The Unprecious Art of Freelance Writing
In loving memory of all that “copy” and “content” I’ve written over the years
I have a lot of bios floating around the internet, tucked beneath one article or another. Some are painfully serious (“Tori Telfer graduated MAGNA CUM LAUDE from…”), but most are fairly self-deprecating. In these bios, I like to hint at the “diversity,” the “range” of my writing — which is somehow both huge and not terribly impressive.
In these bios, I mention that I’ve written website copy for products like steel-plated German cuticle “nippers.” I say that I’ve blogged about orthopedic high heels, and that I used to get $10 per juice-themed blog post (“Whip up this strawberry-beet concoction for a Valentine’s Day glow!”). I talk about how I’ve ghostwritten “thought leadership” articles for people I’m pretty sure were on cocaine, researched old-school serial killers, and edited short stories for six-year-olds, all in the same day. I contain multitudes! — and I mean that as less of a reference to Walt Whitman and more of a reference to the science book I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, available on Amazon Prime for $16.12 as we speak. In other words, my career = more practicality, less poetry.
