Rough Story Script from Episode #1: How I Became a Freelance Writer and Why I Started This Podcast

Hello everyone, and welcome to We Built this Life. Thank you so much for listening today to the very first episode. I thought I would start off today by talking about my career story to date. It’s a work in progress, for sure, but to give you a brief summary, I’m a part-time freelance writer, and I have three little kids, a 6-year-old daughter, and two sons, ages 4 and 13 months. My older two kids are in school for most of the day, but my youngest, the baby, is home with me.

Becoming a Freelance Writer

So I wanted to tell you how I got to this point. So I never had a plan for my career. I studied journalism in college because I liked writing. But I was very shy—I still am more shy and introverted and even socially awkward, but as a teenager my shyness was pretty strong. So there was this fundamental journalism class that everyone in the major had to get through and you had to write 20 stories for the college newspaper. This scared me, so much; I physically felt sick about it. If you’re the type of person who gets really nervous and anxious, you probably know what I mean. I just couldn’t get up the nerve to go up to people on campus and ask them questions so I could write these 20 newspaper stories. So I became an English major and I read books and wrote papers and I didn’t really know what I’m going to do with that after I got out of college but for the time being, I didn’t have to interview anyone I didn’t know, so that was great.

So I graduate, and I got my first job at a nonprofit working for my friend’s mom. It was the first of many nonprofit jobs in my 20s because I switched jobs every one to two years. I coordinated trainings, I organized volunteers and I was an AmeriCorps volunteer myself for a year helping to organize cooking classes. I was kind of just treading water though. I wasn’t incredibly interested in any of these jobs even though I was working for organizations that did great work. But for the most part, with major the exception of one position, they were just jobs that brought a paycheck. Looking back though, I realize now that I was always volunteering for writing assignments—and by this point I was actually interviewing people to write these newsletter stories for the nonprofits—but I didn’t make the connection that I should try to be a writer.

Then in 2006, my brother died and everything changed. We all have these sort of life altering traumatic things that happen to us, and to date this has been mine. I was 27 and living in New York at the time but this one weekend, Memorial Day weekend I was in Maryland, where I’m from, for my friend’s wedding. I was a bridesmaid so all of us were at the nail salon getting our nails done, and I remember I was lying down on a chair with my eyes closed and a couple of girls came through the door and I heard one of them say, “There’s a man lying in a pool of blood outside of the Kentucky Fried Chicken.” This was kind of on the main strip in our town. I didn’t really think anything of it. Actually in that moment, I remember feeling like the person was probably okay, like it wasn’t that serious, because violence just didn’t happen in my town, and that it had probably happened to someone I didn’t know, because what are the chances I would know this person? I didn’t live there anymore. But come to find out, it was my brother and he was stabbed in the throat. What happened was he was waiting at a stop sign next to the Health Department of all places, and he was waiting to turn right and he had his window down. He didn’t know it, I guess, but someone, a 19-year-old male, had been following him. This other guy ended up stabbing my brother in the throat through my brother’s open window while he waited at this stop sign. His carotid artery was severed, he did get out of the car, and in the funeral home we could see that he had cuts on his knuckles, so we think he maybe fought with the other guy a little bit, but he lived for maybe 2 more minutes. My brother, his name was Pat like Patrick, and he was 23, had just graduated from college, he studied sports management, and he worked at the GNC in town and moved in with his girlfriend and her five-year-old son at, and he had woken up that day like any other day and gotten ready for work and that was it, that was the end of his life.

I know we live in a world where things like this happen all the time; a death like this isn’t an anomaly unfortunately. But when it happens to someone you know, it really shakes you up. I had a therapist afterward for about two years and I remember telling her one day, because I really struggled for a long time after this happened to my brother, I told her, I feel like I’m a ghost, like I’m this hologram just floating through all of these people on the streets of New York, but I’m not really there; I’m was just in my own mind, trapped in this experience that happened to my brother and my grief about it. I still struggle with anxiety about violence today, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that.

But at the time we lost my brother, I was in my late 20s, and I was struggling with work, or with desk jobs at least, which is what I have always had. So I thought, you know, I don’t want to sit behind a desk anymore right now. I know it’s the responsible thing and people save for retirement and their futures—their houses, their kids—but at the time I couldn’t think that far ahead. I was 27 years old, I had a boyfriend who is now my husband but at the time we had only been together for a year, we didn’t have kids yet, and I truly didn’t think I was going to make it that long. My brother died when he was 23; there’s no way I’m living until retirement age. That doesn’t sound logical of course, but it’s just the way my brain was working at the time. So I thought okay, I don’t know how much time I’m going to have here; I don’t want to spend so much of my day right now sitting in one place. And this is just me. Some people work really well in office environments. My husband and I were just talking about this the other day. He’s an admissions counselor for a university; it’s a 9 to 5 job, and he really likes the job itself first of all, but he likes the structure. He likes knowing when his lunch and when he’s going to go home at the end of the day. But for me, it’s completely different. I don’t mind working in the morning and then taking a break to buy groceries and then coming back and working until late at night. I like that flexibility, and I like sort having every day be different. So I just wanted to see if I could find an environment like that to work in, just to see how it would feel.

So I started freelance writing. My last full-time job was as a grant writer—and this is probably a decade ago now—so my first freelance job after I left that position was as a grant writing consultant. So that was a really great place to start because it was a job that paid me a retainer, a consultant fee, every month, so there was a little bit of structure payment-wise. I had that consultant gig for about three years while I went to graduate school for nonfiction writing. So I moved back to Baltimore for school, where I’m from and where I live now, and I had this grantwriting gig and I also started taking on freelance work writing stories for university, trade, and consumer magazines. My work has appeared in publications such as Saveur, EatingWELL, Arrive, Cancer Today, SmartCEO, Baltimore STYLE, Baltimore City Paper, and publications of the Johns Hopkins University and the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA).

And then my husband and I had our first baby in 2012. And freelance writing ended up being a really great fit—I could take care of the baby and avoid paying for daycare, and I could still bring in some money. I’m lucky in that I live near my parents have somewhat flexible schedules, so they have been able to help me by watching the kids when I have to do interviews. And then the great thing about writing is you can do it at any time. I can do it at night while I’m holding the baby if I have to do. So that flexibility has worked out really well for me. And, even though interviewing people is what scared me away from journalism so long ago, that’s what I really love about freelance writing now. I may get major anxiety about going to parties where there are a lot of people or about having to hold up one end of the conversation with people I don’t know. I’m not great at making small talk, but I really do like to learn about other people and interviewing people gives me the opportunitiy to ask them questions that I might feel strange asking if I just met these same people in a social setting.  

So that is how I came to do the work I do, at least for now while I still have a young child at home who isn’t in school. Freelancing can be tough sometimes though. Some of the challenges: You have clients you’ve worked with for a while and then you might not hear from them again and you might not really know why, that can be tough, and every client is different and their payment schedules are different. I’ve had money held up for months in the past; that can happen; it’s not like getting a check every two weeks. And you also have to have a thick skin. You’ll send story ideas to people or LOIs, which are letters of interest, kind of like a cover letter where you tell organizations about yourself and the services you offer, and lots of times you won’t get response. Or you will get a response and you’re writing won’t be the right fit for the client. So you have to have a thick skin and you have to be persistent and that can be a challenge at least for my particular type of personality. But I also love that the work is always changing and I get to talk to different people about what they do. Actually putting the pieces together—the quotes from the interview and the research—to write a story is really fun too. It’s like a puzzle and I enjoy it. I’ve also had a lot of really positive experiences as a writer. I’ve had editors I’ve known for years and who I’m very happy to work with again and again. I feel lucky that someone pays me to put stories together at home; I think there isn’t a job out there that would be a better fit for me.

I also wouldn’t be able to do this without the help of my parents, who watch the baby and the kids when I have to do interviews; I’m really lucky to have that support. And I’m fortunate that my husband works really hard so that our family has not only a stable income, but also health insurance. So that’s my story.

Why I Started This Podcast

So then the next thing I want to talk about is why this podcast? There are tons of career podcasts, why start one? My first reason is really straight forward and kind of boring. I just want to learn a new skill and I want to learn how to tell stories in different ways. Having this skill could help me professionally in the future. 

There’s also just this feeling when you are a parent and you are with the kids a lot, you can kind of lose yourself in the day to day kid tasks, right. The making three meals a day and breaking up fights and cleaning the house, though to be perfectly my house never really seems clean or organized, that is not my strength. But even though you love being with your kids, you can sort of lose your identity a little bit. So I want to start this podcast for me, so I have my own project and this is what I’m doing outside of being a mom. I think we all need that, whether you have kids, too, or you work a ton of hours at your job or you have other obligations, you know, whatever it is. It’s nice to have something for ourselves, too. 

I also, I said it in the intro, but I have just always loved career stories. I never tired of hearing about why people chose to do the work they do. And what I really want to get into in this podcast is the failures that people have gone through along the way—because everyone has failed at something in their careers and I think it’s important to keep being reminded of that—and to learn how others pushed past those challenges to create a working life that fits their version of success. I hope these stories give you a little push to move forward on some of the big goals you want to accomplish, despite struggles or challenges you have had in the past. Failure stinks and putting yourself out there is scary—I’ve recorded this episode about myself at least six times for example, probably because I’m scared to upload it so I understand the fear of putting yourself out there—but we all need to keep moving and to be persistent so we can reach our own versions of success, and I hope the stories that are told on the podcast push you to do just that.

And with that, I think it’s time to close for today. I thank you so much for listening to my story; I hope you will tune into to hear other people’s stories. I will be here again next week. Until then, take care.