Choosing Writing Jobs

Mark Dugas, producer and editor of documentary films, has an interesting take on how to decide whether or not to accept a freelance job. This might seem like the least important aspect among finding a job, making a pitch, setting your rates and securing an offer, but he says to consider these factors:

1. Will it advance your career/have networking benefit?
2. Will you earn decent money?
3. Will it be fun?

Fun? Fun! Who said anything about work being fun? Isn't that why they call it work?

Dugas says that if a job has two of these three, it's a go, and he dishes up a compelling example: a crummy job with low pay for an outstanding person might fly if the contact will further your career. Yep, I would make coffee for, say, Ray Bradbury, but only if he talked to me and I could learn something useful, quote him, or put his name down as a contact. (I've never been a "fan" or gone gaga over any celebrity or even one BIG NAME WRITER.)

When I think back and apply this rule of thumb to projects I worked on, or more aptly to the ones I turned down, it does seem to fit: writing high-priced political rhetoric for a candidate who called advertising placement fees "kickbacks" and told me I just needed "a good lay" -- negatory. The same type of job for low pay for the first woman to run for the state senate -- priceless!

Read Dugas' whole article, Learning When to Say No.