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Freelance Writing


You don’t have to be an expert to write about something. Academics are trained to learn a lot about a fairly narrow topic and then write about it over and over for a very long time. You might assume you can only write on a familiar topic.
But that isn’t true. I’m not an "expert" on teen television, rape culture, immigration, children’s literature, clothing. Early on, you may feel uncomfortable straying too far from your discipline or sub field but eventually that won’t seem like such a big deal. Straying could give you valuable new perspectives on your work in your field.
If you agree to write for no pay, know what you signed up for. I won’t say "don’t ever write for free." But it pays off in many other ways: It ends up attracting hundreds of thousands of page views and garnering responses ranging from beautiful to terrifying.
But by writing for no pay essentially lowers the value of written work for both yourself and other writers. Even if writing isn’t your main source of income, remember that it is for many people. So by accepting low or no pay you are enabling publications to get away with not paying writers for their work.
To be clear, I’m not really talking about writing for your friend’s tiny website or for your favorite nonprofit’s blog. I’m talking about writing for for-profit media companies that shouldn’t be allowed to get away with paying you nothing except for the "prestige" of being published on their pages.
My advice is twofold on this front: (1) Be careful about agreeing to work without compensation, and (2) Ask for the fee you deserve. If you don’t know how much you deserve, you can find guidance on sites like “Who Pays Writers” and “Study Hall”. Your well wishers might be supportive and impressed — or not.
Or, they might think you are distracting yourself from what’s important: your main work. Lots of academics look down on journalism. Lots of them get mad when their area of research is the subject of mainstream articles written by non academics or non experts. Lots of academic still think the only route through life and respectability is scholarly conferences, a good dissertation, and peer-reviewed articles.
But you have to decide on your own priorities. If writing for general magazines and web sites is something you really want to do, prioritize it — even if your well wishers see it as unimportant. It is your career and your life.
Writing for magazines, blogs, and newspapers isn’t better or worse than writing for academic audiences. Don’t think you are doing community service — reaching an imagined public for your work out of good will. Just do good work because you like to both write and get paid for it.

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