Tips for freelancers — from ideas to rewrites and beyond

Meryl Davids Landau

Freelance writers, even people with many years of working experience, can run into challenges operating with the editors who commission their parts. At the “How to be your possess copy editor (and advocate),” panel at Overall health Journalism 2022 in Austin, editors and effective freelancers  shared strategies in a session that progressed into a broader discussion between the panel and the audience.

Freelance author Meryl Davids Landau started the session by offering a couple tips centered on her personal encounters as both equally a novelist and a author of nonfiction health and science articles or blog posts.  She stated writing fiction designed her non-fiction composing superior, and suggested  that writers test to make the anecdotes in their stories browse far more like fiction. “Put you in the readers’ footwear and ask if they are enjoying looking through the posting,” she stated.

Landau also instructed that writers get strategies by attending scientific conferences, or merely by pondering of story that they are finest situated to compose, probably owing to private connections or contacts.

The a few editors on the panel — Rob Waters of MindSite News, Carmel Wroth of Nationwide General public Radio (NPR) Shots Blog site and Matthew B.H. Ong of The Most cancers Letter — all emphasized how crucial it is for writers to continue to be in speak to with their editors. “The most important factor about the partnership among an editor and a writer is that it is a romantic relationship. As an editor, I want to join with my writers,” Waters stated.  It never hurts to overcommunicate, Wroth included, furnished the author retains in intellect that editors are them selves suffering from data overload. It is specially  important for writers to achieve out when a story veers absent from the primary concept — and  Waters and Wroth both mentioned that  a writer speaking that really should also suggest a option.

A writer who has significantly way too much information to put into a solitary posting can always pitch a sequence to their editor. “They will almost certainly say no,” Waters reported, but at that stage, the author is cost-free to pitch the other posting to a different publication (except if the deal with the unique publication states in any other case).

Landau experienced a considerably distinctive choose. “For me, as a freelancer, if you have about-documented, that signifies you failed,” she mentioned. Usually freelance writers are not paid by the hour or by the interview, so expending extra time indicates a lessen for each-hour amount of pay.

The panel also talked over payment.  “I have not located a way to put a value on a story that is not the [industry standard of] term premiums,” Waters claimed.  That common amount for each term provides quite a few problems, which includes incentivizing writers to publish extended than necessary  — and the truth that occasionally crafting shorter is more tough than producing more time. When it comes to inquiring for extra cash simply because a tale is taking for a longer time than expected, Wroth reported, “I’ll look at additional cash if it gets more do the job for the author since of anything I asked for.”

Pitching of system is key, and editors mentioned it’s significant to have a very clear thought of both what the report is about and the publication it is for. “Please research,” Ong explained. “Look at who is looking at the publication.”

Wroth advised imagining what a Fb blurb introducing the closing article might say, and making use of that as the starting point.  “It’s a promise to the reader,” she said, “so you have to have to determine out what your assure is, and then make it happen.” Owning this succinct idea of the report is essential even from the time of the pitch. “When you never know what your story is, there is a ton of wrestle for all people,” Wroth reported.

From time to time a to start with draft requirements to be cut to provide the tale back to that succinct plan. “I don’t about-interview, but I do overwrite,” Landau said. “As a writer, it can be difficult to slash your phrases.” She recommended placing any lower textual content into a individual doc to help make it a little bit simpler mentally. (Waters jumped in with an settlement, calling the text in that individual doc the “orphans” of the piece.)

Other enhancing ideas from equally the panelists and the audience, whether examining one’s personal work or another person else’s, associated trying to see the piece from a diverse perspective. For illustration, established it aside and examine it all over again in a couple hrs, browse it out loud, or start with the final paragraph and read each and every paragraph working toward the initially a person. While undertaking so, writers must appear cautiously for repeated terms as perfectly as verbs, which ought to be exact and sharp.

When requested what tales they have been wanting for, Waters said he is intrigued in knowledge-driven tales on very long COVID and linked psychological health indicators. Wroth also outlined an fascination in COVID posts, even with noting that every person is suffering from COVID fatigue. “There’s a bucket called COVID-adjacent that I imagine is vital ideal now,” she claimed.