Columbia Journalism School recently taught us how to become relatively successful freelance writers. The event on Wednesday featured Nykia Spradley, Maddy Crowell, and Léa Khayata, and was moderated by Elizabeth Kiefer. But really, this is about me.

When the editor finally responds

I came to Columbia with a dream and a word of wisdom. The dream was to become a half-decent journalist, and the wisdom was that I shouldn’t write for free.

The advice had come from a journalist whose work I’d been following. He writes about politics for The Atlantic, and I emailed him asking what all freelancers needed to know. I had hardly been published then and wanted to improve my byline. He responded to my email with four words. At the time, I found them to be useless. Look, nobody’s Twitter bio says how much they make, but they sure do say where one has “words,” “bylines,” and @s. Give me my social currency. But now, after spending too much time at the J-school, my time as an undergraduate waning, I’ve been unable to avoid his words.

So let me put it this way. There is one universal truth in freelance writing, and it is this: never write for free.

This means getting paid for your work, but it also means recognizing that freelancing is not so much an art as it is an architecture. Networks matter and not all time is created equal. You might pull an all-nighter to finish a time-sensitive thinkpiece that nobody will look over; someone else will make a call to their editor and say hey can I write this. Editors will ghost you; others will tell you your writing is trash. There are a few good apples though, and that’s what these J-school events are for. I’ve said enough. Let me explain freelancing.

On Getting Paid
“The payoff comes, but it comes months and months later,” Crowell says. “In between, you’re basically waiting.” Be like Crowell and do things on the side, like fact check (for the New York Times, ideally). Build websites. Do copywriting for smoothie brands. Become an Instagram influencer for the ad revenue. The point is that freelancing is hard to sustain as a full-time job, and is best thought of as a side gig until you’re more established.

There’s also the question of how much you’re getting paid. Negotiating is tough, and it’s a multivariable problem. Does the magazine have a really bad fixed rate like 50 dollars per article? Take it or leave it. But is it The Atlantic? Take the low pay, build your byline, and get paid more later. At the negotiating table, don’t just say “give me.” Say please. Actually, don’t. Better yet, break down your work into its component parts. Tell them what each part requires: how many interviews, how much time, the number of sources used, the equipment needed for videos. Quantify, dissect. Keep taxes and healthcare in mind. $300 is a good benchmark.

But, as Spradley warns, you’re probably still gonna be working more than you’re being paid for.

On Pitching
Pitching an idea to editors is usually the first step to getting published. Kiefer says, “Don’t pitch what you don’t want to write.” This makes a lot of sense. Sometimes I dream about writing for VICE, but then I remember that I would never write an article titled “Counterpoint: Fuck Waluigi, He Doesn’t Deserve to Be in the New Smash Bros.” Don’t put my name on that.

Pitch like mad. Live by it and die by it. Don’t be afraid to email editors. “Hi, maybe you know me, probably not. I’m a freelancer, and I would love to share some ideas if that’s okay.” 98% will say yes. That is, if they do respond. Don’t ask what exactly they’re looking for, Spradley says. That’s annoying. “You should know,” she says. Follow up every two weeks, more or less. It’s okay to be a little aggressive, but not too much. The back-and-forth might take two months, but you could end up being published.

But what about the time-sensitive pieces? That was my question during the Q&A, and I was pretty proud of myself for asking. What happens when you’re racing against columnists with actual jobs to publish a lukewarm take before the rest?

The advice is this: don’t send your pitch to any email addresses called opinion@magazine.com. On the off chance that these large professional magazines read your pitch— probably because of the inbox zero craze—a dozen articles with the same take will have already been published, at which point your work is basically plagiarism.

You’re better off emailing the editor who would be responsible for your article. Better yet, get to know them in advance. If you’re really pressed for time, send the pitch to a bunch of places. They’ll tell you not to—it’s like journalistic integrity or whatever—but people double-deposit to colleges all the time and nobody gets rescinded for it. It’s not a big deal. If you have time, tweak the pitch to each place just a little bit. For example, if I’m pitching to the New York Times, I’ll include more of my own personal experiences so they might say, “hey, your opinion isn’t great, honestly, but at least you’re a college student and not a fully grown professional adult.” That would be unforgivable. But if I’m pitching to The Atlantic, I might include references to that sociology paper I read, or rather, the abstract of the sociology paper I was supposed to read.

Include a headline, but don’t be too witty: get the idea across. Be brief; be concise. Wait, do those words mean the same thing?

But perhaps the best advice about pitching is this: don’t write the full article. Seriously. Just don’t. The magazine’s website will say, “we only accept fully written articles, not blurbs or pitches.” They are damn liars. It takes a long time to write a full article—time where you aren’t getting paid—and nobody wants to trash their piece because it can’t find a home, especially if that piece is time-sensitive. Find the editor. “Editor” and “Tinder” share five out of six letters, and if editors can just swipe left on you, why offer more than six mediocre pictures?

On Advancing Your Career
Make connections. Talk to your thesis advisor, who also happened to have worked at The New Yorker and can help you get an interview with the Times. Kiefer says to be humble: “you don’t know where the work is necessarily going to come from.” So think of everyone as a possibility. Over time, build up a list of stable clients that you can access.

Work with your fellow freelancers. Ask them what they make so you know if you’re being shortchanged; you’re probably coming up with different takes anyway. They’re companions, not competition.

On Being Passionate
I named this article what I named it because despite all the intellectual and emotional catharsis (or narcissism) that getting published provides, there is still an economics to it. One cannot escape instrumentality. But one must still leave room for passion, even if doing so were to contradict what my flashy title states quite explicitly. I firmly believe that a career in freelancing driven by money is doomed to disappoint. So here’s the exception to the rule: write because you love to write.

Spradley says that sometimes freelancing is less about the money and more about sustaining the lifestyle. Find your purpose, be cautious of burnout, take time to reflect. Ask yourself why you’re freelancing instead of working a 9 to 5. Khayata says it will all work out in the end. Crowell says to take the leap of faith.

I write for Bwog because I like the people I do it with. Our managing editor Zack and I frequently force our way into journalism school events and god, does it feel good to be in places you aren’t invited to be in. Bwog is always pitching what we want to write, end of story. And we’ve all bought into the idea that it’s worth telling these stories to the Columbia community: that there are things we can relate to, things we need to know, and things we definitely didn’t need to know but now know and will never forget.

So maybe I would re-formulate my original statement, and say this instead: it’s okay to love what you do.

Edit 5/11, 1:08 PM: We’ve made several edits on the post, to correct for the purpose of our platform as a campus blog, inaccuracies within the post, and the fact that Bwog as an organization does not condone underage drinking.