We have made it almost to the end. Amid all the end-of-year rituals, I’m working through my annual review this week and I thought I’d share a few takeaways from my freelance writing business.
How I earned my money in 2020
I wrote 62 articles this year varying from 500-3,000 words and 272 pieces of content marketing–blog posts, newsletters, etc–ranging from 250-2,000 words.
I sent 256 pitches and spent 82 hours pitching assignments, researching publications and browsing recent coverage, so I could tailor my pitches to have the best shot. I got a ton of nos and no responses, but I got yeses from total dream pubs!
I had several editors come to me with ideas or respond to a pitch with a yes and a request for additional pitches on another topic area, which helped me earn more. I also worked with two trade magazines; sometimes I pitched topics but in many cases the editors came to me with ideas they trusted me to execute.
Overall, trade magazines accounted for 16 percent of my income from 25 percent last year–pandemic-related cuts.
Digital and print publications made up 18 percent of my income for 2020; they were only 5 percent of my income for 2019 and I had a goal of pushing this up to 10 percent. I've been sharing my five favorite bylines of the year on Instagram so you can check out what I'm most proud of having written.
Content marketing made up 37 percent of my income in 2020, vs. 61 percent in 2019. I took a big hit there from the pandemic when certain clients dropped their marketing budgets. I've picked up a couple of new content marketing clients, and am saying no to work that isn't aligned with my rates–something that was difficult to stick with this year when lean months and lost work had me tempted to say yes to whatever rate was offered, but I'm glad I stuck to my guts and hustled out pitches. It's led to me being able to tell some fun stories and make inroads with editors who've given me repeat work.
And the rest of my income came from other sources!
My best rate was $1.50 a word(!!) or $1,950 for a story that required several interviews and 7.5 hours of my time, for an hourly rate of $260. They were great to work with but alas not commissioning at present.
My worst rate was $50 for a short feature that required quote outreach and 1.33 hours of my time for an hourly rate of $37.50. This was a scarcity pitch on my part in the thick of the pandemic.
How I spent my time in 2020
I spent 67 hours on writer-adjacent marketing tasks, like updating my portfolio and website, sending out essays to lit mags and other publications, and applying for professional development opportunities.
This is my second year chasing #100rejections (here’s why). So far I’ve racked up 77 rejections with 28 open submissions. I received 5 “tiered rejections” with an invitation to submit again.
I had two short nonfiction pieces accepted by lit mags and 2 nonfiction pieces accepted for publication in anthologies. I received 1 invitation to edit and resubmit, which is pending their review. I was longlisted for a fellowship, waitlisted for a Tin House workshop, semi-finalist for a contest, notably mentioned in Best American Travel Writing, nabbed a scholarship to the Desert Nights, Rising Stars writing conference and named the creative nonfiction editor for Atlas+Alice (and you can submit your coolest stuff to me for the next 2 weeks, if it vibes right).
It took me 69 hours to edit and write new pieces, dozens of hours to craft applications (note to self: tag these for easier accounting next year), and 17 hours to submit the work and track my results in a spreadsheet.
I spent 308 hours writing and editing novels, 24 hours working on a book proposal, 36 hours on big picture business planning and visioning, 144 hours on administrative stuff (100 on email alone, which is reigniting my desire to hire a VA), 141 hours walking the dogs, 100 hours on professional development and 2 hours planning travel (pre-pandemic obvi).
“I only write stuff I want and I have a big pile of fuck-you money” was how I expressed my overarching goals recently to a friend, but what that looks like concretely is till gelling. I’m still chewing over the numbers and thinking over the ways I want 2021 to look different from 2020.
Digging into the raw math of my earnings and my time is the first step in the big picture thinking. For me, the numbers help me see what practices work and what habits do not work any longer. I’m more of a feelings person than a logic person, but when I look at the raw data, I have a gut feeling on it that suggests where I need to grow. There’s no objectively good or right answer; there’s what decisions help me have the writing business I want to have.
If you’ve got a question about finding your growth edge of making the numbers work for you, send it my way.
And thank you for reading. I know this year wasn’t what any of us wanted or hoped for, and that the simple endurance act of making it through can’t erase what, and who, we’ve lost.
Things I read and loved this month:
Artforum: Saidiya Hartman on insurgent histories and the abolitionist imaginary - This was my first introduction to Saidiya Hartman and I've bookmarked "Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments" to read after being blow away by this note: “In large measure, this world is maintained by the disposability and the fungibility of Black and brown female lives. Intimacy is a critical feature of this coerced labor and of care. Black intimacy has been shaped by the anomalous social formation produced by slavery, by involuntary servitude, by capitalist extraction, and by antiblackness and yet exceeds these conditions. The intimate realm is an extension of the social world—it is inseparable from the social world—so to create other networks of love and affiliation, to nurture a promiscuous sociality vast enough to embrace strangers, is to be involved in the work of challenging and remaking the terms of sociality.”
Guernica: The storytellers of empire - Old but worth a read: Kamila Shamsie's article on the insularity of American fiction, mediated through American imperialism and military invasions: "So in an America where fiction writers are so caught up in the Idea of America in a way that perhaps has no parallel with any other national fiction, where the term Great American Novel weighs heavily on writers, why is it that the fiction writers of my generation are so little concerned with the history of their own nation once that history exits the fifty states. It’s not because of a lack of dramatic potential in those stories of America in the World; that much is clear."
Jane Friedman: Don’t Hold Out for Publishing to Make You Feel Seen. Here’s Another Goal Instead - something I try to keep in mind and share with other writers is that the end goal should never be publication–external validation is just not the path to lasting happiness. Author Susan DeFreitas reflects on how visibility–actually seeing the intention of another writer, and connecting with their work–is a more satisfying goal. If you've been feeling under-connected, or haven't gotten the publishing wins you wished for in 2020, this might help reframe things.
My latest piece:
The Penny Hoarder: Shop at Ethnic Grocery Stores to Save Money, Expand Your Palate
This piece combined two of my favorite things, saving money AND cooking international food not available in my rural town. Most recently, that's vegetarian gyoza from this cookbook, which my wife just proclaimed as better than a restaurant, possible because all our fave local Japanese places have closed down.
Get your q’s answered!
Every two weeks, I answer your questions about the writing life and making it work for you. Want yours answered? Email lindsey.danis[at]gmail.com.
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