The Space Between Vertebrae
My hands grow cold and rigid. In those blue-tinged palms, I can see my future.
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Posts Tagged: freelance
FUNNY WOMEN: Tailoring a Pitch Across Outlets
Hit me if you’re down for this excluze to all your compadbros.
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Country, Black Ass, Queer Perspective: Talking with Michael Arceneaux
Michael Arceneaux discusses his new memoir, I CAN’T DATE JESUS.
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A Funny Inevitability: In Conversation with Siel Ju
Siel Ju discusses her debut novel-in-stories, Cake Time, the difference between our online selves and real-life selves, and who she hopes will read her work.
...moreWhat It Means to Write at a Coffee Shop
When you’re a freelance writer — or any type of freelancer — you make yourself a lot of promises, mostly about getting out of the house and about wearing real, non-pajama clothing. But with no one to hold you accountable, these promises often go unfulfilled. For The Billfold, Allegra Ringo walks us through a routine of (not) writing many of […]
...moreWhy Women Freelance More
More and more people are leaving the salaried workplace for the freelance economy. But it’s not necessarily by choice; at Bitch Magazine, Sarah Grey discusses how companies and labor policy push women in particular toward freelancing, and why the “lean in” brand of workplace feminism is unhelpful in remedying it.
...moreA Narrative to Relate To
At Guernica, Elizabeth Karp-Evans interviews John Freeman, the founder of the literary journal Freeman’s, on freelancing, his goals for Freeman’s, and cultivating narratives: Narratives are individual; after that they become myths because you need to abstract a narrative to make it apply to many at once. Literature is of course subjective and universal when it’s great, […]
...moreFeel Less Dumb
Debut novelist Adrienne Celt (The Daughters, 2015) has some advice for you. Not writing advice, of course. No, Celt would like to help you with your taxes: I think it’s nice when people stand up and say “I HAVE BEEN THERE. I FELT VERY DUMB, AND CAN HELP YOU FEEL LESS DUMB YOURSELF,” especially in the […]
...moreHow a Freelancer Prays
The writing life is hard, especially in the finance department and in the unstable nature of a freelancer’s status. Over at McSweeney’s, Marco Kaye writes a poignant representation of the inner monologue of the pleading, praying freelancer: Assist me in negotiating the rate I deserve. Allow for rate negotiations, period. Help me get better at this […]
...moreWe Think Writing Is Sexy
So I’m here to tell you that you can make a living as a writer, but you (might) have to let go of some notions of what “making a living as a writer” means. Over at Huffington Post Books, a new column by Katie Rose Guest Pryal offers some practical advice for how to make a […]
...moreClicking on This Story Won’t Pay Anybody
Noah Davis is running an experiment: how much will he earn off writing a news story about how much freelance journalists are paid. Like many freelance writers today, part of his compensation is based on the number of pageviews his article receives. Writing was never very lucrative, and the transition from a printed world to […]
...moreRefinancing the Writing Life
The system for determining worth and value strikes me as terribly strange, and it occurs to me that it just might require a suspension of disbelief. Luckily for me, I know something about that. For Salon, Rachel Basch writes about the humiliation of refinancing her mortgage as a writer, freelance editor, and adjunct.
...moreThe Kill Fee is Killing Us All
Journalist Scott Carney wants to kill the kill fee: When I came back to America I sent the best draft of the piece I could to my editor. He didn’t like it. So I rewrote it. He wanted stronger anecdotes, so I rewrote it again. Over the course of the next seven months I rewrote […]
...moreDisappearing Digital Ink
Writers like to believe their words will make them immortal. But in the digital age, most writing careers outlive publications. Carter Maness discovered that most of his career as a music journalist has faded from existence as the publications that published and paid him shut down the servers hosting his words. This evaporation of content can […]
...moreDispatches from a Real-Life, Full-Time Freelance Writer
Over at The Billfold, writer Nicole Dieker kicks off a new series on all aspects of life as a full-time freelancer. In her first installment, she covers the four different types of paid assignments and how her personal writing projects fit with her professional obligations. Now that I’ve got the defensive posturing aside: well, sure. […]
...moreAdvice on Writing for Free
In an “ask a freelancer” column for the Daily Dot, Rumpus contributor Melissa Chadburn receives a question on too many writers’ minds these days: Should I write for free? Short answer: yes, if you’ll enjoy it and it’ll help you grow as a writer. Long answer: read the whole thing.
...moreA Day in the Journalistic Life
The life of a writer is rarely depicted as glamorous. We do it because we must. But sometimes we also must do other things like eat, and pay for shelter over our heads, or support those dependent on us. In the age of of information inundation, with high reader demands and little money to go […]
...moreThe Joys Of Freelancin’
“The great thing about freelance, of course, is the numerous freedoms it embraces, chief among them being the freedom to work in your underwear. This seems to be the one that everyone knows. I was talking on the phone to an uncle of mine who’s in a nursing home, and when I told him I […]
...more“The pulp of 2010”
Jonah Lehrer laments a big problem with the social web: “The one shared feature that I’m most interested in is also a little disturbing: the tendency of the social software to quantify our social life. Facebook doesn’t just let us connect with our friends: it counts our friends. Twitter doesn’t just allow us to aggregate […]
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