How I became a columnist for a print magazine
Add other freelancing adventures in April
Hey, I’m Emma from Where’s Ems? 👋🏼 I’ve been travelling full-time since 2023 while building my freelance writing business. Subscribe for a behind-the-scenes look at all my freelancing adventures including earnings, pitches, resources and tips.
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In this issue…
How I got a new gig writing my own column
The freelance projects I worked on in April
⭐ The exact pitch that got me a commission
What I did to move my business forward
Freelancing resources you may find useful
🤑 A breakdown of my freelance earnings
Content you might like
On April 1st, I followed up on my first pitch to National Geographic Traveller. When I sent it two weeks prior, I was having one of those waves of confidence where I was certain they would love it and commission the story the same day (if only).
It’s been 56 days, and I’m yet to get a response.
While this is no time at all in the world of journalism, it’s easy to quickly fall into a cycle of post-pitch thoughts that go something like this:
“Urghh, what was I thinking?”
“Of course they weren’t going to reply to me.”
“I’m not good enough to write for them.”
But what does good enough even look like? Is it when I have one more byline? Five more? Ten? I don’t think there’s a threshold you cross where pitching National Geographic suddenly feels reasonable. It’s Nat Geo!
Somewhere along the way most of us picked up the idea that a rejection, or silence, confirms what we secretly suspected about ourselves all along — that we’re not good enough. So we protect ourselves from finding out. We don’t pitch the big magazine, we don’t reach out to our dream client, we don’t put our hand up for the thing that scares us most, because if we don’t try, we can’t fail, and if we can’t fail, we never have to know.
It’s a very effective system for staying exactly where you are.
It was during another wave of confidence in September last year that I decided to reach out to Freelancer Magazine about becoming a regular contributor.