatic life experiences, grumbles, opinions and weird health issues are all freelance pitches in the making. Some people are nervous about the idea of letting it all hang out in print, which is fair enough. Trust me, anything you write WILL get back to your friends and family, so be prepared for your mum and dad to read it, whatever it is. And for their friends to come up to them in the supermarket to say they’ve read it.

That said, don’t let those nerves stop you. For starters, first-person pitches are often easier to sell in, because they’re something only you can write and a lot of publications love them (they often pay better, too). I often pitched ideas based around talking to a number of different people, only to be told they’d prefer a first-person piece on the subject.

Few publications will take anonymous pieces, though I sold anon first-person pieces to Sunday Times Style, Guardian Weekend and Guardian Family (though two of those were case study interviews, not about me, I should add), so for the most part you’ll need to be willing to put your name to it. But that’s the other point I want to make about first-person pieces: you’ll often find the response is far more positive than you might expect.

Some people talk about first-person pieces as ‘selling out’ or ‘selling your soul’. I’ve never understood this. How is sharing an experience with people who might learn from it and/or identify with you ‘selling out’? If your story is of interest to other people, it’s worth selling. If you have a moral issue with this, or anything that’s not long-form political journalism, stop and ask yourself why you became a journalist in the first place.

One last word about first-person pieces: don’t assume they’re piss-easy, especially when it’s someone else’s story. As anyone who’s ever tracked down an interviewee, persuaded them to tell their story, interviewed them and turned it into a publishable piece will know.

That said, don’t be afraid to write about what you don’t know

I have a few areas of particular expertise, but I’ve written or subbed material about plenty of others, from product descriptions to features. Here’s the thing: not everyone has the basic skills journalists need. Not everyone can chase down contacts, extract interesting quotes, write decent copy to brief and deadline, and so on. Some outlets will value a good journalist above the specific subject knowledge involved.

With some of my most regular clients, I started out being relatively clueless about the subject matter, having landed work through a word-of-mouth recommendation, or because I’d found some common ground I could cover for them only to be offered more commissions. The longer I freelanced, the bolder I got, pitching ideas to both existing contacts and new ones about subjects where I knew I’d have to do some research.

And you know what? That’s fine! Being a good journalist doesn’t mean knowing everything about everything, it means knowing who to ask, what questions to ask them, and how to ensure they give you all the right information. For example, a good journalist will ask follow-up questions and won’t ever say: “Oh, I don’t know, they didn’t say.” (Why? Because a good journalist knows it’s never a case of “they didn’t say”, it’s only ever a case of “I failed to ask them”.)

Chase your pitches

It takes a lot of guts to do this when you start out, especially if you encounter an editor who doesn’t like it and sends an irritated, scathing response. That will happen sometimes, however politely you chase.  But it’s worth doing anyway, because a lot of the time, silence doesn’t mean no, it means they haven’t seen your email or haven’t had a chance to read it.

I found I got more responses to emails with the subject line “Just chasing up a pitch…” than I ever did to my initial pitch emails, and I also found I got a surprising number of yeses after chasing. Remember: editors are busy, and they get a lot of emails. So it’s worth chasing a little.

Get clued up about your finances

I cannot stress this strongly enough. I’ve heard so many freelancers say: “Oh, I’m clueless about tax,” or “I don’t know about all of that.” Well, more fool you, because you’re probably paying too much tax. It’s not difficult to learn the basics. Go on a decent training course, pick the brain of another freelancer, get an accountant, whatever works. Just don’t stick your head in the sand and expect it all to sort itself out. That’s how you end up paying more tax than necessary or, worse, in hot water with HMRC.

So learn about what expenses you can claim and when, how to write down the value of assets, the pros and cons of being paid gross or on PAYE (including Class 1 NI and holiday pay), what records you need to keep, what you can save on (e.g. how to get a small earnings exemption form, what it’s for, and when to give it back) and what to save for (e.g. payments on account).

Learn what you will/won’t be entitled to in times of need, especially if you live with a partner (if one of you is unable to work for some reason, you may come in for a nasty shock if you haven’t already looked into what benefits self-employed people, and people with working partners, are and aren’t entitled to). Also, learn about the pros and cons of things like VAT registration, business banking and registering as a limited company.

If you’re confused by accounts and tax returns, consider getting an accountant. I’ve never seen this as a waste of money because my accountant is reasonably-priced, I could earn far more than her fee in the time it would have taken me, and I would have made a pig’s ear of it and ended up completely stressed and miserable in the process. The key is to find one who’ll provide ongoing advice and support, answer questions, and so on.

Oh, and I don’t just mean get clued up about your relationship with HMRC. Understand commercial debt legislation, too. Understand what terms you should and should not agree to, what the default terms are if nothing is discussed, how to chase late payment, what fees and interest you can add, and how to start small claims proceedings. Because even if you see writing as a hobby…

Freelancing is a business

So treat it like one!

There’s some more good tips and links over at The Renegade Writer and Diane Shipley.