Q&A with Dawn Silvia

Wednesday, November 28th 2007

Dawn Silvia (courtesy of Beantowners)Dawn Silvia is a freelancing jack-of-all-trades. But the latter part of that hackneyed expression—“master of none”—doesn’t apply to Silvia, whose dexterity with words results from talent and professional versatility. “I’m friendly, easy to work with, and can help with the CYA factor (cover your ass)…” she says, “My work is clean and I know the publication. I also give good holiday gifts. Oh, and I can write. Did I mention that?”

Silvia, at thirty-five, has lots of advice to offer young freelancers. In this email interview, Silvia tells us about her freelancing experience at Boston magazine. She has contributed to ComputerWorld, and Elegant Wedding magazines, as well as Misstropolis and Beantowners online. Her experience at Emerson College, where she earned her M.F.A., reinforced her notion of publishing as a business. Silvia’s background in public relations (she holds a B.S. in PR from Syracuse Newhouse School) led her to manage her own consulting agency, Red Wagon Communications, and later serve as Director of Communications at The Pohly Company, a Boston-based custom publisher. Between Red Wagon and Pohly, Silvia appeared on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, until Martha’s “Goodbye” ended her reality-tv career on week four. Nowadays, Silvia works for law firm Goodwin Procter, while teaching copyediting part-time at Emerson and freelancing for Boston magazine.

Q. Writing doesn’t pay. Do you agree with that?

This is not what I’ve found… I attend the American Society of Journalists and Authors conference every year [where] they have a panel discussion called “The Six-Figure Freelancer.” All panelists have made over $100,000 in the past year. It would not hurt to pick up a copy of the Writer’s Guide every year. It is not likely that Playboy or Esquire will accept a submission from [an]… unpublished author. Build some good clips, even if it means you have to write for free or cheap in other publications to build a portfolio, then work your way up the reputability scale on publications.

The potential to earn a lot of money for relatively little work is high [in freelancing]. I have written 750-word articles that took forever and paid fifty cents a word, but required ridiculous amounts of research… and 3500-word articles that required almost no research and got paid seventy-five cents to a dollar a word. To know that I can… hammer out a good outline and then write the story in about three hours-and make $3500 for it-is a good feeling. I also like the feeling of taking something I know nothing about and then becoming an essential subject matter expert on it in the end, with my name in print to prove it. Who doesn’t love that?

Q. What does it take to be a freelancer?

To be a freelance writer… you have to have an understanding of the publication you’d like to break into. You can’t just write a story and send it to every publication. If you’re trying to break into a particular magazine, look at the table of contents to see their regular features, then collect several issues of the magazine and literally study them. Can you write like them? Does your story idea seem to fit within the realm of what they publish? If so, the next step is to write a compelling pitch letter, essentially selling your idea to an editor. Your pitch letter needs to not only showcase your writing but pique the editor’s interest. If you succeed in this, [the editor] will sign you on to write the story… and then you are on your way. Do not be late. You want to build a relationship with a publication so that eventually you can get away from writing pitch letters [and] one day [the editors] will automatically call you when they need something-because you are such a rock star with delivering the goods. Editors want writers who are low maintenance.

Don’t say no when [the magazine calls on you], if at all possible. I worked for Boston magazine and said yes to every cruddy thing they asked me to write, no matter what the topic was.

Q. How are you assigned articles at Boston magazine?

I write mostly for the marketing department… If we’re doing a summer issue, the marketing department might plan a section that features a story about looking and feeling your best in the summertime. That will enable them to solicit advertisers that want to compete for business in the summer. They set a story topic… and give me a list of advertisers. The plan is to write a story that will be interesting and compelling, using my advertisers as sources for information.

Q. What’s the schedule like there?

I get a call on a Friday… they ask for it back two weeks, or sometimes one week later. First, I look at [the list of advertising contacts] and try to see what each advertiser’s business is… Once I know what angle I am taking with it, I develop a general list of questions… The rest of the time I am trying to set up interviews with advertisers-there can be as few as one or as many as fifteen-and this is a huge pain, because they often… disregard my stated deadline. Once I get my interviews done, I start writing, and usually I get a last minute call [from the marketing department] that they’ve added a few more advertisers to the section. Ugh! I submit my story, it goes to the in-house copyeditor, then to the designer to be laid out. By the end of the week, it goes off to print, and we see it about four weeks later.

Q) How does your PR background relate to your freelancing work?

My previous positions were varied within the communications field and did not specifically prepare me to write for Boston magazine, except for the fact that those positions involved lots of writing. If you can write, you just need to learn how to sell yourself to the right publication. (If you can’t write, well that’s another story.)

Q) What can a freelancer do to keep her head out of the editor’s guillotine?

I once… left off the introductory words “people say” in the quote “…I do the best lips.” The plastic surgeon I quoted thought she sounded like a snob and was very upset. She called the magazine and they had to compensate her since she paid a lot to sound great. Needless to say, I will not be making plans to have her do my lips anytime soon!