I meet, dated, and eventually cohabited with a wonderful (so I thought) person for three years. He was older than I was (32 to my 24) and more “worldly,” and I appreciated that mature outlook. The relationship was a pleasant experience for me from the start as he possessed qualities I valued: honesty, commitment, blah…I loved the guy and really thought that marriage was on the horizon. However, people change and I started to grow a bit tired of the I’m-older-so-I-know-better routine. I tried discussing my feelings with Mr. Maturity, but he didn’t feel that he belittled me with his outlooks on life. I did, so things eventually fell apart and we ended the relationship.

It was an amicable split with no hard feelings. I didn’t keep in touch with Mr. Maturity for several reasons, but we had mutual friends with whom we frequently socialized. I maintained relationships with those people and after a few months had passed, they began to make odd comments about my former relationship with Mr. M. I didn’t respond because it just didn’t matter enough. Finally, a friend sat me down and told me some of the outrageous things Mr. M was saying about me and our relationship. There is very little truth to any of the stories. In fact, several are pure fabrications. I am at a loss as to what to do. I do not want to play he-said-she-said about this, but I do want it to stop. Do I contact Mr. M. and ask him “WTF?” or should I just tell my group of friends that they are lies? I’m too old to be playing high-school games, but I have a reputation to maintain.

Any ideas?

Thanks —
Young’un

I was pretty much in the same place as Wannabe Sars when I was eighteen and in high school, and I think I have some words of advice now that might (or might not) be helpful — you be the judge.

What has helped me quite a bit in terms of getting jobs to write for other publications was going to a university and becoming a writer on their newspaper for three years. When you are trying to sell an essay or an article idea to a magazine, which represents most of freelance writing as I understand it, they want to see “clips” — copies of stuff you’ve written other places — or else they want a resume that includes other places you’ve been published. If you can list several years’ experience with one publication, that helps.

And it is easier to branch out from that kind of work into writing for sites you like online rather than going straight into the world of big magazines. I worked on the newspaper and the school literary magazines and got publications in both places, used those to get some regular gigs writing online (though those are harder, much harder, to come by now that the whole online content-provider market has kind of tanked). And I used the experience I got from writing all those opinion articles to place essays online with sites I admired.

All of that gave me enough clips and credits on my resume to land my first solid (i.e., we send you a contract and agree to pay you a kill fee or a standard sum on publication) assignment from a major magazine. I got that by being a regular reader and thus noticing when they put out a call for young writers on their website. Lots of smaller (but still paying) magazines run essay contests and calls for essays and such, which is a nice way to send out your work to an audience that is looking for a new writer instead of sending out work to an audience that would much rather hire an experienced writer they already know — Utne Reader is holding such a contest right now. You should also enter any writing contests your school/university sponsors — more lines on the resume.

Anyway — it takes years to break into the market and become someone who is regularly published. I’m not there yet, though I am getting optimistic. The best thing to do, IMO, is to have an entire other career planned: in my case, I’m going the academic route, getting an MFa and Ph.D. in Creative Writing so I can teach at the college level, and hoping that freelance writing can supplement my income and provide me with some entertainment. One more thing: you’re right about reading. It’s important to read all kinds of things, too, and if you’re a freelance-writer wannabe, I think it’s most important to read popular nonfiction and magazine writing. It’s the easiest way to learn what you like to read (and thus, what you might like to write) and how tone varies from publication to publication. I learned how to write opinion columns from reading them and analyzing how they were put together.

Hope some of this is remotely helpful.

Eva