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| Volume 49, Number 2, Summer 2000 |
by Larry O'Hanlon
Seems like I'm often hearing or reading about how hard it is to be a full-time freelancer. You know the complaints: rotten contracts, lousy pay, isolation, no benefits, no security, etc. We rarely hear about the rewards. It even seems that freelancing is often perceived of as a default career-something people do between jobs or when they have a well-paid spouse to make ends meet. Yet there are many science writers who consider freelancing a great job. Even a few, like me, for whom freelancing has been a lifesaver.
I've been a science writer for about eight years, ever since I squared off against my old typewriter in a hot, run-down ranger's trailer in Death Valley and tapped out a geology article for the tiny Kern Valley Sun. I earned a whole ten dollars. Nonetheless, I considered a career in science writing a step up from guiding bleary, beer-bloated tourists on geology tours. Any grass looks greener than RVs and coyote scat.
Like scores of other science writers, I re-tooled for my new career at UC Santa Cruz. There I stumbled into newswriting-a craft with a name I still consider somewhat oxymoronic. I worked at a number of community newspapers in California and Nevada, usually covering everything except the subjects that I'm best qualified to write about. That's about par for most newspapers. I reported on plane crashes, water wars, lake monsters, farm-worker riots, bomb scares, tribal feuds, and at least a thousand other stories. It was quite an education.
In those days, I made ends meet by living in tents, travel trailers, and water-stained postage-stamp rentals that had probably seen a corpse or two. Along the way I was robbed once, often swindled and betrayed more times than I want to remember by folks I thought had better manners. At some of the papers I had the rare pleasure of working with editors who-if you squinted and jiggled your head-actually resembled human beings. Other papers, on the other hand, honored their pact with Satan and hired only his minions. Despite the madness of the jobs, however, I managed to make the conversion from geologist to seasoned news-writer.
One of the things that kept me going through the years of city council meetings and police blotters was the tickle of freelance science pieces I wrote on the side. It was enough to remind me that I wasn't just the underpaid county/tribal/water/crime/weather/ social issues reporter for the Lahontan Valley News Eagle Standard or an under-employed freelance writer in Wisconsin, fueling airplanes in subzero weather after moving to the wrong state for the wrong reasons. Freelancing was a life raft, a fragile connection to a bigger and better world of science writing. I never, however, considered freelancing an end in itself. Too risky, I thought. One needs a real job to make it these days.
Then, a couple of years ago, I hit the wall. I couldn't stomach the insanity of newspaper work any longer. After a perfectly quixotic attempt to change the nature of management at a certain daily newspaper in Santa Cruz County (an endeavor about as promising as befriending a skunk or cuddling a porcupine), I ended my newspaper career and became a full-time freelancer. I was finally more disgusted with newspapers than I was wary of freelancing.
In hindsight, I can see that as a newspaper reporter I was in a slow death spiral-overworked, underpaid, and seriously considering an editor's advice that I take up binge drinking as a hobby. Since I abandoned the newsroom and employee-hood, however, my life has improved enormously. Along the way I've learned which criticisms about freelancing are true and which are just fears disguised as reasons not to freelance.
I'll start with the regular paycheck question. Once I thought it was essential to survival. But no matter how hard I worked and saved as a reporter, I could never get ahead, and I foresaw only more 16-hour days and diminishing returns ahead. As a freelancer, I broke that cycle. Because I no longer had to commute to an office, I moved to a less expensive area, reduced my operating expenses, and made a go of it. My evidence that the plan worked is that just a few months ago, I bought a house in a beautiful part of California that is affordable only because it's a lousy commute to anywhere. Let me add here that I am not married and I have no roommates.
Risky, you say? Foolhardy? Well, that brings me to the next point: job security. Many people consider freelancing less secure than regular employment. It just isn't so. As a freelancer my job security is in my own hands. It is a result of how clever, creative, and productive I choose to be. It's not in the hands of stockholders, bureaucrats, or the vagaries of merger mania. If one of my clients disappears, I get to work and develop two or three others. In an era when loyalty and job security are as common as steam engines, I'd wager freelancers have more job security than most employees.
Next is stress. It's the killer. Stress was slowly wearing me down as an employee, with all sorts of hidden personnel agendas and boards of directors thousands of miles away deciding my colleagues' and my fates behind closed doors. That's to say nothing about those newsroom editors. They weren't exactly guiding us down lotus-lined paths to serenity-unless you mean by that a cemetery. We were overworked, never paid for all the hours we worked, and continually being asked to do more and more for less and less. Sound familiar?
Of course, freelancing isn't perfect. I have to work hard, and I still have to deal with editors and other managers. Most I choose to work for are great folks. Those still allied with Satan I either refuse to work for or light a fire under them. After all, if the publishers of a publication value my contributions and want me to keep working for them, they have to treat me right (and vice versa). I think civility is a lot easier to maintain between freelancers and editors than employees and managers.
Another huge benefit of freelancing is the freedom to grow professionally. As a freelancer I am able to explore other areas of writing that I could never try as a reporter or associate editor. I can develop documentaries, books, educational materials, radio programs-anything that interests me. There was hardly time to eat dinner when I was a reporter.
I could go on and on. Frankly, however, I'd rather stop before I make too good a case for the freelance life.
Freelance Larry O'Hanlon watches the commuter traffic from his home in San Rafael, CA.