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There is a part of me that can’t believe this. A big part. Last week I wrote, ‘Don’t worry, “9 Things I Love About Being A Freelance Journalist” will follow next week.’ And look: here it is. Now that never happens, that’s a first. Whenever I’ve promised to do something on here before I’ve never done it. Until now. Perhaps I’m turning a corner. Well, not turning a corner, but certainly building a corner that I can turn into at a later date. Turn into? Turn down? What do you do when you get to a corner? This is tough: I’m writing this in a bar where there’s the shrillest, cackliest Christmas party ever going on, so you’ll have to bear with me. Anyway:

1. Telling People What I Do For A Living. People immediately perk up when you tell them that you write words for a living. If I ever find myself talking to a woman in a bar, or in a park, or on a premium £1.80 per minute phone sex line – and I often do find myself in precisely those situations – just prior to chronically, hilariously, boring them to death, I’ll casually drop in what I do and they’ll seem bowled over for a bit. I say casually, although it’s anything but. The whole conversation will be carefully engineered by me into revealing what I do. Pathetic, really. And slightly brilliant. In fact, my whole life revolves around trying to tell people what I do. That, and occasionally doing it.

2. Double Pay. A few years ago I wrote 1,200 words for The Guardian for which they paid me £500. On the morning it ran, someone from the syndication department rang me up and said something like:

“The Daily Mail are interested in buying this piece.”

“I’m sorry, but having my work published in the Daily Mail goes completely against my principles. Tell them I’m not interested.” I said.

“They’ve offered £1,700 for it.”

“I don’t have any principles. Tell them I am interested. Tell them I’m interested in everything.”

About two weeks after that a magazine accidentally paid me £1,000 instead of £500 for a feature. Shortly after that someone else double-paid me for a feature and I went through a brief, heady period of being syndicated like fuck. If you’ve never been syndicated like fuck before, you really should try it. Since that time, I haven’t been syndicated like fuck. In fact, I haven’t been syndicated at all.

3. Seeing the Images That They (Whoever They Are) Have Chosen or Created to Illustrate Your Copy. I still get incredibly excited by this, and about seeing my work in print generally. I wish I could write more about this, but I’m wondering why I don’t get syndicated like fuck anymore. Have the gods turned against me? Do I need to start making sacrifices to them again? Gods, please let me know.

4. Getting Commissioned. It can be thrilling, still. It’s most thrilling when you’re commissioned by a publication you’ve always wanted to write for. These thrills can quickly evaporate if you really, really try to make the feature sing and it ends up doing no such thing. Still, this is a positive entry – perhaps only my fourth ever positive entry – so let’s not dwell on this point. (Don’t ever try too hard though – that’s my one piece of advice)

5. Editors, some. Some editors are a treat to deal with. They respond promptly to pitches, are polite, helpful, commanding, and say lovely things about your work. Dealing with editors like this makes your professional life a lot easier and more pleasant. I would name names, but don’t want to be accused of sucking up to anyone in order to get more work (Mike Rampton’s fucking brilliant).

6. The Freedom. It’s four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. After finishing this, I could carry on working until midnight (I won’t), take myself off to the cinema (I won’t), stay in this bar and drink until I’m drunk (I might) or even stand on a roundabout masturbating at passing traffic (I definitely will). See? How many other jobs offer such freedom and opportunity?

A roundabout, earlier.

7. It’s Brave. Not as brave as being a fireman or a dictator, perhaps, but working for yourself takes guts. And sticking to something – and I’m talking about Pitching the World here – that has proven to be the downfall of your health, career, marriage, hairline, etc. etc. is even braver. No, not stupider. Braver.

8. You Can Spend the Whole Day Messing Around and Call It Work. When I was married I would spend all day watching Curb Your Enthusiasm and pretend it was work. “I may have to interview Larry David one day,” I would tell my wife. Or I would just stare out of the window. “I’m thinking of writing something about windows. Or about staring out of windows,” I would yawn. Once, I spent a whole afternoon seeing how many kick-ups I could with a tennis ball. Again, work.

A window (and some other stuff), earlier.

9. The Work. Freelance journalists do important and heroic work. Some of them. Sometimes.

Don’t worry, “9 Things I Love About Being A Freelance Journalist” will follow next week. It’s good to get the muck out of the way first though, isn’t it? Of course it is. In fact, this could potentially be my last downbeat post. It’s all going to be smiles from now on.

1. Telling People What I Do For A Living. Whenever I’m at a party, or on a plane, or lying under a park bench drinking super strength cider and someone asks me what I do, I hate saying: “Actually, I’m a freelance journalist.” I hate that “actually” – what’s with that “actually”? I also hate the image that “freelance journalist” conjures up. It seems weak and creepy and privileged all at the same time. That I am weak and creepy and privileged all at the same time can be overlooked for now.

2. Telling People Who I Write For. “You know,” I say, “The Guardian, The Independent, lots of men’s magazines. Property stuff. You know.” I’m such an inarticulate plum. And a lying one, too. I haven’t written for any of those fucks for years. I don’t know who I’m writing for these days, but it’s certainly not them.

3. Shrinking rates.

4. Shrinking pagination.

5. My shrinking penis. I honestly think it’s getting smaller. Is that supposed to happen at 36? I might look it up. Regardless, if it is – and it definitely is – it’s definitely down to being a freelance journalist.

6. Listening back to my voice on a dictaphone.

7. Especially if it’s apparent that I’m clearly bored by the questions I’m asking and the interviewee is completely bored by the answers they’re giving.

8. Knowing, as I transcribe this semi-mythical interview, that my editor will be completely bored reading it, the subs will be completely bored subbing it, the printers will be completely bored printing it, the people who have to put it on the shelves in newsagents will be wondering where their lives went wrong and the readers – well, you get the picture. They’re going to think it’s shit, too.

9. Sketches, rather than photos, of columnists.

10. Photos of columnists.

11. Columnists.

12. The bitterness that being a freelance journalist fosters.

13. The waiting. Waiting to hear about whether a pitch has been successful. Waiting to hear if your copy is successful. Waiting for payment.

14. I can barely go into how much late payments annoy me. I was paid seven months late once.

15. That It’s Nothing Like Fletch. I only became a journalist because I honestly thought it would be like Fletch, but it turns out that it’s very little like Fletch.

16. You can never switch off, can you? It’s constant. For example, I’m writing this in some plummy cafe and have been looking around for inspiration since the moment I arrived. I’m all “Tea? Has anyone ever written a feature about tea? Or walls – ‘Why Walls Are Okay'” Maddening, isn’t it?

17. Going to Stoke Newington farmer’s market and seeing some plum in his mid-thirties wearing a check shirt, with a Guardian tucked under his arm, and a bag of organic sausage made out of Bangladeshi cotton or something and thinking ‘Hahaha look at him, look at that fool – bet he’s a freelance journalist’ and then realising that you too are a plum in his mid thirties with a check shirt made out of organic apples and you too have a Guardian under your arm and you too are a freelance journalist.

18. Knowing that your life can change in an instant – you might get to spend six months in the Arctic; you might be offered a column in the Financial Times – but also that it never will.

19. Pretending To Interviewees That You Can Do Shorthand. Then not being able to file decent copy because it turns out you can’t do shorthand and were just showing off.

20. Letters From the Editor that are full of grinny, upbeat, whimsical bullshit.

21. Wishing that I were an editor so I could write a Letter From the Editor full of grinny, upbeat, whimsical bullshit.

22. Being completely overwhelmed by the number of fellow freelance journalists out there at the moment and terrified by the numbers who will be pouring out of universities, colleges, prisons etc. over the next ten or twenty years.

23. Fuck, 23. I honestly only meant to do 9.

24. Getting your photo taken 80-90 times by a photographer from the Daily Mail for some shitty feature that you never wanted to write in the first place.

25. Subs Tinkering With Your Copy. When I was the north London section editor for Square Meal and reviewed 115 bars and restaurants I was writing a review of a wine bar and said something like, “Although the emphasis is on grapes, you won’t feel the pleasant owners wrath if you order something else” which, okay, is a bit rubbish, but the whole Grapes of Wrath thing I thought was pretty sweet but the sub changed it to, “Although the emphasis is on grapes, the pleasant owners won’t mind if you order something else” which is even more rubbish.

26. Actually, that whole Grapes of Wrath thing was terrible. No wonder they changed it.

27. My mood being almost entirely contingent upon the approval of editors.

28. Writing this post.

29. Writing this blog.

30. Toby Youngs’ massive bald head.

31. Danny Wallace’s column.

32. My massive bald head.

33. My lack of column.

34. This is getting a bit laboured now. Okay, one more. Commissioning editors saying, “Let me think about it” to a pitch. Nothing good has ever come from “Let me think about it.” I’ve never had a pitch commissioned after an editor has thought about it.

Oh dear. It turns out that I’m back in Boscombe. That in itself isn’t too bad. I have a lot of family here. I have friends here. There’s a big beach here. But there’s also my copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook here. There’s a lot wrong with that. Firstly, after a three and a half month hiatus, it continues to mock and humiliate me. Secondly, it means that I have to flick through it and pitch. I hate having to flick through it and pitch. Once this fuckhead of a project is over (2013? 2049?) I’m never going to flick through something and pitch ever again.

Still, persistence. Dogged, ill-judged, character-weakening persistence. This morning, I thought that I’d persist with the G’s. The G’s looked an approachable, relatively untapped bunch. Sure, I’d pitched Grazia (and been ignored) and Greetings Today (who didn’t ignore me, but then did) but other than that, the G’s had always seemed untouched and promising.

A mistake. Never think that anything is either untouched or promising. Nothing is ever untouched or promising. The G’s are hard. Here are some G’s.

1. Go Girl Magazine. According to the blurb, this is a ‘Magazine for 7-11-year-old girls including fashion, beauty, celebrity news and gossip.’ I don’t know anything about fashion, beauty or celebrity news for 7-11-year-old girls. I’m not prepared to find out. I’m not prepared to walk around the streets of Boscombe asking seven-year-old girls where they got their jeans from or if there’s any good gossip going around at school that I should be writing a feature about. Go Girl Magazine is a non-starter. For now.

2. GQ. I used to buy GQ five or six times a year. Now I buy it no times a year. Recently, I somehow ended up reading an issue and it seemed to consist of the smuggest writers in the world writing about the most boring things in the world. In the fashion pages, there were a few pictures of men in expensive coats looking demented. That was it. They pay well though.

3. Green Pebble. Green Pebble is a ‘Magazine dedicated to contemporary visual arts in East Anglia.’ I can’t think of anything to say about this.

4. Grow Your Own. This is a publication for ‘kitchen gardeners of all levels of expertise.’ At first, this seemed promising. And interesting: kitchen gardeners. But then I realised that I don’t have a kitchen. And not only that, but it looks like I will never have a kitchen. This is a shame. If some quirk of fate led to me one day having a kitchen, I would definitely plant loads of stuff in there and write about it.

5. Guitarist. ‘Aims to improve readers’ knowledge of the instrument, help them make the right buying choices and assist them in becoming a better player.’ Although I have a better chance of one day owning a guitar than I do a kitchen, I have never owned one previously and certainly have very little knowledge of the instrument and no idea how to turn a bad guitar player into a good guitar player. At a push, I could perhaps squeeze out a few hundred words on buying one, but it would primarily consist of, “Make sure it looks cool, make sure it looks cool, whatever you do just make sure it looks fucking cool. Buy one of those ones that is one guitar on top of the other as they’re well cool,” and I don’t think the people over at Guitarist would go for that.

You might think that, as I haven’t threatened to quit since June, that I would do so right about there. You’d be wrong. Some of the G’s are actually okay, and I’m planning on spending the rest of the evening cooking up ideas for Granta, Glamour, The Good Book Guide and Golf Monthly. My next post could well be about this, if things go well. If things go badly, my next post will be about trying to explain to a policeman why I’d been walking around town trying to find out where the local seven-year-olds got their jeans from.

So. Last Friday, a corporate client who I’ve previously written for asked me how much I would charge to rewrite 350 words of their copy.

‘Fuck knows,’ I replied (I’m paraphrasing here). ‘Six hundred pounds?’

‘Cool. Get started.’ He said. (I’m paraphrasing for him, too.)

This got me thinking. It got me thinking, primarily, about the shitty rates I’ve been paid by newspapers and magazines over the years. It got me thinking that perhaps I should focus my energy away from journalism and towards being a corporate putzfuck (see previous post for hilarious layers). And not only that, but that I should also consider revisiting other areas within the writing industry, whatever the hell that is, where I’ve tried to make a living. Over the years I’ve tried to become a successful political speechwriter, scriptwriter and novelist and perhaps I should try these things again.

Here’s what happened before.

1. Political Speechwriter

Sometime in 2009 I received a phone call. ‘Fly to New York tomorrow,’ it went. ‘Then fly to the Caribbean. We want you to write speeches for politicians.’ So, the following day I flew to New York and then the Caribbean. Along the way I picked up a book called something like, ‘Greatest Speeches of the 20th Century’ and read the whole thing. The first speech I wrote took less than an hour and was called ‘Let Me Tell You About Change.’ The candidate who I wrote it for looked to be a no-hoper, but ended up winning the seat in the election. I had to record the speech to check the length, and when I first read it aloud I was overcome and cried. It was that good. The next two speeches I wrote weren’t as good. Then I stole a computer and ran away. That wasn’t very good either. When I came back to London I saw a job advertised at the US Embassy for a speechwriter and I applied, but they said no.

A stolen computer, earlier

2. Scriptwriter. 

Either shortly before or shortly after stealing a computer and running away from the Caribbean, I was approached by two people who asked me to write a short film. They had the shell of an idea. They wanted me to fill that shell. We all got very excited (they had won a bunch of awards between them and had contacts with lots of money to invest; I was a brilliant thief) and talked about Cannes, Sundance, Oscars – stuff, essentially, that was no way going to happen. One evening I sat down and wrote the script. It was about two Arctic explorers who end up sabotaging each other. A comedy. I called it ‘What More Do You Want Me To Give Up Now?’ which were apparently Ernest Shackleton’s last words. I asked them if they liked the title and they said no. They did, however, really like the script. They said it was sharp and funny. They said we would definitely get funding. We had a meeting and talked a lot about shots from a helicopter. We had another meeting, but I can’t remember what was said. Perhaps I was supposed to do something. Nothing else has happened with it since then. It’s only just occurred to me that we gave up on a project that had the words ‘give up’ in the title.

Ernest Shackleton, earlier

3. Novelist.

Eleven years ago, I hitchhiked from Bournemouth to Barcelona. Within five minutes I had my first lift, in a BMW. This is easy, I thought, there’s no way this can fuck up. A few days later I was in Paris stealing food from shops and eating out of bins. I tried to sleep on a roundabout one night, and car loads of people drove past and stared at me like I was demented. When I got to Barcelona I met two Italian girls at the ferry terminal. They gave me pasta and cigarettes. I alluded to being an eccentric millionaire and suggested that if they ever found themselves in Mallorca, they should come and stay in my mansion. A few days later they found themselves in Mallorca and they ended up sleeping in a disused sauna of a semi-abandoned tennis club. After they left, I started writing a novel. The novel was about the death of childhood. At one point it looked like it would get picked up by a publisher, but in the end they said no. A few years after that I began to write a novel about a psychopath who seduced women by telling them he was playing a young Stanley Kubrick in a biopic. Everyone said no to that. A month or so ago I started writing a novella and abandoned it.

Journalism it is, then.

Earlier this evening, someone came to see me. They had to pick up a cat. Somehow, I’ve found myself in a situation where I’m living in an expensive house on top of a hill looking after cats. I don’t know how many. Two? Ten? A number of cats, anyway. And a dog. The dog is old and brilliant and three or four times a day I have to scrape out the green gunk that hangs out in the dog’s eyes and then put in eye drops. It’s not as bad as it sounds.

So a man came to see me about a cat. I hadn’t seen him for maybe fifteen years. Now he looks like a New York playwright. I told him that he looked like a New York playwright. This seemed to make him happy.

“So, how have you been? What have you been doing?” he said.

“I got married. For a bit, then I got div-”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said. “Oh fuck.” He’s also divorced.

“Yeah, I got divorced. She’s having this kid.” Jesus, I thought, I’m speaking American. Am I trying to impress him? Do I know that he isn’t really a New York playwright, that he just looks like one?

“Oh, fuck,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. And you’re writing now I hear?”

During this thrilling exchange of words he’d wandered over to my desk. On that desk, was my days’ work. One sheet of paper. On the top of the sheet of paper, I’d written: ‘EVERYTHING IS FUCKED’ and then listed everything that was fucked. Hair, face, shoes, glasses (before I lost them), computer, career – that sort of thing.

He picked up the piece of paper and looked at it. Underneath ‘EVERYTHING IS FUCKED’ and the list of everything that was fucked, I’d written: ‘How do I get to be one of the voices on Points of View?’

Underneath that, I’d written: ‘From now on, only insult people with four letter words where ‘u’ is either the third or fourth letter. Try: turd, slut, fuck, rube, putz, fuck, chump (almost), cunt, plum, bum (almost)’

“That’s just.” I said.

We smoked some cigarettes and we talked about me writing for his charity and then he left. What an impression, I thought. What a days’ work.

Where do we go from here, I wonder. Further down? How much further is there to go? Since starting this hare-brained putz of a project I’ve lost my career, my wife, my shoes, my mind and lots of other stuff that I can barely begin to think about. The night before last I had a vision. I had a vision of me trying to rob a casino. Is that where I’m headed? In the vision, I wasn’t all cool and cinematic. In the vision, my gun was made of paper mache because my visions are smarter than I am and my visions know that when I do go to rob a casino (and I will, I definitely will), I won’t be able to afford a real gun, I’ll have to make one out of the fucking Guardian or something. And I won’t have a getaway car. I’ll have to take the bus. And I won’t have clothes. In the vision, I was dressed in a barrel. You know those old films or cartoons or whatever the hell they are when the wild west town idiot has to walk around in a barrel? That’s going to be me.

‘Going to be me’ – it fucking is me. Now. I’m in that barrel now. I’m standing in front of the cashier in the casino in my barrel with a gun-shaped Guardian. Ace, isn’t it?

Wow. Apologies for the drama. What a rube. It’s been a tough few days. Apart from the playwright, I haven’t spoken to anyone for five days. I think I better get back to cooking up pitches that will be ignored.

Thanks for everything.

The title says it all, really. Here’s the first, to Rob Fearn.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

To: Rob Fearn @ The Guardian.

From: Pitching the World.

Subject: Ideas for Shortcuts

The beadier-eyed among you will have noticed that I’ve used that whole ‘Why not?’ blather again. They will have also noticed that I clearly can’t be bothered with the whole, “I’ve written for The Guardian and etc. etc. etc.” bit. And they will have noticed a crap subject line. Oh well. Shame, really, as I’d love to do this.

This, below, was inspired by and a product of my previous post.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

From: Pitching the World

Subject: I Love Buying Women’s Clothes

Dear Laura,

Apologies for barging into your life like this, but Suzy Cox from Grazia contacted me years ago about something I had written for the Guardian that was later written by my then wife for Grazia so I reckon Grazia owes me one. Actually, that logic is twisted. If anything, I owe you one. Still.

Perhaps I should start again. I’d like to write a feature for you. Specifically, I’d like to write a feature about buying women’s clothes. For women, not for me. I love it. When I was married I loved it. When I had girlfriends I loved it. In fact, even though I’m not really looking for someone new at the moment, part of me wants a new wife or girlfriend just so I can buy her clothes. I’m not talking about saucy lingerie and the like, but nice floral prints and tennis dresses – that sort of thing. I even enjoying buying women shoes. It’s odd, I spent most of my twenties working on building sites and have spent the early part of my thirties writing and smoking and drinking myself to death in pubs, playing football and so on and bar this little peccadillo am not in the least bit effeminate.

What do you think? Could pepper the whole thing with the opinion of other men who hate/like this kind of caper and of women who both enjoy and can’t stand being on the receiving end of clothes that men have bought for them. I’ve already sought the opinion of female writers about this and have some cracking material.

Here’s the piece that attracted the attention of Grazia before, but have tons more clips if you’re interested.

Thanks for taking a look at this.

All the best,

Pitching the World

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Writing the above – although completely true – left me feeling slightly grubby. But then I thought they might pay me lots of filthy money that I could go out and spend on dirty things and – in the same way that a double negative works – I might come out of the whole thing spectacularly clean and brand new.

What do you think? Not about my half-baked theory, but about the pitches. Any of them going to make it? Which ones are the swimmers? I’d be delighted to hear your thoughts. Thank you.

A loganberry (actually, three of them – perhaps four. If you look closely – five?), earlier. 

Why did it all turn out like this for me? I had so much promise. I was personable, I was bright. Oh, maybe not academically speaking, but … I was perceptive. I always know when someone’s uncomfortable at a party. It became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I’ve ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every area of life, be it something to wear, something to eat … It’s all been wrong. – George Costanza

This morning I started panicking about work. This afternoon, I sat in a field and stared at sheep and black pigs and dry stone walls and tried to stop panicking about work. I think I got somewhere. I realised that, like George Costanza, I should do the opposite of what I’ve been doing. Rather than thinking about the sort of features that I want to write, I’ve begun to think of the title of a feature and then watch everything else slink into place. A breakthrough, perhaps.

Earlier today – in the field – I spent ten minutes trying to work feature ideas around the title of so-so news quiz Have I Got News for You. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Have I Got Views For You: The top 9* open top bus journeys in the UK.

2. Have They Got Views for You: I revisit the work of some of the most well-known and well-paid columnists in the country – Richard Littlejohn, Jeremy Clarkson, Julie Burchill, Jan Moir etc. – to see if there is consistency and belief in the offensive, hinky bullshit that they spout or whether they just come up with stuff to get attention and make more money.

3. Have They Got Views Whilst I’m Looking at Views for You: As above, but I conduct all of my research on open top buses.

4. Have I Got Shoes For You: When I was married, I used to enjoy buying my wife shoes and dresses. I’ve enjoyed buying shoes and dresses for girlfriends, too. In fact, although I don’t really want a new wife of girlfriend just yet, I sort of would like one so that I could buy her shoes and dresses. Is this normal? I could write about this, and other men who like to do this.

5. Have I Got Screws for You: A year-long weekly column about my attempts to sleep my way to the top of the journalism industry. The best bit will be when I try to give Alan Rusbridger a handjob in a public toilet.

Alan Rusbridger, possibly getting a handjob, earlier.

6. Have I Got Snooze For You: Research by NASA suggests that a 20-minute nap during the day increases mental sharpness and productivity, and has a favourable effect on mood. Could we see a situation in the future where companies actively encourage sleeping at work? Probably not, but I could write about it.

7. Have I Got Pews for You: An investigation into church attendance and whether the decline can be halted.

8. Have I Got Ewes for You: God knows. Farmer’s Weekly?

9. Have You Got Eyes for Two: I’ve no idea what this would be about, either. It was a long and heavy weekend. (And I haven’t even touched upon booze/crews/cruise/boos and so on. You can have those. Do what you want with them.)

But hopefully you see my point. And although I’ve been capering about up there a bit, there are one or two strong ideas – the getting a girlfriend just so I can buy her clothes, the sleeping at work – that I could work on and pitch this evening. I probably will do. And that’s just from  a 10-15 minute brainstorming session. (If I ever write ’10-15 minute brainstorming session’ ever again you have my permission to kill me.)

Anyway, please try it and let me know how you get on. It doesn’t, incidentally, work with the next batch of films/television programmes I thought of (Back to the Future, Newswipe, The Karate Kid, Countdown, The Big Lebowski), but sort of works with Dude, Where’s My Car? and Last of the Summer Wine.

*According to a friend who is the assistant ed at a fitness magazine, putting ‘9 Ways to Get Better at Whatever’ leads to higher sales than ’10 Ways to Get Better at Whatever’.  Or, indeed, any other number. Some world we live in, isn’t it? 

On September 18th of this year I wrote: “For me, freelance journalism is tough at the moment. Anecdotally, freelance journalism is tough at the moment. I’ve heard of a handful of people in the last week alone who have either given up or are on the verge of giving up. Rates are low and dropping. Editors make you fuck them in bins and buy them hats before they commission you. Accounts departments spend all their time laughing and masturbating at you. All very grim and seedy, I’m afraid.”

For the record, I have never made love to an editor in a bin. I may, however, buy the next editor who commissions me a really nice hat. Bear that in mind, editors.

Anyway, rates. I’ve been promising to write about rates for some time now and I’m the sort of person who, if they promise to deliver something, they damn well deliver it. Please don’t write in saying this is not true. I know it’s not true.

Until a day or so ago, I thought that if I did write a post about rates, I would illustrate it with graphs. I imagined the graphs would look something like this:

After some digging around, I’m not sure how accurate that graph is, not sure to what extent ‘we in trouble’. Things could be a lot better, granted, but after seeking and receiving the advice from a couple of dozen journalists and editors over the last few days, I’m actually feeling more positive about being a freelance journalist than I have done all year.

In fact, I’m feeling a bit like this:

This man pops up if you type ‘online graphs’ into Google image search. He looks okay, he looks happy enough with things. Who is he? Maybe he’s reading this. If he is reading this, perhaps he could inject his opinion into this borderline laborious post. In the meantime, here are ten (later changed to eleven) things that I’ve found out about current freelance rates for journalists.

(Non-journalists/everyone may want to skip to the end, as I have a feeling I may put up another graph decorated with fuck words and dicks.)

1. Rates may well have stagnated over the last decade or two. According to Mari Molid*: “A friend of mine who’s freelanced forever says that the dirty little secret about freelance journalism is that rates are the same as 20 years ago. But our grocery, fuel and housing costs are sadly not.” Ida Alstad* seems to support this: “Some rates haven’t changed much in 20 years. I used to get £100 a day freelance subbing in 1990/1991. You’d be doing well to get much over £120 at most places today.”

2. It could be that rates, after a fall, are rising again. Gro Hammerseng*: “I found that rates dipped considerably about two years ago when the recession hit, but I’m finding some are getting better again this year. They’re not up to the levels they were in the middle of this decade, but they’re better than rock bottom.”

3. You can sometimes earn a lot of money. Richard Parker**: “The top rate I’ve been paid was £2,000 for selling a few quotes about a celebrity for a tabloid – it was a major exclusive and the quotes were only two hundred words long.” Stephen Fry, apparently, tried to get £3 a word from the Guardian (thanks to Central Park Mugger**). Both Tonje Larsen* and Tine Stange* reported getting £1 a word (for Bella). Both reasonably high and pretty damn low rates were included in an email from Kaari Aalvek Grimsbo*: “Well firstly I’d like to make it clear that I don’t really write on a pound per word basis… I normally get a day rate (between £70 and £250).  However for dramatic effect, I word counted my short story for the illustrious People’s Friend.  It came to 3p per word.  That’s 1450 words at £50.  The more normal amount is around 50p per word.  The most is £1.”

4. It’s probably time for another graph, summing up what we’ve learnt so far:

5. The highest word rate received among those I spoke to falls between 50p and £1 a word, with the Daily Mail coming out as one of the highest payers.

6. Bernie Lomax** from a leading men’s magazine has this to say: “Rateswise, at our mag we generally do about 15-20-25p/word, depending on who’s doing it and how much research/organisation it requires. Generally we work with round figures, using the same several people most of the time, so it’s more casual like “Hey Pitching the World, can you do this, about twelve hundred words, call it three hundred quid?” If it’s an interview where we’ve arranged it and it’s using our questions so they’re literally just ringing up and reading them we’ll sometimes just do a token fee. It varies to be honest. It’s kind of based on whether we’re using someone because they’re the fucking tits as a writer or whether it’s because there’s something any dork could do, but none of us is about.”

7. Some US magazines pay very well. According to the NUJ guide, US Vogue and Vanity Fair pay up to £2,746 per thousand words and US Esquire offers £2,060 per thousand words. These figures, however, do look to be out of date. Apparently, Good Housekeeping used to pay a dollar a word in 1966 and still paid the same in 1998.

8. Some publications pay very poorly. Again, according to figures posted on the NUJ website, one journalist was paid £625 for a 4,200 word feature for High Life, the New Statesman pays £187.50 per thousand words and the NME £140 per thousand. Recently, I was offered £100 for 1,800 words.

9. Some publications don’t pay at all. Please try not to write for these publications.

10. Fucking hell, this post has taken about a hundred thousand hours to do. Has it been helpful? Hope so.

11. At the time of going to press (how grand am I?), this just dropped into my inbox (how casual am I?). Seems to sum up everything rather well. Larry Wilson**:

“When I was working for travel mags in 2003-5, I wouldn’t go under 35p/word. Today, the standard rates I get from almost all the papers are lower or about the same. Guardian/Obs c.30p, Telegraph 30-35p, Indie even less.

– At the time I joined the Telegraph, our desk had been paying the same standard rate since its inception 10 years before (50p). That stagnation was bad enough, but no one ever thought that rates would actually go down. Then the management consultants came in, and they did.

– Best gig I’ve had was travel writing for a corporate – just shy of nine grand for seven days skiing and getting drunk in Italy, and producing 3,000 words of copy.”

In graph form, that is represented like this:

Jesus, that looks terrible, and is not at all representative of what he said. If you really try though, it does look a bit like someone skiing.

Thank you very much to everyone who contributed. Apologies if I’ve mangled your fine words.

* To preserve anonymity, all females have been named after members of Norway women’s national handball team.

** To preserve anonymity, all  males have been named after characters in Weekend at Bernie’s.