In this installment of Freelance Friday, I chatted with one of my favorite journalists writing on sex and gender today. Rachel Hills is many things: a blogger and digital media expert, a pop sociologist, and a prolific professional writer. Since graduating in 2004, she has published over 100 articles and worked as an editor for ninemsn, newmatilda.com and Vibewire. In the following interview, she talks about going freelance after college, infiltrating the pages of women’s magazines with “accessible feminism”, and marrying her love of social research with a career in writing.

Rachel attended the University of Sydney in Australia, where the overachiever triple-majored in Media & Communications, English and Gender Studies. After a brief stint doing communications for a non-profit, Rachel started writing professionally. Nearly six years later, almost all her writing work has been freelance, but she’s also held three staff editing roles in that period as well. Two months ago, Rachel packed up her bags to London (where I met her in person for the first time) and is now back on the full-time freelancing train again…

How did you get started in the writing business? I got my start as a professional writer through freelancing. The creative jobs market is always tight, but it’s particularly tight for recent graduates, and it quickly became apparent to me that despite my insane level of engagement in extracurricular activities at university, folder full of clips and handful of junior industry roles to my name, it was going to be very difficult for me to get employed doing the kind of work I wanted to. So I decided to break into the industry by “just doing it”.

The year I graduated, I worked on a really amazing youth media project called electionTracker, which sent four young journalists in their teens and early 20s on the road with the major parties for the 2004 Australian federal election. Working with people my own age who were already submitting their work to major newspapers and magazines inspired me to do the same, and in 2005, I made it my new years resolution to have a story published in the Sydney Morning Herald. I decided to send them a story each week until they published one, the idea being that they’d be more likely to publish the work of people whose names they recognised. They accepted the second story I sent them, and the rest was history.

What kind of clients have you written for? My main beat is “accessible feminism”, but I’m happy doing any form of smart cultural or social journalism. I’ve written for a range of publications including major newspapers, women’s magazines (Cosmopolitan, Cleo, Glamour), teen mags (Girlfriend, Girl’s Life), fashion mags (Vogue, Russh, Yen), “serious” mags (The Monthly, The Bulletin, New Matilda, The Walkley Magazine, Australian Literary Review) and more. Mostly I’ve written for Australian publications, since that’s where I spent most of my career, but I’m currently building some relationships here in the UK that I don’t want to jinx, and am about to start to put all those contacts I’ve developed in my two trips to the US to use.

How did you establish yourself as an expert in this niche? It was pretty simple really. I pitched the kinds of stories I was most excited by, which led editors to associate me with those kinds of stories. I’ve found I tend to be more focused on my niche when I’m writing part-time, however. Now that I’m doing it full-time again, I’m pretty much writing about everything - although I still have my favourite, ’go to’ topics.

How much do you get paid as a freelancer? It’s hard to say at this stage, as I’ve only been doing it for two months this time around, but so far it looks sustainable, if not extravagant. Make of that what you will! Last time I was freelancing full time, I was much younger and greener, and I made around $20,000 per year. Particularly at the beginning though, it was often a lot less: in the first six months, there were plenty of months I only sold one story.

Do you think freelancing is a viable career option for aspiring writers? I think it’s challenging for most people, no matter how experienced they are (for evidence of that reality, I refer you to this article by someone far more experienced than me at The Awl). There are ways to make a lot of money out of it, it seems, but it’s not by doing the kind of writing I do - for that, you want high word rates, and low research/effort stories. I think the greatest difficulty, though, is the lack of stability. Even if you’ve got a lot of work one month, there’s no guarantee you will in three months time.

Did you have any misconceptions about the business before you started freelancing? I think the greatest misconception I had was that only “other”, special people could do this; that I had to wait until I was older or more experienced to do the kind of work I wanted to do. This isn’t true. If you’re a good writer and have good ideas, there’s no reason you can’t do it - it just might take you a while.

I asked Boston-based Susie Anderson the same question when I interviewed her, so I’m interested in hearing what an international writer has to say about the following. There’s the sense that New York City is the center of the media industry. If you haven’t lived or interned in the city, how do you establish yourself and form relationships with editors? Editors are understandably reluctant to commission work from writers they’re not familiar with. It’s not because they’re snobs (most of the time), but because buying a story from a writer who doesn’t deliver is an enormous hassle for everyone involved, and it happens more than you think. So the easiest way to gain the trust of an editor you haven’t worked with, or who doesn’t know you, is to show you’ve been vetted by another editor or publication they respect. For me, the Sydney Morning Herald led to The Age, which led to a part-time subediting gig at the magazine, which led to freelance work at that magazine, which led to freelance work at another magazine, and so on and so forth until eventually I had enough clips to get a quick and enthusiastic “yes” from Vogue. It can be a long, slow process, but one thing really does lead to another.  

How do you introduce yourself to an editor you want to work with? I’ve visited the US twice, and I’ve found big time editors to be a lot friendlier and more accessible that you might expect. Again, you have to prove yourself - I’m sure they wouldn’t have met with me if I didn’t have clips (i.e. been vetted by other editors) and if they didn’t think my work was good (and it probably helped that I was Australian), but you’ll be surprised how many people will be happy to help you if you’re friendly, enthusiastic and your work is good.   And finally, don’t underestimate the power of a good idea. If you’ve got clips to back you up, you can write and you’ve got a good idea, you never know who will let you through the door.

We’ve all heard stories of freelancers who pitched an idea only to see it turn up in the publication a few months later, written up by a staffer.  Does this actually occur? It doesn’t happen as often as you think. In most cases, it’s simply a case of two people genuinely having the same story idea (especially if it uses a news item for a hook, or is a women’s mag “evergreen” like “how to win that man”). I have seen one case where I strongly suspected a publication had stolen a story idea from a freelancer, but I also strongly suspect that behaviour was partly due to the useability (or lack thereof) of the original copy. If you want your pitches to be picked up, you don’t just need good ideas, you need to be able to present them cleanly, in a way that fits the publication.

Where do you want to be career-wise five or ten years down the line? In five years, my book, The Sex Myth, had damn well better be on the shelves (or else I will have been an incredibly lazy person), and will hopefully have been a roaring success. I’d also like to be writing for the big US cultural/social/political magazines and websites - those are the publications that most resonate with the kind of work that I like to write and read. Other than that, I’d just like to continue doing what I’m doing now - writing interesting articles, doing in-depth social research, and connecting with people who are interested in the sorts of things I write about via the internet.

What do you find most rewarding about freelance writing? Freelancing may be financially precarious, but for me, there isn’t any other line of work that provides such a consistent source of excitement and fulfillment. I still get a little thrill whenever I have a pitch accepted, and feel like I’ve had a major coup whenever I break into a new publication. I love the intellectual challenge of taking complex, academic ideas and making them interesting and relevant to a mainstream women’s magazine audience. I also love being invited to speak at events, watching people respond to my work and receiving the occasional piece of fan mail (although I get far more of this for my blog than for my journalism, even though it has far fewer readers). Basically, if you’re interested in participating in - and hopefully shaping - public debate, there are few better careers to embark on.

Give us a list of your greatest hits, Rachel! Career highlights include meeting Maureen Dowd on a TV show and getting invited for cocktails in DC, and being nominated for Cosmo’s Fun Fearless Female Awards this year.

Some of my favorite pieces over the years include:

Untangling sex, sexiness and childhood, Australian Literary Review (2008)
In MySpace, everyone can see you preen, The Sunday Age (2007)
Beauty by numbers, Cleo(2009)
Skeletons in the closet, Russh (2007)
Great Sexpectations, Vogue (2010)
All about Allison, Walkley Magazine(2008)
Camp no more: inside the ex-gay movement, YEN (2006)  

To find Rachel online, you can read her personal blog on Tumblr, check out her portfolio, and follow her Twitter.