The Life of a Full-Time Freelance Writer

How do you do it, Natasha Vargas Cooper? That's the question asked recently on The Billfold.

From the piece...

Do you live paycheck to paycheck?

There are entire months when I don’t get paid. Realistically I probably only get paid five times a year. I’ll get a large sum of money and I’ve been lucky enough live on that before it gets down to zero I’ll get paid again. The goal is to get big ticket pieces so I can spend my time on those, and don’t have to cobble together smaller pieces and listicles and slideshows, which I’m not very good at anyway. I am not a blogger, I can’t hack it as one, I’m slow. I had two weeks at Gawker that made me want to put a gun in my mouth.

I’m pitching five editors from five publications constantly. I have relationships with them. I’m not sending blind queries. There are two ways the magazines pay. One is a negotiated fee-per-word, and one is a lump sum payment per piece. And I have a good rate. Very early when I started writing I got a book deal and my first longform piece was for The Atlantic, and through those I was able to establish myself early on.

How did you learn how to negotiate?

Whenever I’d get a piece, I’d tell my dad—who was a journalist for 30 years—and he’d say, “How much are they going to pay you?” I’d respond sheepishly that “I didn’t ask” because at the beginning it kinda felt like the editor or magazine was doing me a favor. And he’d make me get back on the phone and get a contract. Coming from a union background, I also don’t, uh, have a lot sympathy for bosses. These are giant conglomerates who can absolutely afford to pay $25,000 for a photo shoot, so they can absolutely pay me my measly fee.

I don’t have any sentimentality about this profession. I don’t romanticize it or my relationship with these magazines. And I don’t have any illusions that the business relationship I have is with the editor I’m working with, because it’s not a friendship, it’s a business deal (not living in New York helps reinforce this perspective). So I ask for a contract, I say, “Okay, this is the fee,” and sometimes they’ll push back on it, but I have a pretty good idea of what my work is worth now.