How to be a Freelance Writer Part Three: The Process
This is Part Three of a five-part guide on freelance writing. Check out the Introduction and find links to other parts here.
The actual writing process
I’m going to assume you already know how to write. Here are some quick tips for not breaking anything while you work on the piece:
· Focus. You’ve got the commission! Depending on the piece, this can be the hardest thing to achieve in the whole process. However, you’ve got to do the work and get that baby filed.
· Plan out how you’re going to attack this piece. Break it down. What do you need to do in order to write the piece? Some pieces will call for no reporting/research at all, or just a quick google (“light reporting”). Some will require in-depth knowledge or interviews. If you’re writing a review, you’re going to have to actually read the book/watch the film, etc. Plan the preliminary stuff in along with the writing — this preliminary stuff can actually be the most time-consuming.
· Know how you work best. I tend to write and research at the same time and I prefer to start difficult work in the mid-morning. You may be the complete opposite. In any case, the knowledge of how you work best is going to help you maximise your efficiency (which means that you end up getting paid more on an hourly basis).
· MEET YOUR DEADLINE. Your word is a big part of your value as a writer. I mean this literally, you are paid to write words, but also metaphorically — people need to trust in what you say. It doesn’t really matter how great a writer you are, if you’re unreliable or difficult to squeeze words from, nobody will want to work with you. If you have trouble with deadlines generally, set your deadline two days before your real one. Set mini-deadlines (I’ll have the interviews done in X days, a full draft in Y days, etc.). If you can’t meet your deadline (good excuses are sickness, your interviewee had to reschedule, the reporting process is longer than expected for [insert concrete reason]), obviously that’s fine. Let your editor know as soon as you begin to suspect you’ll have a problem — often editors plan what content they’re running in advance. They can’t fill a gap they don’t know is coming up.
· Write to the set word limit. There’s so many things everyone should know about the topic you’re writing about. Unfortunately, you often don’t have the space to mention them all (this is even true if you’re writing a book). It’s difficult but do try to stick to the word limit (if you’re writing for online, you can have a 10% buffer).
· If you’re having any problems (uncooperative sources are often the main issue that comes up), know that you aren’t on your own. You can let your editor know. They may be able to help. If you’re having trouble choosing a hook or focusing your research, it’s best to try and figure it out on your own or with the help of a friend or relative, but the editor is always there if you’re stuck. Likewise, if the process is more time-consuming, convoluted, or otherwise requires far more effort than you think you signed up to, tell your editor. You may be able to renegotiate your brief, or get paid more.
· Edit your work. I don’t think editors expect 100% clean copy all the time, but you want your writing to be clear, concise, logical, and enjoyable. It is impossible to achieve these things throughout your piece in a first draft. In fact, in general, unless you’re really struggling and looking for early advice, I’d say never send anything to an editor until you have no idea how your work could be improved. That’s the perfect time for someone else to give you meaningful feedback (of course, an even better time for your editor to see it is on the day it’s due).
Edits
When an editor receives your piece, they may or may not send back edits. Sometimes they request that you make changes to the piece, sometimes they make changes and seek your approval (sometimes both). Occasionally, an editor will make changes without your approval. This may be appropriate for time-sensitive pieces that have to be published, like, three hours ago.
Some publications tend to run pieces as is, or with only the lightest of copyediting (i.e. fixing up typos). The advantage of a minimal editing process is efficiency — it’s really easy to get pieces published, your hourly rate is better (edits can be pretty time consuming). Plus, your voice is preserved. There are lots of reasons why your piece might not be edited in greater depth: the publication/editor doesn’t really have the time, it’s the kind of piece where your unique voice/perspective is integral to the piece itself (as in humour pieces, personal essays, and op-eds), or it could just be that you wrote the piece really well.
In general, having pieces go through edits will make the piece better. The main issue is that edits take ages. Many freelancers are taken through multiple rounds of editing. Editors may request structural changes where you’ll essentially have to re-write (or at least restructure) the whole thing. You may need to change your focus slightly. Editors also like you to add things. Often, they have questions that seem obvious in retrospect, but you forgot to address in your draft. Sometimes you’ll be asked to cut down on words, especially in print publications where even going a paragraph over will seriously mess with the page layouts (Joan Didion once wrote a wonderful essay to an exact character count). This is annoying, but you want to do it. Better you cut down words than have someone else put a chainsaw to it.
Don’t take edits personally. Have you ever read the acknowledgements pages of your favourite books? Even the best writers have editors to thank for helping to make their piece what it is. If the whole piece was terrible and went nowhere, an editor would probably just kill the piece and be done with it. The fact that they’re trying to help you improve it means that they see its potential and they see you as a writer worth investing time in. It never feels good to receive edits, but they aren’t bad to get.
Attitudes towards editing vary among writers. Some writers are super chill about it, and others don’t like the process at all. Regardless of where you fit on the continuum, spend time understanding what the editor is asking you to change (or has changed) and why.
I’m usually chill about edits, which means I have a tendency to glaze over suggested changes and just approve them all without looking at them properly within the context of the piece. I guess this makes me easy to work with, but at the same time, it’s been important for my development to push myself into taking a more active role in responding to edits. The edits I receive can show me what kinds of mistakes I tend to make, so I can learn to fix them at draft stage. Additionally, edits are not intended to be set in stone, they are suggestions. The best way to respond to edits is creatively. Sure, you can accept them, or they can inspire you to think about an aspect of the piece you hadn’t considered. Instead of accepting the suggested change, you can use the opportunity to come up with your own change.
Other writers are more reticent to accept feedback. This makes sense. You’ve worked hard on the piece and you want to make sure it stays true to your vision. Again, it’s still important to understand why a change is suggested. In particular, writing for publications is different to writing for yourself. You have to fit the tone and style of the publication, and the editor has to think about the audience they’re targeting and what their interests and proclivities are. If you’re well-matched with the publication you’re writing for, there shouldn’t be too much of a gap between how you’d ideally write the piece and how an editor wants you to write it, but you will almost certainly encounter gaps of this kind during your freelance writing career. As above, you can remember that edits are suggestions, they are not set in stone. It can be helpful to cultivate a creative, curious approach to them.
You never have to accept an edit. If the suggested changes aren’t in accordance with what you know or believe, if the edits include phrases that you’d never say, or if they make you uncomfortable, explain this to your editor. As long as you can justify your reasoning, it’s unlikely that your disagreement with an edit would stop the piece from being published.
Getting killed
Despite best efforts, sometimes accepted pitches don’t turn into published pieces. Perhaps you can’t write the piece as you expected, or perhaps you did write it and your editor deemed it unsuitable for publication.
You may be entitled to a kill fee if this happens. A kill fee is usually a proportion of the fee agreed to upfront. A generous kill fee is about 50%, though increasingly often the kill fee is a token payment. Legally, if no kill fee was agreed to and you worked on the piece in good faith, a publication owes you the full amount.
I don’t think it’s useful to conceive the writer as being at fault if the piece was killed. Often, factors that kill a piece are out of the writer’s control (something too similar was published, the story you got wasn’t as good as the story you were expecting to get, you researched this amazing phenomenon to find out it was all a hoax…). In other cases, writers may have pitched a great idea, but they overpromised a little. They gave editors the impression they’re working towards a better or more unique story than they really had. This is a really common problem for writers who are starting out. Ideally, an editor should be able to tell when a pitch idea will fall flat at execution stage and reject the pitch. But editors aren’t perfect and sometimes they accept things that shouldn’t be accepted, and then you end up doing all this work on something lacklustre. And then they have the hard job of telling you they won’t be publishing it.
I’ve had three pieces killed (all within my first year of freelancing). One was because a similar article to mine had been published, one was because the editor of a publication commissioned more pieces than they could run, and the other one was because I couldn’t really deliver on what I promised. Getting killed is embarrassing and disheartening and generally leads to bad feelings. However, it’s not a sign that you’re a bad writer. If you did the work, you are owed your kill fee. This is an experience to learn from. Dust yourself off, keep going.
Also, a weird plus side of getting killed is that you’re free to take the piece elsewhere. This means that you can actually get paid twice to write one piece (this has also happened to me). So, if the piece is salvageable, keep pitching it.
Getting published!
Go you! When a piece is published it is good etiquette to thank your editor. If you have some more ideas, pitch them. If not, but you do want to work with them again, say that they can expect to get some pitches from you in the future.
If you interviewed anyone or relied on any particular sources for the piece, you may like to send them a link or a copy. I think this is really important if your piece was detailing someone’s story, or if they were really helpful to you.
That said, don’t feel obliged to get in touch with sources you didn’t really get along with, or just gave a quick comment, or who seem like they want to control how the final piece looks. The less opportunity you give people to request retractions, the better.
You may make enemies with sources (you may also make enemies with readers — I talk about dealing with the public in part five). Obviously, their feedback can be really important, especially if you got a factual matter wrong. Sometimes though, making enemies is a good sign that you’re bravely writing truthful things.
You may like to share your piece on social media. This is a really good way to get traffic to the article and feedback from friends and followers.
If you see typos or anything on the published piece (it sometimes happens) and it’s web-based, you can get in touch with the editor to fix them.
Just as struggling to be a published writer is stressful, success can be stressful too. It’s hard to expose your thoughts to a wide audience — it’s a brave thing to put your ideas out there in public and it’s perfectly natural to feel a bit vulnerable. You may also be dealing with thoughts about how on earth you’re going to get published again (all writers, at some point, worry that they’re out of ideas). Take some time out to celebrate your achievement, and know that whatever anxieties you have at this point are shared by pretty much every other writer on the planet.
Invoicing and getting paid
And now to the less glamorous, but still vital process of getting paid! Different publications have different payment procedures. If you’ve been instructed on those, then just follow them.
If you’ve not been given any instructions, then you default to sending the publication (usually the editor you worked with) an invoice. An invoice looks like this:
The important information to include on it is:
· Your legal name
· If relevant for your jurisdiction: your business number (in Australia, for instance, you must include your ABN)
· Your contact details (email, address, phone number)
· The date
· An invoice number (you can make up any numbering system you like, but you must have a number so that the publication can reconcile their payment records)
· The name of the publication, their address, and the name of the person your invoice is being directed to (again, usually your editor, but it may also be someone in the Payables/Accounts department)
· A description of what you want to be paid for (usually I put the title of the piece). Usually, I invoice for one piece at a time but if you do a high volume of work for a single publication it can be easier to put multiple pieces on one invoice (as per the sample above).
· If you are paid per word: the word count of the piece (you generally invoice for the word count you and the editor agreed to, but if you were allowed variation, then invoice for the actual word count)
· The amount to be paid
· Your payment details (bank account details, or if you’re being paid electronically such as through Paypal, the email address or username associated with your account)
· A payment deadline (I leave mine as “Invoices must be paid within 14 days”).
Excel or Word has some templates that should work fine. The important thing is that it has all the necessary information and that it’s clear.
In an ideal world, you’d submit the invoice and see the money instantly roll in. Sadly, we do not live in an ideal world. Many publications are really bad at paying writers in a timely manner. Unfortunately, it means you’ll need to follow up on payments. After 14 days have passed, if I haven’t been paid, I send an email to the editor (or to the accounts person) that goes something like this:
Dear [whoever],
I’m emailing to follow up on the invoice I sent to you on [date]. I was wondering when I should expect to receive the payment.
Kind regards,
[Me]
You may want to make the email more or less terse depending on how much you like/know the recipient. Usually you don’t need to follow up payment at all, and when you do, one email like the one above is sufficient to get things in motion. Some freelancers have some real horror stories about chasing up payments though. After a few months, it is entirely appropriate to threaten to get lawyers and/or debt collectors involved. Some writers also take to social media to shame publications that take months (or even years) to pay. Fingers crossed you don’t ever have to do that.
