How to Be a Freelance Journalist

The life of a writer: trips to exotic locales, interesting topics and setting your own schedule while reporting on the latest breaking news. All of these factors have played into your decision to become a freelance journalist. So why haven't you sold anything? Being a freelance journalist may not be as glamorous as you thought, but there are tips you can use to finally see your name in print.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Know your motivation. If you're just itching to see your byline, then maybe it's time to reevaluate your career goals. Writing is hard work that requires hours at your desk, the patience to get a piece finished and a thick skin to handle rejection.
2. Educate yourself in your craft and the business. Becoming a freelance journalist will require time spent reading the type of news or features that you want to write, in addition to articles and books on how to be a freelance journalist. Study the content and the writing style of what's being published; that's the material writers are successfully selling.
3. Write what you don't know as well as what you know. Choosing your topics to pitch to a magazine or newspaper is perhaps the most important step in the process. If you can't get your idea sold, the piece can't appear in print. Make sure the topic is relevant to the market you're pitching.
4. Familiarize yourself with your target publication. Whether it's a newspaper, magazine or trade journal, read several issues of the publication to become knowledgeable about the topics they have already covered, the types of articles they buy and their style. Visit the library to read back issues, request sample copies or peruse the online version.
5. Realize that your writing is a product and you are in a business. Fooling yourself into thinking your writing is solely "art" or the process is just a "craft" will limit your ability to step away from the piece and sell it. Freelance journalists who are successful and sell a lot of articles learn the ins and outs of the business.
6. Set your sights on the smaller publications at the beginning of your career. Your goal at this point is to build up a reputable clip file, and that means getting published. If you're unknown, the larger or national publications will most likely pass on your work, but once you start collecting your bylines in smaller publications, you have those to show editors.
7. Accept rejection. The hardest part of the job for freelance journalists is getting that rejection letter, phone call or email. Don't take it personally; consider it a success that you even got your work out there in the first place. Rejection is part of the acceptance process, and you'll need to learn how to deal with the possibility of facing it over and over again.

Tips & Warnings

• Write, write, write! Even if you don't feel like it, even if you haven't gotten accepted at a publication yet, even if you don't think you have anything to say that day. Keep your skills sharp and get something down on paper. Treat your writing like a job and show up at your computer every day or within a schedule that works for you.

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