Paying Your Dues

Kristen King

by Matt Haldeman

www.inkthinkerblog.com — 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 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 freelance, everything I read on the subject was written by someone who had clearly made it. Most of the things they wrote about didn’t concern me.

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 take 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.

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?

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.

The teacher’s comments were simple and obvious. Find something you’re passionate about, write on it, and then submit.

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.

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. Didn’t you have to be well known or important to get an op-ed published?

Our teacher explained 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.

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. But I do feel, whenever I write, that anything’s possible.

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.

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 Writer’s Market, which you can now subscribe to online for a fee. Take my word, it’s worth it.

That’s about it. I hope you realize 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.

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Matt Haldeman teaches sixth grade at a public school in the Bronx, NY. He has written for various publications including the Washington Post and Hopscotch for Girls and his plays have been performed in various theater festivals across the country.

Although this article was published by Kristen King, the original author retains all copyright and should be contacted for reprint requests.