Jumping out of a hot air balloon

Reviewing my first year working as a freelance journalist.

Let me start with stats because who doesn’t like stats? In my first year as a freelance journalist, I wrote 54 articles that appeared in 14 different publications — mostly magazines, one local newspaper, two national newspapers, two websites (wait, is this the 2006 review?) and one trade magazine. On six occasions, my story ended up being the cover story. I pissed off at least one editor (by selling a similar story to a competitor, who published first), frustrated another (she responded to my submission my story started with: “How do you feel about what you wrote?”) and negotiated my pay with pretty much all of them, managing about a 50% success rate (yes, I do consider the negotiated bottle of booze per submission on top of my pay for a bi-monthly cocktail feature a succes).

Despite having excellent tools at my disposal, a more than reasonable fear for utter disappointment hold me back from calculating the average time I spent on an article and how much money I made from it.

This year, I enjoyed a few work-free weekends and one two-day vacation. On four occasions I failed to pay my rent on time.

I’m Dutch. In July 2015 I moved from Amsterdam to New York and therefore had to quit my job as a staff writer at the Dutch edition of Esquire magazine. My brother often joked that nothing printed in Esquire really matters, and to some extent he’s right, but I did get to write the kind of stories I like: profile stories, interviews, reportages and essays.
Magazine journalism in the Netherlands though, like anywhere else in the world probably, was not faring well when I left. There were massive rounds of layoffs at every major publishing house. The overall mood was somber: one managing publisher explained an impending round of layoffs, on stage, with the entire staff listening, by saying they had to “think of the company as a hot air balloon, struggling to stay in the air”. “To prevent it from crashing, we need to throw out some of the sandbags.”

So, you know, freelancing didn’t sound too bad at the time.

Here’s what I learned in my first year working freelance:

• Most of the editors I pitched to this year responded. Hurray. Some even approached me to write something, even though I hadn’t met them yet (thanks Casper, Anne-Martijn!). But along the way I came across quite a few editors that seemed to hate receiving pitches from freelancers, too. One of them, over the phone: “I don’t respond to these little ideas freelancers like yourself send me. I don’t know you, therefore I won’t work with you”. Maybe he’ll find himself flying a crashing hot air balloon one day, maybe not.
• Still, I like pitching.
• I like acting on (/ getting paid for) any interests I develop. Really, that’s so much fun. Now, who’ll pay me to go on a loooong husky dog sled ride through Lapland?
• “I could have written that. I SHOULD HAVE written that” — is how I felt many times this year.
• Arguing about money you’re owed can be comical. Like when one accountant asked me: “Do you even realize how small of a company we are?”. I asked her the same question.
• Going to work, being among other potentially miserable freelancers, helps. They too get rejected, make less money than their friends, live in tiny apartments, but somehow still succeed in writing all these amazing stories. That motivated me. Seriously, sign up for Brooklyn based coworking space Studyhall, or something like it.
• When I submit something after many days of working on it, I make myself a drink, recline my chair, and feel like it’s the best piece I’ve ever written and it’s better than anyone else could have written. The next day an editor might tell me otherwise. Like the one who asked me: “Are you happy with what you wrote?”. She was right to ask: I was, but should not have been. Version two, based on her feedback, was much better. (Thanks Hanna.)
• Still, I hate rewriting stories.

These are the stories I really enjoyed writing this year:
(All of it is in Dutch, so I can safely claim the writing is astonishing.)

Good news (Het Parool)

Shadowing Blendle-founder Alexander Klöpping in New York City. With his online platform for ‘quality journalism’, he likes to think he’s bringing New York publishers some much needed good news.

Door to door for Hillary (Nieuwe Revu)

I signed up for a canvassing event at the Hillary Clinton campaign, interviewed volunteers to learn what motivates them and tried to understand what a political ground game entails. The guy next to me on the bus offered me homemade cookies. It was a fun day.

Flirting with the assistant (the virtual one) (Esquire)

What happens when software speaks the language of its users? You’ll start flirting with it, apparently.

Excitement has returned to the hotel lobby (ELLE Eten)

Back in the day, a hotel lobby equalled excitement: business men striking deals, champagne bottles being popped, affairs being conducted. Now, not so much. But things are looking up.

The shiny appeal of a coworking space (NRC Next)

WeWork and Spaces facilitate a shiny work environment for a growing number of freelancers. What exactly makes working there so appealing? And do their members work harder because of it?

Wild thing (ELLE)

Because it brought me to L.A., which was fun. Also: celebrity interviews are really weird.

My brother doesn’t say it any more, so I will: none of these stories really mattered. Especially not in a year like 2016. I’m going to try harder next year.