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How once woman went from being a SAHM of four to a published freelance science journalist |
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I'm revising this intro after more than 15 years to better reflect my intention When I started this blog in 2004, I was a stay at home mom to two small children, a college graduate with a degree in English and Astrophysics. By 2007, I had four small children, ages newborn, 2, 4, and 6. For several years, Writing.com was how I kept my sanity. This blog began, first as a way of staying connected. Later, when I worked on a novel, I used it to stoke the writing fires as I plotted out short stories and the next step of my novel. Ultimately, I moved my writing preparation to "Invalid Item"  In 2010, I became a single mom who had homeschooled her children for several years. I had a 2, 4, 6 and 8 year old and had never had a "real" full time job, since I was married while in college. Everyone told me that I would have to buckle down and take on a "real" job. Instead, I decided to attempt to live my dream: to make it as a writer. I knew that if I didn't try then, I would never really dive in. I counted my money and set a deadline. If I hadn't began making a decent (defined) amount of money after so many months, I would suck it up and get a J-O-B. After some thought, I decided to play to my strengths. I served an internship at Sky & Telescope magazine while in college and enjoyed writing about space and astronomy. With an astrophysics degree, I thought I would be able to sell myself more easily, and a small niche should be easier to penetrate. It's been about ten years since I was first paid for an article on Space.com. In that time, writing - journalism - has been my primary moneymaker. I've often thought about setting up a blog on my website - www.astrowriter.com - but just haven't gotten around to it. There are a few things I would like to share for those who are interested in scientific journalism in general. Now that I'm back on WDC, there's no reason not to combine the two and use the site blog for that sort of interaction. There are certainly plenty of folks on this site interested in the publication process. So while I'll probably meander around some, that's the intention of of this blog: to share some of my struggles as a published journalist and to help answer oft-asked questions. |
We're coming to the end of April, and I've decided to go ahead and enter my blog in "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" by Fivesixer  for May. I suppose that means I'll need to clean things up a bit. I'm not sure if the blog name even remains accurate since I am now a full on, frequently published writer. I'll come back to that later, though.Today was a banner day. Started off with yet another rejection from a long-time client due to COVID budget BS. You would think COVID would have little impact on space news and space sites but you would be wrong. Right now, I'm frozen out of three of my clients, roughly 60% of my income from last year (though not a 20/20/20 split). Most of the remaining work is low-paying jobs rather than larger assignments. That means a lot of little stuff, which is more stop and start and loss cost effective for work. One editor has a $0 budget for freelance at the moment, and the other two are just taking dramatically less pitches. The result has been some rather persistent blues. I have continued to pitch to the two that are reduced, but I have been getting a much higher rejection percentage. However, today I knocked the ball out of the park. Pitches that I sent off last month at various times came back positive. First, I realized that one of my rejections from last week included an assignment, due Friday. Short work, but both easy and quick. Then I pinged an editor about a story I'd pitched at the beginning of the month and responded to follow up questions about last week, and he came back with a thumbs up. The third pitch also went out last week, to one of the reduced publications, came back with an acceptance. Overall, that was about $3000 worth of work that came back thumbs up today, a very nice chunk. I say 'about' because we still haven't nailed down the length on the longest and largest assignment. I also made some progress with NASA, who has not been great to work with lately. Their PIO (press info officer) has been dodging me for awhile. I finally screwed up my confrontational gene and called them directly. They said they would move forward towards scheduling my interview by Friday. I'm not going to hold my breath, though. So I suppose the lesson of the day is, keep pitching, even during a pandemic! Because I've really gotten frustrated about the significant increase in rejections and felt like giving up quite often. Then all of a sudden, three acceptances in one day. That's the power of constant pitching. Pitch on! SG |
| It's been a long time - almost a decade - since I formally logged into Writing.com, but the site hasn't been far from my mind for some time. Things have been ridiculously busy, even before the whole COVID-19 crazytime. The short personal updates include my four kids growing up, homeschooled until 9th grade for my middle two, all the way through high school for my oldest, and up til present 8th grade for my youngest. Right now, they are 18, 17, 15 and 13, which is a little insane considering two of them didn't even exist when I started my membership at writing.com. There's also been a divorce, a move, and a home purchase. And, most recently, a new relationship! But for those of you - if there are any still around lol - who are interested in my writing, the biggest news is that I am a professional journalist. Science journalist, specifically, with a focus on space and astronomy. I write for quite a few outlets, including the aforementioned Space.com, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope - oh and I had my first BBC article last fall! This is my full-time gig, and has been for almost a decade now, so suffice to say this isn't cheap penny pay but more like $1-$1.50/word depending on the outlet. I've lost count of my cover stories for Discover, Sky & Telescope, and Astronomy magazine but I think they are somewhere around 10; it's funny that I've gotten so blase about something that is still pretty awesome. And I love it, even when I complain. I love writing about space and astronomy, I love learning more about the field and keeping on top of the latest developments. I love attending conferences and meeting scientists. Oh and in March I had my first "scoop" - an unnamed source clued me into some NASA shennanigans that resulted in an article for Space.com. I'm still sort of working on that one, and btw NASA press officers must take a class in being obstinate jerks. Anyway, I used my remaining gps to pick up a one month membership, upgraded of course. If it sticks, I'll likely re-sub for a year. That means I'll likely be around for the next month if not the next 12. I'm trying to work on a novel during the COVID crap, and I wanted to access some files that somehow didn't download with the rest of my portfolio, hence the resupply. But I also enjoy reading and reviewing. Which I'm going to go do now. Nice to see y'all again! |
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