By Matt Haldeman
I’m not a famous writer. I don’t have an agent. The money I make in one year of writing is about enough to buy a new suit, or maybe cover my rent for a few weeks.
So why should you listen to me?
Well, you can be the judge of whether I have anything helpful to say about getting published. I know that when I was just starting out, I would have loved to have someone like me offer advice.
When I made my decision to be a writer, I purchased every book every published on the subject of freelancing. The problem was, everything I read was written by someone who had clearly made it. Most of the things they wrote about were things that didn’t concern me.
I read articles on what you should and shouldn’t expect from your agent. I read articles on how to get the most money from a book publisher. I even read about how to maintain creative control when your book gets made into a movie.
And I wasn’t even published.
Now that I am, I’d like to share the things that I’ve learned. Obviously, I haven’t learned everything, or I’d be a lot wealthier. Still, I think there are a lot of traps that beginning writers fall into and I think I can help you avoid many of them.
So I’ll talk you through my first year as a freelancer. When it began, I had zero publishing credits. When it ended, I was a columnist for three publications (one of them paying), I’d been published in the Washington Post, I’d seen my work performed on a professional stage, and I’d made slightly over $400. I certainly wasn’t going to quit my day job (I teach public school in the Bronx), but it was a good start and I am proud of what I’ve accomplished.
So here goes:
INITIAL SUCCESS
I wanted to be a writer. I loved to write and I believed I was good at it. So why not make a little money on the side and see my name in print? I’d made up my mind; I was going to do it.
So I took a class.
In retrospect, it seems like a silly idea. What I should have done, since I wanted to be a writer, was to write. But I thought there was some secret to the whole process and so I attended a lecture entitled, “How to write an effective op-ed.” Luckily I didn’t pay for it. When it comes to writing, “Don’t ever pay for anything, ever!” is the maxim I live by.
I was amazed by how simple and obvious the teacher’s comments were. Find something you’re passionate about, write on it, and then submit. That was all there was to it. I was amazed.
Luckily, he gave us time at the end of the lecture to craft our own op-eds. My friend and I (both school teachers) opted to write on school choice vouchers. We were given fifteen minutes, but we spent so much time discussing that we barely had two paragraphs.
When the class was over, our teacher dismissed us with these words, “Now go home, add a few lines, correct your mistakes, and go submit your op-eds to a local paper.” I was confused enough to approach him afterwards. Didn’t you have to be well known or important to get an op-ed published? Certainly, they didn’t take articles from regular people.
Our teacher reminded me that newspaper editors are people just like us who have too much work to do and not enough time to do it. Editors are often in need of some sort of filler. If your topic is timely and it arrives in his inbox at just the right time, you just might get published. He suggested sending articles on Saturday morning for two reasons. One, Sunday editions are the biggest and most likely to need extra articles. Two, editors like to go home early to be with their families on the weekend.
And so we did exactly that. We went home and turned our two paragraphs into two pages. We edited and revised every night that week, and then sent it off that Saturday to our favorite local paper, the Washington Post.
It was easy. Three minutes of browsing on their website and we found an e-mail address (OPED@washpost.com). We sent the article and waited. About a week later, we got an e-mail telling us we’d been accepted, about a month later we saw our article in print, and about three months later, we received joint checks for $150.
In retrospect, it was probably good that I knew nothing about freelance writing. If I had, I would have decided that there was absolutely no way the Washington Post would ever accept my article and I would have sent it to some small paper.
And in a way, that initial success changed the way I approached freelance writing. No, I don’t expect that everything I write will bring in $300 and be published in a major newspaper across from a piece by Henry Kissinger (that was the best part). But I do feel, whenever I write, that anything’s possible and I’m never afraid to try a long shot.
There are all sorts of websites that actually make you pay to get your work published, or even make you pay for the chance of getting your work published. To me, they’re preying on people who have lowered expectations, and think this is the only way to get into the business. It’s not true.
You do have to pay your dues, but you shouldn’t have to pay to pay your dues. Be wary of anyone (agents, publishers, editors) who ask for money and tell you that’s how the game works. The only thing I’ve ever paid for is my annual copy of the Writers Market, which you can now subscribe to online for a fee. Take my word, it’s worth it.
Be especially wary of contests that have entrance fees. If people need your $5 submission fee to make a living, it’s more than likely that having your work published or performed by them will do nothing for your career. Working for free, on the other hand, is an entirely different manner. It often makes sense to work for free to build a library of published clips, especially when you’re starting out.
That’s about it. I hope you don’t think that my point is not that I am such a great writer. I was definitely lucky. And don’t expect to be freelancing to be easy, because it’s not. But if you want to take something away from this article it should be this: reach for the stars. Send your work to the most unlikely of places. You may receive the most unlikely of results.
Matt Haldeman teaches sixth grade at a public school in the Bronx, NY. He has written for various publications including the Washington Post and his plays have been performed in theater festivals along the East Coast.
