Inspiration: Getting Your (Authors @)Google On

If you, like me, strive for more narrative nonfiction in your work, you need role models. Here's one:

Bill Hayes, author of Five Quarts: A Personal and Natural History of Blood, The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy, and others. The following is a 47-minute reading and discussion by the narrative nonfiction and science writer Hayes. Happy Sunday!

Where Professionalism, Frustration and Serenity Intersect

This week, freelancer LJ Williamson admitted to both fabricating outrageous stories for her client, Examiner.com, and to feeling self-righteous about it.

She emailed FishbowlLA:

[A]ll they care about is how many hits your page gets, and they don't care about the writing. Fine — I decided to try to do things their way.

Unexpectedly, one post I wrote about the vaccine/autism debate really brought the crazies out of the woodwork, and brought my page views to a new record high. So I went with it, decided to start baiting the vaccine deniers more and more, with exaggerations and half-truths.

I also wrote a series of preposterous articles on topics like why peanuts should be banned, why panic was a totally appropriate response to the swine flu outbreak, and why schoolchildren were likely to die if they were allowed to play dangerous games such as tag.

And no one at Examiner noticed or cared what I said or did for quite some time.

Examiner.com is an online content aggregator. I almost wrote "aggravator," and that would have been approriate, too. Sites like Examiner.com, Suite101.com and more hire freelancers, but only pay them according to the number of clicks their articles receive. I've written before about the danger these sites hold for freelancers, both in terms of their bottom lines and in terms of the quality of their work. And I'm not alone. Recently, freelancer Michelle Rafter, author of the WordCount blog, explained I don't work for aggregators, but I am a Web writer.

But Williamson's example shows another danger of these sites: If you let your clients, some will encourage you to discard your ethics.

Well, let me back up: I get what Williamson is doing. She's calling content aggregators' bluffs. They say they give writers free reign to explore and that their business model rewards the best and most interesting writing. But as she showed, they don't. They reward--duh--sensationalism and bombast. She exposed such sites' lack of quality control, which is just as important as profitability if the client is really a site for journalism and not just a cynical ploy to exploit would-be writers and make a buck.

And I suppose someone had to do it. I fully expect her to come out with a first-person article crowing about how she pulled one over on Big Business.

But I care less about teaching clients lessons than professionalism. It mortifies me that anyone would flout her responsibility as a journalist just to make a point. That's gotcha journalism at its worst, and it's just as cynical as Examiner.com's business model.

Still, this is an important lesson for writers. When I was still at newspapers, a rising-star reporter was fired after a big expose revealed some reporting holes. But all of us reporters knew what was going on: The editor had been seething to get this story in the paper for years, encouraging most reporters to pursue it. We all passed because we knew it was a boondoggle--impossible to prove and seemingly a vindetta. But he found in this writer, who was young and ambitious, the one person willing to pursue it his way. When you're getting that kind of validation and encouragement from an editor who ought to know better, it can be hard to remember your ethics.

When the truth came out and the crap hit the fan, the editor predictably abandoned her. Then he fired her. The lesson here is that you can't rely on your editors to check your ethics. If you love your job and you value journalism, you have to learn to adhere to your values no matter what. You have to hold yourself to a higher standard than perhaps even your editors do. Or, and perhaps more pointedly, you have to seek out editor relationships where your editor cares as much about good work as you do. As I've said before, the editors who care about good work are also more likely to pay you well for it. Not always, but it's a not-so-surprising correlation.

And while Williamson seems to have many great publications under her belt, I'd think twice if I were an editor about hiring a reporter willing to burn her clients and make stuff up for some snarky, well, vindetta.

So was the point worth making? I'm sure it depends on who you ask. I wouldn't make that point, but I already don't like aggregators or pay-per-click arrangements, and I advice coaching clients to avoid them. Perhaps it will serve as a lesson to new or aspiring freelancers and writers--both to avoid such aggregators and to avoid such irresponsible behavior.

Photo by vsqz.

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." Robert Collier

Serenity Tool: Embrace, Don't Idolize Big-Name Writers

Yesterday, I wrote about Dan Baum's impressive archive of queries, available for any of us mere mortals to review and dissect. But I wanted to add something:

Baum makes a number of comments I disagree with. (And I'm not the only one to have that response.)

For instance, he states that when he calls people for queries, he tells them he's writing the story for X Magazine (Wired, The New Yorker, etc.).

"I say I’m working on a story for Wired magazine and I am," he told Linda Formichelli at The Renegade Writer. "My relationship with Wired magazine at that point is none of their business."

He also says he doesn't reslant and repitch stories:

Well, you have to write a proposal for the sensibilities of a particular magazine, so when people tell me “I have an idea for a story,” my first question is “You have an idea for a story for what magazine?” Because you can’t say, “I have an idea for a story, and if I can’t sell it Playboy I’m going to sell it to Rolling Stone, and if I can’t sell it to Rolling Stone I’m going to sell it to Harper’s,” because it just doesn’t work that way.

When Formichelli asked if that was specific to his particular realm of the freelance world, Baum conceded it might be.

"I want to keep saying this that this is just my experience," he added. "Family Circle and Woman’s Day might be similar enough. In the small number of magazines that I wrote for, you just couldn’t do it. I mean, if you were writing a proposal for Wired, there’s just nobody else you could sell it to. I tried, I’ve tried, I really have. I really have tried and it just never worked for me."

That's exactly it. I want to encourage all freelancers out there to embrace Baum but not idolize him. He's just one writer, and he and his wife live entirely off his earnings as a freelancer. (Best I can tell, Baum and his wife essentially co-write or at least co-report or co-research his work, but it's published under his name.) He, like you, is just trying to make a living.

This is one of the things I love about the freelance world. We're all just learning. We're all just finding what works for us and doing that over and over again to good effect. If we're in serenity, we're letting go of the stuff that doesn't work, which can be very hard. What Baum says is interesting, but it's not gospel.

For instance, I would never tell sources that I'm writing a story for a publication for which I didn't have an assignment. I tell them, instead, that I'm writing up a proposal for my editor at so-and-so magazine. It's important to me to be upfront with my sources in a way that makes me comfortable. Baum, obviously, is comfortable with how he does it. It's not my style.

Likewise, I try to reslant and repitch my work all the time. That's how most of us make a living as freelancers. Baum is right: A New Yorker story is nothing like a Wired story. But there's a difference between an idea and a story:

The story I pitch to Yoga Journal is nothing like a story I'd pitch to Reader's Digest. But the root idea might share a kernel. They're different pieces, though. And that has worked for me.

So my encouragement for the day: Find what works for you: Don't just emulate what works for someone else.

Photo by skye.gazer.

Writing the Dream Query for the Dream Job

Recently, the fabulous Renegade Writer Blog posted a q&a with former New Yorker writer Dan Baum, and he shares both an interesting approach to freelancing and a whole treasure-trove of detailed queries. Some of those landed assignments at The New Yorker.

I point this out because it's interesting to see the amount of detail and the work he's put into his queries. One query I read, which landed him an assignment writing about the "jake leg" for The New Yorker, was so compelling I couldn't stop reading. No surprise it landed the assignment. It taught me a couple things about long-form narrative non-fiction pitches:

• Write like you've got the assignment. Duh, right? But I know I've queried the New Yorker with far less narrative pitches, and I can see why his pitch sold and mine didn't. It's a case of show-don't-tell.
• Details, details. The pitch is like a short article--fully researched, sourced and well-crafted.
• Open access. All good queries should do tell the editor about access, but his do a good job of showing the editor that he's thought out how much background he'll need and where he'll need to go to get it. It makes the job easier on the editor and builds trust.

He also has a great quote about how he pursues his sources for his queries. It fits with the persistence theme, but also gives a window into another freelancer's world (emphasis mine):

[To make it,] I think it takes relentlessness. When I’m starting to work on a story, I’ll start reading about something, and I’ll just follow every link, and as I’m doing it I’ll make a list in a Word document of the people that I need to find.

I start calling them immediately, and talking to them and taking notes on my computer. The expression I use with Margaret is “I had a red dog day today,” which means I had my nose down on the ground and I was going after everything today. Just hoovering in enormous amounts of information. And when I start a proposal, I try to have a series of red dog days where I am just relentless, going after everybody, and as soon as I encounter somebody’s name I pick up the phone and I call. When I finish the interview I say, Who else should I talk to? Then I call those people.

I don’t put it off — I don’t say these are people I’m going to call later — I do it right then. Man, there are times when in one day I can get enough information to write a proposal that will get me a $12,000 magazine assignment.

If you're a freelancer interested in long-form narrative, check out his archive and try an exercise:

• Take one of the queries
• Take a story you've written that you thought had narrative potential
• Start playing with your notes and research and practice making a narrative query from those notes and that research.

See how it works. Is there more research you need to do? What's missing? Do you know how to find the missing piece, or do you need to talk to someone about it?

It's fun. Try it and tell me how it works, and I'll do the same.

"Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time." Marabel Morgan

Photo by bobster855.

Happy Memorial Day: Thinking about Genius

If you haven't seen this great talk by writer Elizabeth Gilbert on genius and the challenge of showing up and doing your work every day--with or without your muse--you should.

Enjoy, and happy Memorial Day!