I’ve always been an animal lover—so when I heard about a fellow creative who set up an organization to help animal welfare organizations with their marketing and PR efforts, I knew I wanted to help get the word out. Not only does Linda Formichelli have a heart for using her talents to help animals…she’s also a seasoned freelancer with lots of great insights.
Linda had just received her Master’s degree in Slavic Linguistics and was working part-time for a small publisher in Berkeley, California, when she decided to revive her long-lost dream of becoming a writer.
“Using a copy of Writer’s Market and a book on query letters, I wrote up an article pitch and sent it to several magazines I had never even seen. The idea sold to EEO Bimonthly magazine—for $500!” she recalls. As she started to sell more articles, she cut down her workload at the publisher’s office and quit to work as a full-time freelancer in 1997.
Linda’s been met with nothing but success, having written for more than 120 magazines, including USA Weekend, Redbook, Health, Writer’s Digest, and Oxygen. She is the co-author of several books including The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success and The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters That Rock.
We caught up with this New Hampshire resident to discuss how she stays afloat—and how she’s using her creative skills to make a philanthropic effort.
Kristen Fischer (KF): You’ve been staying strong as a freelancer since 1997. How do you keep work steady?
Linda Formichelli (LF): I’m always changing and diversifying so that I have income coming in from different sources. For example, when I started out I wrote for magazines and also did corporate work. Then I added books and cut the corporate writing. Later, I added an e-course on breaking into magazines, and recently my Renegade Writer co-author and I started offering several courses taught by different instructors through our website (http://www.therenegadewriter.com). It’s always good to diversify; if you rely on one type of work and that tanks, you’re screwed.
KF: What’s your best tactic for getting clients?
LF: I have two tactics I’d like to share. One is to be very, very persistent and to keep getting your stuff out there. Don’t send a pitch to one magazine, sit by the phone with bated breath for two months, and then give up. Send your query to lots of magazines (tweaking where necessary), and then write another one and send that out as much as you can. Send letters of introduction to trade and custom publications. When you go to conferences, introduce yourself to editors. Participate in online writers’ forums.
My second tactic to being busy is to be busy. Say what? I know it sounds contradictory, but I always get the most calls from editors when I’m unavailable…either I’m already swamped with work, or I’m about to go on a month-long vacation. The trick is, when you’re not busy and you need the work, fake it. When you write to your editors, don’t say, “Please hire me or I’ll be eating mac and cheese for dinner all month.” Say, “I just finished up a batch of deadlines and have some free time opening up in my schedule. Is there anything I can do for you?” If you’re busy, you’re seen as a professional who is sought after. If you’re not, you’re seen as desperate, and that turns people off.
KF: Have you experienced any low points, career wise?
LF: Yes. I burned out last year. Here I am telling you that to be busy, you need to act busy—but in the late summer of 2007, I think I went overboard. I started getting stomachaches and headaches and couldn’t figure out why. I went to my doctor, and she suspected that my problems were stress-related. Duh! I realized that the health woes had started when I had 13 or so assignments due in one month. I also realized I was burned out; I just was not interested in writing. I was going on a month-long trip to Germany in October, so I made sure to clear my work schedule so I’d have nothing to do. I also took off for most of November. I started getting back into the swing of things in December and January, and now I’m back to my typical workflow—but I have vowed to say “no” when the workload gets too heavy.
KF: Is there anything you’ve not done as a writer that you want to?
LF: I’ve been working on the same novel since 2000. But I think I’m the kind of person who wants to *have written* a novel. I don’t want to actually do the work. The sad thing is, I still think it’s a great idea but I can’t bring myself to work on it! Maybe someday I’ll get off my tuckus and write it.
KF: You’ve also been published. Many people here at FSw debate between self-publishing and going the traditional route. Any insight into that?
LF: I think self-publishing is becoming more and more common and acceptable. If you’re going to kill yourself pitching a book to publishers, only to learn that you’ll earn a $2,000 advance and have to market the book yourself—well, why not self-publish it, market it as you would have for a publisher, and keep the control and the money?
The downsides are that I suspect it’s difficult to get your book into bookstores if you self-publish it, and that self-publishing is still looked down upon somewhat because there are no barriers to entry, meaning your great book is surrounded by (and associated with) sub-par books that would never have been published in the traditional publishing world.
KF: Do you have any advice for writers starting out in the business? Do you think it helps to have a full-time gig before going freelance?
LF: It probably does help to have a full-time writing gig first, because you make important contacts that way. However, I, and most of my friends, jumped into freelancing without having had a 9-5 writing job, and we’re doing just fine. You can always network online, at writers’ conferences, and so on.
My advice to new writers is to not let rejection get you down. We all get rejected. Heck, I’ve been doing this full-time for 10 years, and I still get rejections; I’ve probably gotten thousands. A rejection doesn’t mean you suck; it can mean that the magazine already has your idea in inventory, or the magazine is taking fewer freelance pitches, or the editor didn’t get her frappuccino that morning.
If you get no rejections, it means you’re not trying. If you get rejections, it’s because you’re getting your work out there. Eventually, something will stick.
KF: You’ve started something called creativePAW (Creative Professionals for Animal Welfare). Tell us how you came up with this and how the program works.
My husband and I do volunteer projects for the local animal shelter and volunteer at feral cat spay/neuter clinics. I started realizing that many animal welfare organizations don’t have the resources to do PR, do fundraising, and educate people on their cause…they’re too busy doing the day-to-day things, like cleaning cages and rounding up people to volunteer at clinics. I also always suspected that issues like spaying/neutering and homeless pets are a marketing issue: If marketing can make people believe that one brown fizzy liquid is better than another, why can’t it make people believe that spaying/neutering your pets is cool?
I thought, “Wouldn’t is be great to get together a network of writers and other creative professionals to help these animal welfare organizations with their marketing, educating, and fundraising?” My first idea was to start an e-mail list where I could post about animal welfare projects for interested creative professionals—but eventually, the idea grew to become a website with a database of creative professionals that animal welfare organizations can search when they need help.
Whenever my enthusiasm for the project flagged, I thought about a video I saw on YouTube (which you can now see on creativePAW) of kill day at a shelter. It’s a really well-done video by The Ephemera Project, and I couldn’t even get through the whole thing because I was sobbing so hard. Thinking about that video and the fact that a homeless companion animal is euthanized every eight seconds in the U.S. spurred me on. Now, a week after I launched the site, creativePAW has more than 100 members—about 85 are volunteers, and the rest are organizations.
KF: How can people get involved with creativePAW?
LF: We’re looking for writers, web designers, PR people, illustrators, graphic designers, marketing professionals, voice talent, editors, proofreaders, translators, and other types of creative professionals. Please go to http://www.creativepaw.org and register to be included in the database. It’s free (of course) and easy. You don’t have to worry about getting spammed, because animal welfare organizations have to register and be approved before they’re allowed to search the database. You can also take on only those volunteer projects you have t
