8 surprisingly easy ways to kiss your freelance career goodbye

by Leo Wiles
21 October 2016

Over a decade ago, a veteran freelancer missed her deadline and dictated my magazine’s cover story over the phone as we were going to print.

That surge of adrenalin, bile and loathing for the writer who failed to file on time without any warning has never left me. Largely because it wasn’t only her reputation at stake but mine too – being the commissioning editor who had to explain why we were going to be late going to press, costing us thousands of dollars.

To say I never hired her again is an understatement. The freelancer’s lack of organisational skills and blasé attitude meant that I also never recommended her to anyone – despite the fact she had a star-filled contacts book.

So, if you want to kiss your career goodbye as a freelancer, that’s definitely one way to do it.

Here are some others!

1. Pretending to be the go-to writer on a particular subject, only to plagiarise others’ work or even interview the wrong people to support your feature. If you do it for, say, a custom title dedicated to a particular field (such as medical research), you’ll be left wishing your pumped up alter ego had stayed in the closet.

2. Dashing off emails and texts with typos, or letting grammatical errors slip through to final copy, is also a fast track towards making a client wonder if they’ve made a mistake trusting you to write about their brand. It’s just another way, along with writing for free and thereby setting an expectation that your work has no monetary value, that can damage your career.

3. Faking your cuts and pretending the pieces you wrote for your blog were actual commissions. We’ve seen this a lot at Rachel’s List and if you do it – DON’T! Editors who look at your website will be no slouch in the research stakes and can figure out fast if you’re telling porky pies about your work.

4. Hyperbole / spin that leads to inaccurate quoting and potentially false information or defamation is a complete no-no. Because if it slips through an editor AND a sub’s net it could mean expensive lawsuits all round. (And not working again.)

5. Plagiarising yourself is almost as bad. We’ve all had those incredible interviews that could have ended up as a 3,000 look at a particular subject only to be commissioned to squeeze it into 750 words that we want to on-sell. But do so at your peril if you haven’t cleared it with the original outlet who ran the piece and paid you. You’ll also lose face with the second outlet if there wasn’t full disclosure at the time you proposed the idea.

6. Being defensive about re-writes, even when it’s the client who changed the brief, won’t win you a seat at the inner circle of regular contributors. Especially if you point out that it was the client’s fault to begin with.

7. Pitching ideas that are ludicrous for a title, or aren’t topical or well thought out – or which already ran six months ago – may not be a complete deal breaker, but it depends on the editor. In many cases, sending a crappy pitch will fast track your current and future pitches to the trash.

8. Taking on too much can also kill your career. Having work coming out of your ears sounds like the dream, right? However, when you’re over-committed and start skimping on a project or handing in sub-standard work you’ll be left out in the cold. While it can take years to build up a reputation, it only takes one bad article to demolish it – and commissioning editors and clients tend to have an elephantine memory.

Have I left anything out? Which ways can you think of (or which have you witnessed) that led to a freelancer’s career suicide?