Random Advice for Newbie Writers: on Paying Your Dues

When new writers are looking to be “discovered,” they often agree to write for free. Some suggests that it’s good for their “exposure,” whereupon we experienced writers and editors snort into our beer and mutter, “Exposure is what you die from in the winter.”

But everyone has to start somewhere, and I’ve a few words of advice for those folks.

There’s nothing wrong with writing “for exposure,” but don’t permit yourself to think of it in those terms. “Exposure” means you are a victim, providing services at the whim of someone who does not value what you create. Instead, think of the process as “paying your dues.”

As a beginner, you have a lot to learn. That’s fine; no matter what we’re doing, we all suck at it when we start. The goal is to not suck, though, and to make sure that everything you create is better than what you did previously, and that you can demonstrate that it’s better (by others’ standards, not just your own). You need to get better as a writer (or at your chosen creative endeavor; this advice applies to other things too), and you need to build credibility.

So with everything you write, you should aim for:

Clips (so you can show other publications that someone else thought your writing was publish-worthy)

The ability to learn from the experience

Money

…and not in that order. As someone starting out, the most important thing is that you find ways to get better. For most of us, “write, write a lot” really is the best advice. Gladwell was right when he wrote that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get good at anything[1] . I look back on my earlier work and recognize so very many things that today I would do better… and faster, too, which matters if you want to make a living doing anything.

When you are paying your dues, you are looking for opportunities to get better. When you are writing for exposure, you’re stating (to yourself and others) that your work isn’t worth paying for. One implies change; the other does not.

You can learn a lot on your own, and by working with self-selected friends. But at some point you do need advice from someone who does not already care about you, or who does not know your personal voice and thus dubs it in (“…oh, I know what Esther meant to say here”). I can and do demand top dollar (as I told one would-be editor recently, “I don’t even turn the computer on for $200”), but every so often I take less money (or none) because I want to do something completely different. It might be a type of writing (reviews vs feature stories) or a topic area (e.g. that story about traveling by train).

You also need to challenge yourself to do types of writing that are not what you’re comfortable with, so that you can get good at them or at least recognize why you aren’t good at them. I do not have the “news” gene, for instance. I can explain why, if I need to do so. But mainly the knowledge keeps me from applying to news gigs where I won’t be happy, I won’t be timely (since it takes me twice as long to write a news story), and I won’t be good.

What a beginner should look for, though, is to work with someone who’ll help you improve your work. This comes in the form of, “Here’s the author review, with my changes and comments.” A good editor makes all the difference in the world. It’s like getting your hair cut. When you’re done, there’s no surprise — but you think, “Yes, that’s what I want to look like all the time!” If you pay attention to an editor’s suggestions, every one of them, you’ll gradually see your own foibles and you can fix them before you submit the article to the editor.

And the end result is that you get a lot more money. As someone who’s been on the assigning side of the transaction for several years, I can comfortably assert that I’d rather work with a B-author who follows direction (and delivers on time) than with an A-author who is high maintenance. The easier you make it for me to edit your story (which can include things like, “I notice they always put subheadings in bold”) the more likely I am to give you a follow-on assignment.

We all begin as amateurs. We aren’t worth much when we start. But if we keep creating new things, we find mentors to give us honest feedback, and we learn the business skills to accompany our technical skills… each of us moves up the ladder. Don’t assume you can start at the top; at the same time, don’t nail yourself to the bottom rung, either.