Just Write The Piece

Here is my number one tip-top piece of advice for freelancers: just write the piece. 

I came of age as an editor with the rise of e-mail. Many of us entered the profession because of our love of words and sentences, so naturally we were obsessed with email. Checking it. Replying to it. Complaining about it.

Sometimes the job could feel like being a conduit between Gmail and Google Docs (or, as one of my favorite writers referred to it, Google Fuckin’ Docs).

E-mail is a great way to get an editor’s attention. It’s like a key to the door. Except that ten thousand other people have the key, too. 

The freelance pitches arrive at all times of day and night. I would read them on the subway, or waiting in line for coffee, or sometimes even at my desk. It’s a neverending stream of ideas—some half-baked, some quite good, some quite insane.

I have great sympathy for freelance writers. I knew what it was like to be on the other side of the door. I also knew that I paid more for writing at the start of my career than I did now, and that reality sometimes made me feel a little sick. What will happen to writing, to expression, if we don’t value it more?

Sometimes an idea would catch my eye: “It would be fun to read this piece.” But then I would feel the weight of commitment. I would have to check the writer out, read some clips, reply to the email, negotiate a rate, send a contract—and then what if the draft turned out to be crap and I was stuck with a real tangle? Better just to hit archive and move on. There is probably some ideas meeting to prepare for.

But sometimes the piece would be attached, and the writing would have something. Grounded in particular experience, and infused with a winning brio. The resolve weakens. Let’s give it a shot. Why not.

It may seem callous of me to tell you to write for free, to send things to an editor on spec, to use your valuable time on a what is often a moonshot. But I propose in return that you might learn a lot by just writing the piece, especially if you are starting out. You might learn, for example, that you didn’t actually want to write the piece. Or that you really had not thought it through carefully. Or, more likely, that you hadn’t thought about why you in particular were the best person to write the piece. 

So just write the piece. Try to go about it with a certain lightness. Sometimes it all comes together beautifully.