BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

How Your Journalism Sausage Gets Made, Part Five

Following
This article is more than 10 years old.

(Image by The U.S. Army via Flickr)

Being a freelance journalist means being a good juggler.

You are working on one story. You are filing another story. You are invoicing for another story.

Today marks the debut of my first feature for Boing Boing: "The Graffiti of War."

Here's how it happened.

TIP #1: Make friends with interesting people.

Freelance journalists write stories in a variety of ways. Some go out and write the story, then sell it to an outlet. Some pitch the idea and get a contract, then go and write it. Some editors come to you with stories they want written, then you go and write it. Sometimes you think of the story idea, sometimes an editor does, and sometimes people do their own stories and self-publish them so they can do whatever they want.

Once upon a time, editors responded to email queries when you pitched them stories. These days, most editors who don't like your ideas will ignore you. This can result in a disheartened state of mind. For you. Sometimes, though, they will like your story, and then you are off and running, and your confidence is restored. Ideally, you do regular pieces for certain outlets. That way, you aren't banging on a new door every time like a door-to-door vacuum salesman.

I think my first published story was in the East Bay Express, but I have no idea what it was about or if that's correct. Another early piece was a review of a book by Susie Bright, which I think ran in the SF Bay Guardian. My first piece for a glossy magazine was a story about how to date a tall woman for Details, where my editor was Duane Swierczynski, whose name I still cannot spell and who has gone on to become a successful crime writer. Those were all "cold calls." I pitched something, the editor liked it, and in some cases I wrote for those editors again.

Generally, it's easier if you know someone at the outlet. I say "outlet," because these days, there are all kinds of choices: websites, print magazines, journals, blogs, etc. Take, for example, Boing Boing. It isn't a conventional publication. It's a blog. A long time ago, it was a 'zine. Now, it's an icon.

Xeni Jardin, who is a co-editor of Boing Boing, is a friend of mine. Over the years, I've done two guest-blogging stints on Boing Boing. It was a really excellent time. More recently, they started running original features of the sort you might see in a traditional magazine, in addition to regular blog posts. I really like their features. They're very beautifully designed, when you look at them, you feel like you are looking at something different but you are not sure quite what, and they are always about something very unique.

At some point awhile back, I got an email from a combat veteran. He and another combat veteran were working on a project called The Graffiti of War. Basically, they were collecting images of "graffiti" that US servicemen and women had created while deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were planning on turning these collected images -- graffiti-covered tanks, murals on blast walls, Sharpie scribbles on the insides of Porta-Potties -- into a book.

I emailed Xeni and asked her if she was interested in a feature story on their project. She said yes. Off we went.

TIP #2: Don't write stupid stories.

Being a journalist isn't easy. Especially if you're freelance. You're sort of a lone wolf. Also, most writers are prone to depression and anxiety. If you do crappy work, writing stories about stuff you don't care about, and you spend most of your time alone, in all likelihood you will become more isolated, more anxious, and more depressed. This is why you should try and write stories about things that you love. Things that matter to you. Things that you feel invested in. They will make your heart sing.

I loved that these guys were combat veterans and were trying to give something back. (They plan to donate money from selling the book to organizations that help those post-deployed who are struggling.) I loved that they were doing it on their own. They didn't need someone to give them the nod. They just went out and did it. And while they were looking to help others, I knew in the process they were also helping themselves, processing the things that war leaves behind in the mind.

I got on the phone with Staff Sergeant Jason Deckman, a 37-year-old, 16-year Army veteran who has been deployed to Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Iraq, among other places. Deckman is the project's tech guy. His partner on the project is Jaeson "Doc" Parsons, an Army combat medic veteran. Parsons is the one who came up with the idea of their project.

I talked for Deckman for maybe half an hour. Here's a story he told me:

There was a graffiti that someone stenciled probably with a Sharpie marker on the bridge in Fallujah where Blackwater contractors were killed and strung up. It said, 'In memory, 31 March 2004, of four Blackwater contractors killed here. PS Fuck you.' Expressing that anger for the insurgents who not only killed our brothers-in-arms but treated their bodies in the most disrespectful way possible. That one, it just floored me. There's kind of a stereotype of people in the Army, in the military, 'Hey, they're a bunch of dumb grunts. They're a bunch of college dropouts.' I'll tell you, some of the people that I've served with could've been college professors. These folks understand history. They understand why they're fighting. They understand who they're fighting, and the location. So whoever was there, they realized the importance of that bridge. It just wasn't another bridge to pull guard on while the patrol went by. This was the bridge where those contractors were hung from. They took the time to say, 'I remember. I realize what happened here. And I'm not going to forget.'

That's what you're looking for in a story. The piece of it that moves you. The part where you become aware that the thing you've encountered is bigger than you, and because it's bigger than you, it can teach you something, and you don't miss that, you pay attention to that, and it changes you.

TIP #3: Create things that are beautiful.

Content farms are ugly. They look ugly. Their prose is ugly. What they are doing is ugly. They think readers are stupid. They think the people who write for them are stupid. They think the internet is so stupid it won't figure out what they are doing and find ways to block them out.

Of course, content farms aren't the only places churning out crap. If you are young and trying to write for money, maybe you are getting paid $10 a post or less to put together slide shows or listicles featuring the best movies about beer or whatever you expect the latest meme will be involving bikinis. Trust me when I tell you, I am not criticizing you. I've been there. But it sucks to create crap. Because it makes you feel like you are crap. You can take your paycheck, but $10 a post to sell your dignity isn't very fun, is it?

Boing Boing is a different story. One of their tag lines is: "A Directory of Wonderful Things." Another one is: "The brain mutator for higher primates." This is the first Boing Boing feature they ever did. (I believe.) I remember looking at it for the first time and thinking, oh, my God, that's beautiful. And it is. Look at this one, about furries, with fur all over it. Or this one, about Muslim America, with pictures so big they wrap around your head. Or this one, about narco war, with blood and guts. They are designed by Rob Beschizza, and I'm not really sure what Rob is doing, because I'm not a designer, but I think it is amazing.

So, who cares? Who cares what the stupid page looks like? Well, I do. I care a lot. And here's why. I've been going back and forth with a popular pop culture site for the last few days. They want me to write a "test post," to see if I'm a fit or not as a regular blogger. I told them they had to pay me to do that, a "test post," seeing as, it turns out, they are planning to publish it. What they want to pay me is very low. I have been doing this for a very long time, and at this time doing things for very little money is not what I want to do. But it's not just that, right? What that tells me is that they haven't hired me yet, but they have already made it clear that they think my work is of little value. And what I infer from that is that they are willing to pay very little because somewhere deep inside they know what they are doing is of no value.

When I looked at my Boing Boing feature about the Graffiti of War for the first time after it went up today, I thought, oh, it's very beautiful. Maybe some people agree. Maybe some people do not. Maybe some people think war is ugly, so the story is ugly. Maybe some people think that it doesn't matter what it looks like, that black ink letters pounded out on reams of white paper is what the news should look like. But I don't think so. I think these stories come alive because they are beautiful, because they matter, and because they make us feel more alive than we did before we met them.

Read: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.

Want to hire me? Email me. Follow me on Twitter. My personal blog.