Modern Ways to Find Sources

I wrote yesterday about the old-fashioned way of finding sources, looking locally and why that’s still a good idea for a lot of writers as a way to get story ideas.

But there are a lot of Internet-based ways to connect with people who can help you with articles as well, things that simply weren’t around when I was starting out.

Interview Requests on Writing Websites

Several writing-related websites like Writers Weekly have forums or places in their newsletters where people writing articles can ask for more information from other people who read the forum or website.

These sites can be a great way to get information fast if you need some quick facts or anecdotes to flesh out a query, but as you might imagine most of the sources are other writers, which doesn’t make for a very well-rounded article if that’s the only tack you take.

Professional Sources

I wasn’t sure until just now that it even still existed, but ProfNet was one of the first sites I came across that aimed to connect reporters and sources, particularly sources at universities, in government and at corporations that you might not be able to access otherwise (or maybe wouldn’t even know to look for if you tried to find them on your own).

I used ProfNet for a couple of stories, and it connected me with good sources, but it seemed a little clunky and time-consuming to use. Still, it’s there, and if you’re looking for good, professional sources for an article, authorities on your subject, you’re likely to find them here.

HARO

HARO, also known as Help a Reporter Out, is my current favorite place to look for sources, and it deserves a category all its own. This e-mail based service sends out three messages a day with a variety of interview and information requests.

If you’re looking for people for a story, you fill out a simple web form and your request will be included in a future mailing. You can say exactly what you’re looking for, any regional qualifications you need, what your deadline is and how to contact you (even specifying an e-mail subject line if you want).

If you want to reply to a request, the sender’s information is right in the e-mail, so you can send them a message quickly, and vice versa.

I’ve used this service a couple of times and always gotten good responses from people in a variety of fields. It’s actually made me use sources more often when I might have written articles more like personal essays.

If you have a favorite way of finding sources online I haven’t mentioned, let me know in the comments.

Finding Sources the Old-Fashioned Way

Back in the day when I worked as a reporter at several different newspapers across the country, e-mail wasn’t really considered an acceptable way to contact sources. The Internet existed (I’m not that old), but there weren’t all the websites dedicated to helping reporters and sources find each other that there are today (we’ll talk more about those later this week).

In those days if you wanted to find a source you were likely to hit your local phone book. While we’re not all reporting local stories these days or writing for local publications, thinking locally can still be a good idea when looking for sources for a story.

Locals are people, too

In fact, you may be able to get some good story ideas from people in your local community. An issue that is facing, say, a mom in your book club might well resonate with other moms in other parts of the country.

An issue the city council is grappling with might be going on other places as well, leading to a story with more regional or national interest.

Having contacts in your niche at the local university or wherever you might find folk in your niche (for me that’s local knitting groups and the yarn store) might clue you into trends or, in the case of institutional contacts, research and reports that haven’t been widely publicized that you might be able to get more attention for.

Finding Local Sources

Of course these days you don’t literally have to use the phone book to find local people who might be able to help you with your stories. Many communities large and small have community web pages, message boards or a group of people connected on social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook that can help you connect with people who can help you with your story.

The websites of institutions, major companies in your area, universities and other groups can help you find people to use for general information and contacts in your field of interest. It’s always good to have an expert you can e-mail for quick background information if you’re delving into a scientific or jargon-filled subject.

And people you know or come into contact with in your daily life can also provide topics for articles, if not actually serve as sources themselves. This is one time when listening to gossip could actually be lucrative.

Try to find people who are interested in what you are interested in writing about, then listen to what they have to say. What are the obsessed with right now? What are they concerned about? What questions do they have? Any of those issues might be worth pursuing as story ideas.

While the big, wide world (and the world wide web) provide us with all sorts of options for finding sources anywhere, sometimes it is worth it to look locally, too. You never know what you might find.

On Misconceptions and Finding Balance

People have a lot of misconceptions about what the freelance life is really like. They think people who work form home live lives of leisure, working just a few hours a day and spending a lot of time on long lunches and at the kids’ ball games.

While that’s certainly the ideal, most freelancers I know are quite the opposite. They often put in more hours than the average person with a day job. Though they may make time for those long lunches and ball games, they make up for it by working at night or on the weekend.

Building a freelance career isn’t easy. It’s great to fantasize about what your life will be like when you’re freelancing, but you should also know that your dreams and reality might not match, at least for a while.

The Dream and the Reality

When I thought about freelancing I imagined time for leisurely reading, meditation, journal writing and housework, not to mention working on projects that were fun, satisfying and well-paying.

Some of that is just now coming to pass. I have a more flexible schedule now than I’ve ever had, giving me time for a mid-day knitting group once a week for a couple of hours and an afternoon of crafting and working on projects on Fridays. (I still work Sunday evenings to make up for some of that lost time).

A Fine Balance

Working from home is really all about balance. If you take too much advantage of the ability to take time off, you won’t be working enough to make your business sustainable. But if you’re working all the time you’ll be unhappy and easily burned out.

You also need to have enough flexibility to deal with unexpected time drains. I wrote this post (and a couple of other things) while sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for a blood draw that usually takes about 10 minutes and today took an hour. It wasn’t the way I meant to spend my afternoon, but I was still productive.

I was also able to mentally move things off my to do list as the time ticked by. I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish everything I meant to, but I also knew that none of it was incredibly pressing other than writing my newsletter, so I didn’t feel too stressed about the alteration of my schedule.

When you get to the point (and it can take a long time) where your days are full enough to keep you busy and well paid but not so busy that you can’t take a little time off when you need to, that’s a really good place to be as a freelancer. Keep striving and one day you’ll be able to get there, too!

Action Step: Beginning to Chart Your Path

Some of you are probably already freelancers, while some of you are just getting started on this crazy road. You may be looking at freelancing as a temporary way to get a little extra money, or you might be wanting to eventually freelance full-time.

Or you may not know what you want yet. That’s OK, too.

Today is all about spending some time thinking about what you might like to get out of your freelancing career. Do you want to do a little work and still keep your full-time job, would you like to work for a couple of regular clients or the occasional magazine, or are you looking for a full-time career in a particular niche?

A Sort of Road Map

It’s a good idea to have some plan of where you’re going, no matter where you are on the journey. When I started out I didn’t have much of a plan except that maybe someday in the far-off future I’d like to be able to do this full-time.

Now that I’m there, my expectations and goals still shift. I’d like to do more writing in the niche of crafts and creativity, as well as writing about how to be a successful freelancer, like I’m doing right here.

I have culled old clients and cut back on work for others to give me time to pursue goals that have become more important to me. There’s likely to be even more of that in the future. Every change has an impact on income, of course, but it also has an impact on how you feel about the work you’re doing and how you approach your day.

To me if you can’t have the ideal writing life right away, you at least need a balance of work that makes you happy and work that is OK and helps you pay the bills. That’s where I was for a long time. I’m lucky enough that right now I am in a place where I can be a lot more selective, and the vast majority of the time I enjoy what I do.

Making Your Own Plan

Planning can seem like a really foreign and unfun concept to creative types, which we as writers are. I won’t say you need a formal five-year plan; I never even wrote my plans down except maybe in my journal when I’d write about “won’t it be nice when . . .”

But knowing that you’re on a road and anticipating a couple of the twists and turns you might take along the way makes the travel a little less scary, and maybe even a bit more fun. Be reasonable but don’t be afraid to dream.

The Journey to a Creative Career: Part Three

This week I’ve been sharing a somewhat brief version of my story of going from full-time work outside the home to full-time freelancing. First I talked about how I got started freelancing, then how I started following my passion more in the subjects I was writing about and found that the money really did follow.

When we left the story, I had just started working for About.com (I’m sure that will be the subject of another post in the future, for those who are interested in how that works). It was the end of 2006, and I was starting to get worried that I had too much on my plate.

I worked literally as hard as I could on the “prep” training (where you basically build a sample website over the course of a couple of weeks); at that point I’d decided that I had given it my all and if that wasn’t enough I wasn’t meant to have this site.

But I was accepted, the site went live and I still felt like I needed to work as hard as I possibly could. I was trying to rebuild a site from nothing that just days before had 10 years worth of content on it. That was daunting. It still is, years later.

But knowing that I had this regular and potentially really good source of income (that could also be a huge time drain) really got me started thinking about transitioning to full-time freelancing. With more time to devote to the site, I reasoned, I’d get more traffic and thus more money. And without a full-time outside the house job I’d be able to focus, get more crafting done and also expand the work I was doing for other clients or find some new ones.

Making the Transition

At the turn of the new year in 2007, I resolved that I would be home, working full-time as a freelancer, by the end of the year. At that point I already felt like I had two full-time jobs between my regular work and everything I was doing for, at that point, three pretty big clients (big in the sense that I had a fair bit of work from each of them each week or month, and needed to plug away on it every day).

I was getting stressed out, and burned out when it came to my day job. Book publishing is very seasonal, and I’d find myself without much work to do at work wishing I could just be home working on my freelance stuff (admittedly I did a lot of freelancing from my day job office, which probably isn’t the best idea).

As the summer came along, I was starting to express my discontent to my husband and my immediate boss, both of whom were very understanding. I didn’t have a firm deadline for making my dream a reality, but it was starting to feel more real every day.

Sometime in June I got an e-mail from a book publisher wanting to do a book on knitting and felting. The only catch was the deadline was in December. There was no way I could do it if I had a day job, and I really wanted to do it. Publishing a book had been my dream forever.

Because it was a book that actually offered an advance, I felt like I was justified in saying this was the sign I needed to let go of my day job. The money would provide a cushion if I was earning less from my other clients while working on the book, and quitting was the only possible way I could get the book done.

And it was done, in record time. Picture Yourself Felting Your Knitting came out in January 2008, and I was well on my way as a full-time freelancer.

Fast Forward

Since that time I’ve dropped one major client, scaled back my work with another, kept building the About site and thinking about new books and other publications that I want to offer my crafty skill to.

I spent a long time feeling busy, like there was always more to do than I could possibly ever get done. Now I know that I will never be satisfied with the About site; there will always be more to write about and that’s where the fun is. I’ve opened up a lot more time in my schedule and am having a lot more fun with my work and my not work.

I’ve somewhat taught myself how to crochet and I recently brought out the sewing machine again. And I started this website in the hope of sharing this story, inspiring you and helping you make the same great things happen in your life that have happened in mine.

If you have specific questions about how to get from where you are to where you want to be, I’m always here to help. The world needs more success stories!

The Journey to a Creative Career: Part Two

In part one of this series I talked a bit about how I got started freelancing but didn’t really think of it as something I was planning to do full-time, at least not right away. But that changed for me pretty quickly when I started actually taking long-term assignments that were on subjects I really wanted to write about (imagine that!).

Loving What You Do

I started to write for a couple of different websites on a range of topics, mostly having to do with crafts and health-related issues, but eventually spanning everything from weddings to gardening, teen life to ways to save money.

I had a lot of fun with these projects for a long time, and the pay, while still not amazing, was better than I’d been making. I began to think that maybe it actually was possible to do this full-time, even without writing for big-money magazines (which would be great, but seemed way out of my league).

Eventually I started looking at About.com as a place I wanted to work. The setup seemed awesome: write on a subject you’re passionate about, as much as you want, and get paid for it. Yes, the pay is based on page views and to some extent on ads, rather than the pay for content creation that I’d prefer, but I was hearing generally good things and knew that with a highly trafficked site a good bit of money could be made.

I applied for several different positions over the course of a year or so, including the freelance writing and journalism pages. Finally I was accepted to build a sample site on the subject of knitting in mid 2006.

Rediscovering a Passion

At the time, I didn’t feel like the sort of master knitter they were looking for. I learned to knit when I was relatively young, but I’d stopped during college and had only recently picked it up again. I was replacing someone who’d written the site for 10 years, which didn’t do a lot for my confidence level, either.

But the more I studied and learned about knitting, the more I wrote and connected with the community, I realized this was a great fit for me. I still feel like I’m learning (which I imagine is the case with anyone who delves deeply into a craft, including the craft of writing), but I’m more confident than ever that I can help other knitters and adequately share my passion with others.

And, admittedly, the money isn’t bad. Making money as a crafter is always pretty sketchy, so I appreciate knowing that I’m making a decent monthly income from sharing my craft with others.

But I was still working on the site while working full-time as a book editor. How I finally made the switch to full-time freelancing is the subject of the next installment.

The Journey to a Creative Career: Part One

It may just be the sort of people I hang out with online, coupled with the economy making people nervous but at the same time empowered to make a change in their lives that will hopefully bring about more happiness and less uncertainty, but I’ve been running into a lot of people lately talking about living a creative life and making a living through creativity.

One such person is an awesome yarn designer who recently quit her day job to go about spinning and dyeing fiber full time. Another is a pair of crafty folk who’ve started a blog about having a creative life and still being able to pay the bills.

While both of these have to do with making a crafty living in particular, the worries and motivations are much the same for freelance writers, even those who aren’t in the craft or more creative fields.

In reality, all writing is creative, and we’re all seeking a more creative life, and a life in which we are able to create our destiny.

I thought I’d join this little motivation train by adding my own story about how I came to be living a more creative life and working for myself, largely in a crafty career but doing other things, too.

How My Path to Freelancing Began

When I was younger I didn’t think that I would want to be a freelancer. In college, I was a journalism major and thought that I’d be in newspapers — probably as an editor but maybe as a reporter — for my entire career.

But editing work happens at night, and there are lots of times when you don’t really have any work to do between editions or when the evening’s stories haven’t started pouring in. Not to mention all that free time during the day.

So I started looking into freelancing because I wasn’t writing as part of my job (unless you count headlines and rewrites of some of what passed for reporting where I worked) and I kind of missed it. I wanted to write about creative things — cooking, books, crafts — and things that interested me, like health issues and the craft of writing.

I read a bunch of writing e-newsletters for a long time before I actually took action (though I had been doing a good bit of writing for free to build up my confidence), writing a query to Writers Weekly at the end of 2003. It was accepted and my paid freelancing career began.

I worked on articles during the day (and, admittedly, sometimes at night) as I worked to build my clip file and my skills. I wrote a lot of those little articles that only pay $5 or so a pop, but I figured that was better than nothing and fine for on top of what I was making at my job.

Eventually I got married to the guy I’d been with all this time, and I got really sick of never seeing him. I found myself a day job editing books, and kept up with the freelancing, slowly building over time.

The first year I did any freelance writing, I made $50. The next year was about $500, and probably about $5,000 the year after that. I still wasn’t really thinking about it as a full-time career, at least not any time soon.

I had this dream that one day if we decided we wanted kids I could work from home when I had time, bringing in a little extra money but taking care of our kids at the same time. It would be the best of both worlds.

But how I actually got to that place wasn’t in any way what I expected. Stay tuned for that part of the story.

Action Step: What’s Your Bottom Line?

I’ve been thinking a lot about issues surrounding writing for free or low pay and deciding whether you want to take a particular project. This is probably one of the most argued about issues in the world of freelancing, with plenty of people coming down on either side.

I don’t want to continue that argument (wastes a lot of time we could be writing more productive things!), but I do want to say that this is an incredibly personal issue. What’s low pay for someone living in New York City might seem perfectly reasonable to you if you live in the middle of the country in a small town with a lower cost of living.

You have to know what you’re comfortable with in terms of pay and whether there are any circumstances under which you would be willing to write for free.  And it helps to have a clear picture of your personal bottom line on payment before you are in a situation where you need to decide whether to take a particular job.

Take some time this weekend or in the near future to think about what your boundaries are in terms of pay if you haven’t done so already. Think about things like:

• What’s my ideal per hour pay rate? How much would I be willing to accept?
• Would I go lower for a regular paying/bulk gig? Or for a job that paid daily or weekly?
• Are there other circumstances in which I’d be willing to take less money?
• What do I think about writing for charities/church groups/others who need writing help but can’t pay?
• What about publications that pay in contributor copies?
• Place that “pay” in exposure?
• What kind of jobs would I always be unwilling to take?

All of these questions — and others that arise from thinking about them — can help you decide which jobs you’re really interested in and which opportunities you want to pass up. Knowing this in advance of being presented with a job offer or assignment means you’ll spend less time wondering whether you should take a seemingly less than perfect job because you’ll already know what you want to get out of the time you’re going to spend on a particular project.

Know What You’re Getting into with Startups

I recently sent a query that was accepted to a relatively new blog that seems to have just recently started paying writers (it was originally written by one person and is now accepting submissions).

I’m often a little reluctant to work with new publications, but I decided to give this one a shot because it’s a subject I enjoy and quick projects that provide a decent little extra bit of money. (I will, however, probably wait to see how the payment issue works out before I start inundating the market with a bunch of material.)

New Market, No Pay

This isn’t always the way it works when it comes to startups. Take for instance the recently launched Faster Times, which bills itself as “a new type of newspaper for a new type of world.” By which it presumably means web-based rather than paper based. But it also means new in the sense of not paying writers who would probably get paid at an old-style newspaper.

The website has attracted lots of writers who aren’t exactly slouches — their day jobs are at places like the New York Times and its accompanying magazine and “The Daily Show”.

They’re working for 75 percent of the ad revenue on the pages where their articles appear, which site founder Sam Apple rightly says won’t amount to much. That doesn’t seem to bother the writers, though, who variously say they’ll write for fun, exposure and that potential of someday maybe earning a few cents on their words.

If it were me — and I hope if it’s you — if any publication asked me to write for such reasons, I’d go running the other way.

Startup Warning Signs

Maybe these writers make enough from their day jobs that they don’t have to worry about hobby writing to support this new website. But I know that I like to get paid for my time and my words, one way or another.

Writing “for fun” is nice; I do that on a couple of different blogs (and, in a sense, on this site as well). Exposure is great if you can get it, but a lot of new websites say they pay in exposure when in reality they’re not getting any traffic to expose your name to (not saying that’s the case here, just more generally with new websites that don’t pay writers).

It’s great to be able to be generous with your time and talents for a platform that you believe in, but if you’re a new freelancer trying to build a profitable business, this isn’t really the way to do it.

Should You Ever Write for Free?

Of course this brings up probably the stickiest subject in the world of freelancing: writing for free. I’m not going to say that you never should write for free — I certainly did my share when I was starting out — but I also won’t say that you have to write for free.

There are so many publications, new and established, that will pay writers and are willing to take a chance on newbies that you shouldn’t feel like you have to write for free just to get a clip. On the other hand, you should have your own guidelines for when you might be willing to write for free: say, for a charity you admire or on a subject you’re really passionate about, or for a truly high-profile publication that really will net you a lot of publicity.

In these times it can feel like there aren’t a lot publications out there that are paying writers, but the high-quality websites and publications know that in order to get the best content they need to offer writers something. And that something usually isn’t fun, exposure and a story to tell the kids (that story linked above is totally worth the read if only to get outraged about the quote saying “I’m going to tell my daughter about it one day, like, ‘Honey, I was actually paid money to write!’” as if that’s not possible anymore).

Action Step: Learn About Fair Use

Given my recent post about so-called unintentional plagiarism, I thought it would be a good time to talk about the right way to use sources, or what is more commonly known in the copyright world as fair use.

The idea behind fair use is that you don’t have to secure permission from the copyright holder for every instance in which you might use his or her words; you just have to do it in a way that would be considered fair. Let’s look at a few different ways a freelance writer might use source material and how to go about doing it so you won’t get in trouble for copyright violations or accused of plagiarism.

Quoting Interviews

But virtue of having given you permission to interview them, with the understanding that you represent a news organization or publication (even as a freelancer) means that a person has given you the right to quote them.

Always do your best to make sure that you are quoting the person correctly, meaning not just that you put all the right words in the same order that they did but that you don’t take their quote out of context or twist the meaning.

Whenever you use the direct words of someone you’ve interviewed, provide attribution, even if for just a few words or a phrase that’s not the common way of saying things. Of course you don’t have to directly quote every fact you get from a person; you can also attribute facts you learned without using a direct quote.

Quoting Source Material

Sometimes in freelance writing you might quote a study, report or other reference material in your article. If you’re writing a book review, you’ll want to include a passage or two. This is where the term fair use really comes into play.

According to the U.S. Copyright Office, there’s a fine line between fair use and copyright infringement that may not always be easy to define. But it does provide four criteria for determining whether a use of a copyrighted item can be considered fair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

See what I just did there? I offered the source and clearly indicated what was directly quoted. That’s a big help in terms of staying safe from plagiarism and unfair use claims. But I’m also pretty safe because of the nature of the work (a public document) and the fact that this is a small reference, in no way affects whether people will or won’t visit the original source and isn’t likely to make me any money.

It’s generally accepted that short quotes like that are fine, but of course if the original text is only a few lines long, quoting the whole thing could potentially get you into trouble. The key is to selectively quote in such a way that readers get what they need without causing potential harm to the original writer.

Using Pictures

Though it’s not quite the same as quoting, it’s worth mentioning that you almost always need permission to use photographs you find on the web. There are some people who post photos under Creative Commons licenses (that’s a whole other issue) that allow people to use the photos for either commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Others are OK with using them for non-commercial purposes but not commercial ones. And others (many, in fact) prefer you didn’t use their photos at all. So if you’re considering using stock photography or someone else’s photos on a website or to illustrate an article, be sure you do diligent research to determine if you have (or to get) permission to use the photo.

Many people just assume that anything on the web is free for the taking, but it isn’t. Be respectful of other people’s creative property and treat it the way you’d like your own to be treated.

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