By Emma Wilkins.
In the famous phrase “murder your darlings”, “you” are a writer and your “darlings” are the parts of a piece that, despite your love for them, must be scrapped. The work itself is the ultimate darling, which makes such scrapping possible. Once finished, the challenge is to find that work a home.
Before I started freelancing, I assumed my greatest challenge would either be the task of writing (and of murder), or of finding my writing a (paying) home. What I’ve since discovered is that, as hard as writing, rewriting, and finding a home is, what happens next is very often harder still.
It’s one thing to grit your teeth and kill selected darlings. It’s another to have a darling that you deemed essential murdered, or mutilated, by someone else.
Often, the violence (though it hurts) is justified; the editor deserves the writer’s thanks. But sometimes, something valuable is lost. It might be rescued yet—if edits are proposed and not imposed, if the writer is invited to accept or to reject, if the editor respects their point of view—but, more often than most readers might assume, the writer only sees what has been changed when it’s too late. Or, though shown the final copy when in theory there’s still time to speak, decides to bite their tongue.
They bite their tongue because they fear that questioning a judgment call might cause offense, or burn a bridge, or both. It might result in being labelled “difficult”; and when an editor is spoilt for choice and pressed for time, why would they choose “difficult”?
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I was a journalist—a staff writer—for ten years before to-bite-or-not-to-bite-my-tongue became a regular dilemma. For years, I was used to my editors detecting flaws and making improvements; I was used to feeling in their debt. Sometimes, a change wasn’t to my taste, but we didn’t do bylines; my name was never attached to my stories, and because I wrote from interviews, from court transcripts, from studies and reports, I was not attached to them. I wrote them, but I wasn’t in them; they weren’t personal; they were facts that I reported for a wage.
When, with my employer’s blessing, I started freelancing in my own time, boundaries began to blur. I started writing stories about my life—stories based on my experiences and my relationships, on deeply-held opinions and beliefs; I started interviewing people I knew and cared about; I started taking risks. The greatest risk was one I never anticipated: the risk I took when I surrendered a finished piece I cared about to an editor I’d never met.
In what I’ve come to think of as the Wild West of freelancing, I discovered that some editors manage to add mistakes to a piece instead of removing them, and many don’t run the final copy by the person who wrote it before publishing it.
I didn’t expect editors to consult me when adding missing words or deleting repeated ones, when correcting grammatical errors, or applying their publication’s style guide. I didn’t expect to be consulted about minor changes to punctuation or structure or syntax. But I did expect to be consulted when an edit altered what I was trying to say, or how, in a personal, first-person piece. I expected a suggestion and an explanation of the rationale; I expected the opportunity to accept a tweak or propose one of my own. Many editors I’ve worked with do collaborate like this, but I was naive to think all would.
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The more personal the piece, and the harder a writer works to make each line “just so”, the more it will pain them to stomach changes made against their will.
As for headlines—the only part some people read—I can understand why those who know what makes their readers tick, and click, better than me, would draft their own. I can understand why a stressed-out editor wouldn’t make time to seek my approval before publication. But that doesn’t stop me, the one whose name will be attached to it, wishing they would.
I’ve also found that many publications consider “exposure” ample payment for a writer’s time. I once received an email informing me a submission had not only been accepted, it had already been edited and published online. When I then inquired about payment, the editor informed me his publication didn’t pay contributors. He offered to take the piece down, but by then it was too late to place it elsewhere.
I suggested that in future, the editor could tell contributors, prior to publication, that they wouldn’t be paid for their time. The publication could also note this in its submission guidelines (I’ve since checked; they haven’t changed).
Freelancers also run the risk that an editor won’t respond to their pitch or will reject it, only to use it themselves or assign it to somebody else. How can a writer who reads a story based on an idea they had, in a publication they pitched it to without success, tell if someone got there first, or if the article was based on their intellectual property? Much rests on editors being ethical. I like to think most are, but checks and balances are few.
Another point to note: an article that’s suspiciously similar to one published elsewhere earlier might have been written first. Many editors say that, due to the volume of pitches they receive, they can’t respond to a writer unless they’re interested. Those who send a prompt reply, even if it only says, “I’ll pass”, earn my heartfelt gratitude—I’d rather be rejected and move on than be left hanging, waiting, hoping, wasting time. As for those who pass and take the time to explain why, they fill me with fresh hope for humankind.
It’s worth noting that editors, especially if they’re employees themselves, often lack agency, too. They must conform to certain rules, meet certain deadlines, toe certain lines, and manage certain workloads to keep their job. Speaking of “certain rules”, writers who submit to a publication with a writing style that makes them cringe can expect the edits to as well; we shouldn’t blame an editor who’s just doing their job.
Another issue is that while freelancers might generate the bulk of a publication’s traffic, they’re rarely told how well their stories do. I don’t mind this very much; I don’t want clicks to be my measure of success or of self-worth. But along with not knowing which pitches and submissions are actually read, and the reasons those that are ignored or declined didn’t make the cut, it’s another way in which we’re often in the dark, blindfolded in the Wild West.
I don’t want to make the writer-editor divide seem greater than it is. Many journalists are editors one minute and writers the next; I’ve worn the hat of editor myself. What I do want to do is give readers, and budding writers, a glimpse behind the scenes. I want you to know that just because a person’s name is attached to a piece of writing, doesn’t mean that every line is theirs, or that every line met their approval. This might work in the writer’s favour—“their” best lines might be their editor’s—but it can work against them too; the most dumbed-down or hyped-up sentences might not be theirs at all.
With all the risks and challenges, it’s a wonder that Lone Rangers keep roaming the Wild West. In an article that asks whether freelance journalism is becoming unviable, staff-writer-turned-independent-journalist Ralph Jones says the writing isn’t the tiring part. “What’s tiring is that in order to do the writing you’ve got to do the pitching, the chasing, the dodging out-of-offices, the haggling, the compromising, the invoicing, the self-promotion, the work at weekends, the chasing, the chasing, the chasing.” It is wildly inefficient.
Just as a writer can, in theory, ask an editor to respond to a pitch within a certain time, they can, in theory, impose conditions when an editor expresses interest in a piece. However, the dynamic between freelance journalists and commissioning editors involves a significant power imbalance. Because most editors receive far more submissions than they can hope to use, freelance writers must pick their battles. In order to develop relationships and increase the chances of one acceptance leading to another, it pays to be agreeable. The newer the relationship, the more heightened the risk of appearing “difficult”, especially when interactions occur solely over email where rapport is hard to build. Even asking an editor to respond to a time-sensitive pitch promptly so I can find another taker if they decline, or to “please run any edits by me”, can feel like asking far too much.
Perhaps it’s fitting that this article has been difficult to place. A “dream” publication accepted a pitch for it last September. In October, I sent through a finished draft. The editor said she liked the piece “tons” and had started to make a few edit notes; she’d get back to me soon. Weeks passed. When I followed up, I’d receive reassuring emails—“I’m just swamped”, “please don’t give up on me”. Months passed. The following year, six weeks after an email that promised a reply “next week”, I told the editor I was unwilling to be left hanging any longer. I wanted to write about the power imbalance, not succumb to it, and I felt I had no choice but to cut my losses and try elsewhere. I was paid a quarter of the agreed amount—some publications wouldn’t pay a cent—and I was back to square one. At least the piece was evergreen.
Evergreen pieces—articles that aren’t time-sensitive—are a much safer investment of time than harder-hitting stories that might pass their use-by date before you can find an editor to commission them. Another option is submitting finished pieces to literary journals instead of courting commissions from news outlets, because journals accept more esoteric, less newsy work, and tend to welcome simultaneous submissions. But these journals are often not-for-profit labours of love. They might be more likely to respond to a submission than an editor who’s been contacted cold, but they usually take months to do so. Many don’t pay writers a cent but do charge a reading fee; of those that do pay writers, few can offer much. And competition is fierce. The top journals are said to have acceptance rates under 1%. If I didn’t steer clear of those that charge, I could find myself not only giving work away but paying to do so.
I could up my freelance income by targeting publications I don’t want to read, let alone write for, with content I have no desire to produce, but know will sell. But if I needed the money that badly, there would be much easier, less soul-destroying ways to earn it.
If I were the sole income-earner in my family, I’d almost certainly increase my staff-writer hours, or take on copywriting work, rather than indulging in freelance writing. Many freelancers rely on other forms of employment to make a living; many have given up entirely. According to author and journalist Katherine Lewis, this should matter to readers as well as the editors and publications that rely on them. Writing about the diversity independent journalists add to the media landscape, Lewis suggests the challenges faced by independent journalists—“being underpaid, exploited, ghosted by editors, and asked to do additional work beyond the scope of their assignments”—constitutes an “existential threat to a healthy and diverse journalism ecosystem”.
Maybe some freelance writers could tell a different story. Presumably, those at the top can call more shots than small-timers like me—but I’m pretty sure the majority have a lot less power than most readers would expect, especially if they are under financial pressure. The author of the next article you read might have more integrity than the piece implies, or less; more talent, or less. It depends on the compromises they made, or refused to make; on the ultimatums they issued, or didn’t; and why. It depends on their skill, and it depends on the editor’s skill; it depends on many variables they could not control.
I sometimes think I’m not cut out to sustain a freelance writing career, especially when I’m writing “from the heart”. I care too much about what I want to say and how; about each word, each implication, every darling. When such a piece is accepted, I dread receiving edits I might be forced to accept. At other times, I think I am cut out for this because I care so much—about what I want to say and how, about each word, each implication, every darling.
This is why I’m so appreciative when I find editors who don’t just tolerate collaboration, but invite it. They might ask me to compromise, but also, they might compromise for me. Ink might be spilt and darlings murdered, but the process isn’t painful, and sometimes it is fun.
I might call the place I freelance the Wild West, but when I’m working with an editor I trust, I stop being a Lone Ranger. I have a partner, and my partner has my back. The hats that we are wearing might be different, but the page that we are on—and the place we hope to go—is the same.