The Renegade Writer...

I check this blog every so often. Often times it's used to plug it's own classes, but this interview with Dan Baum of Playboy, Wired, and Rolling Stone fame was fantastic!

He used to be on staff at The New Yorker but is now making his way as a freelance writer. Even with his credible background it's not easy these days. Apparently he's a whiz at writing story proposals...you can check out some successful ones here.

Here's a bit from the blog post:

What does it take to make it — what kind of interests and background do you need to be able to do the kind of journalism that you do? What is your background?

I worked for six years in newspapers and then we’ve been freelancing ever since. What does it take? I used to say that for people getting out of college, working at a newspaper is great training, but newspaper jobs are getting hard to get.

I think it takes relentlessness. When I’m starting to work on a story, I’ll start reading about something, and I’ll just follow every link, and as I’m doing it I’ll make a list in a Word document of the people that I need to find.

I start calling them immediately, and talking to them and taking notes on my computer. The expression I use with Margaret is “I had a red dog day today,” which means I had my nose down on the ground and I was going after everything today. Just hoovering in enormous amounts of information. And when I start a proposal, I try to have a series of red dog days where I am just relentless, going after everybody, and as soon as I encounter somebody’s name I pick up the phone and I call. When I finish the interview I say, Who else should I talk to? Then I call those people.

I don’t put it off — I don’t say these are people I’m going to call later — I do it right then. Man, there are times when in one day I can get enough information to write a proposal that will get me a $12,000 magazine assignment.

And this is just one little tidbit! If you are a writer I suggest you read the whole darn thing.