Getting Started

Since this is a career blog and I'm at the beginning, I should probably write about how I got started in freelancing.

I've had lots of encouragement along the way, but the person responsible for truly planting the seed of the idea in my mind is a fellow Princeton in Asia fellow who's now a reporter with Hong Kong-based Finance Asia, Ned Russell.

I met Ned when I was traveling through Thailand just after graduating from the University of Michigan and before starting my Princeton in Asia fellowship teaching in Guangzhou. (Anyone interested in interning, doing non-profit work, or teaching in Asia should check PiA out. It's open to graduates from any university.)

Ned was finishing up a business internship in Bangkok and agreed to meet up for dinner as a fellow PiAer was passing through town. When we met for dinner, Ned told me about how he was starting freelancing.

I was intensely curious and filled with questions. I had always pictured writing as a mysterious career that some people had magic access to. I hadn't imagined that you could just get started on your own and do it.

Ned was naturally interested in airplanes, airports, and transportation development, so he had a writing niche from the start. While he was working a full-time office job that he didn't find fulfilling, he was researching airports in the area and pitching ideas to airline magazines--essentially magazines for airline industry people.

Ned was gracious at answering my barrage of questions, telling me that he was working on getting up his number of clips (articles that you've previously published that you provide to publications as proof of your previous work, kind of like a freelancing resume).

My interests lay more in culture and travel, rather than airports, but the fact that someone in the same position as me had put himself in his own freelancing position was enough to plant the seed of the idea in my head. As I settled down in Guangzhou for a year of teaching English, the seed grew.