Before I found my gig as a regular freelance contributor for a small local paper, I was working as a high school English teacher who enjoyed some sporadic freelance work on the side. I also maintained a blog all about writing, and I had held one regular, paid (albeit small) role as a contributor on…
When I decided to quit my full-time job in an office in New York City and freelance full-time instead, I had worked for two big digital publishing companies and interned for three. I had the promise of a bare minimum of $1,000 per month thanks to a contract with the entertainment division of the first…
By Susan Sundwall You’ve heard of the house that Jack built, right? In this familiar children’s rhyme, the story builds character by character until we have a complete list of the occupants of that house. This building, layer by layer, is a bit like what happened with an assignment I landed with the Children’s Writer’s…
By Theresa St. John I decided that I wanted to be a journalist/travel writer in 2013. Of course, like many others starting out, I had big dreams and bright, shining stars in my eyes. I thought I’d be traveling to exotic countries, hosted at five-star hotels, spoiled rotten, all on someone else’s dime. And, those…
The year was 2012. I was barely three months into my foray into the freelance world, and I was doing okay (or so I thought.) I hadn’t done much research before signing up to take on clients through a job board to bring in a little extra cash. As a stay-at-home mom of two girls,…
By Megan Headley Three letters leapt out at me when I read the job ad posted on the weekly newsletter of writing opportunities, and it was an acronym I hoped would mean little to other writers perusing the listings: BIM. To me, BIM meant building information modeling, a new type of technology taking over the…
The Mongol Derby That Transformed My Freelance Writing Career For more than 20 years, I worked as a newspaper reporter at weekly and then daily newspapers. In 2015, as papers started trimming down their newsrooms, I decided to become a freelance writer and work from home my home in Anderson located in Anderson County, part…