Category: Editor

I work two days a week as a copywriter at the offices of a retail company, and the rest of the time I’m a freelance writer for various national and regional publications, largely focusing on sexuality, dating, and culture, as well as personal essays. I also edit 2-3 short story anthologies per year, teach erotica writing classes and consult about writing with private clients. I generally work anywhere from 30-50 hours per week, and my S-Corp business has grossed six figures for the last three years. I was laid off from my full-time magazine editor job in 2011 and have worked for myself ever since then. My current business brings in over twice the rate of my previous full-time salary.

The two biggest reasons freelance work is important to me are that full-time media jobs are few and far between, given the increasingly volatile nature of the news business, and that I’m able to bring in a far greater income than I would otherwise. Additionally, I’ve chosen not to drive for the last 15 years, and working from home or within walking distance of my home enables me to avoid a long and costly commute while maximizing my time. Instead of commuting during rush hour, I’m working. I’m more productive as a freelance worker because I’m not beholden to a strict 9 to 5 schedule, and that flexibility has enabled me to write for publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Marie Claire, O, The Oprah Magazine and others during the course of my time as a full-time freelancer.

I’ve spent the past 20 years building up my name and professional profile so that I could contribute to top-tier publications and become known in my field.

I’m the owner of RedHedInk LLC, which provides freelance writing and editing services. Magazines and websites hire me to write and edit based on my more than 20 years of experience, and I commission freelance articles and other freelance content for another company, Superyacht Storytellers LLC, which I co-own.

Why I want to remain an independent contractor: It affords me the freedom (including financial freedom) that I did not have in the corporate world. I left my job as a full-time magazine staff editor in August 2008. Less than one month later, that same magazine eliminated one-third of the editorial staff, including the editor who had taken my place, in a cost-cutting move. That would have been me if I had stayed, and given that the recession was just starting to take hold, decimating newsrooms and magazine offices, it would have been challenging at best to find a full-time replacement job. As a freelancer, I have a rotating roster of clients who actually make me feel more financially secure than I would back in the full-time workforce.

Furthermore, as an independent business owner and co-owner, I rely on independent contractors to provide writing, photography, website design, troubleshooting and graphic design services, among others. My businesses do not require rosters of full-time employees, nor can they afford to bring on full-time employees.

Lawmakers who want to reclassify me need to realize: You are not only about to destroy the careers and personal lives of those of us who choose to be independent contractors, but you also are acting in complete ignorance of common sense. The federal government, via the IRS, has had a longstanding checklist to use in evaluating who’s an employee and who’s an independent contractor. New Jersey should be using it too.

In July 1996, as I was coming home from work on the night shift as an editor at the New Haven Register in Connecticut, a man I’d never met followed me into the vestibule of my apartment building. I didn’t know it at the time, but he’d spent the past 20 years of his life wrestling with the demons of paranoid schizophrenia. On that night, he was off his meds, on probation for hitting a police officer, and hearing voices talking to him about women drowning in pools of blood.

I don’t remember all of what happened next. I know that at some point, he was choking me, because a few days later, I had a string of bruises around my neck like a pearl necklace. And at some point, I was knocked unconscious, because when I came to, I was on the ground. And the kitchen knife he stabbed me with was serrated; that one, I only know because the police told me later.

The diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder came fast, and at first, it was acute and severe. I was fortunate to have good lawyers and a good psychologist, and though I live with the remnants of PTSD today, I’m one of the lucky victims of violent crime who was able to go on and have a life. I did have to leave my dream job as a daily newspaper editor behind — you can’t get your blood pressure down and stop the panic attacks completely if you’re sitting under a police scanner at a metro desk editing obituaries and crime reports — but I found my way to the slower pace of boating magazines, and then to freelance writing and editing primarily for them.

Since 2003, I’ve been able to work for those boating magazines and more as a freelancer from home, where I completely control my environment: all the sights, sounds, smells, people coming and going, pretty much anything that could possibly trigger the PTSD. I rarely have an episode anymore, and I’ve enjoyed major success in my career. I even get to do some freelance newspaper reporting now and again. Today, people can read my byline everywhere from Yachting magazine to The Washington Post. In 2019, I won the Donald Robinson Prize for Investigative Journalism. Not too shabby for somebody who, at one point in her life, couldn’t stop her own hands from shaking.

Some of us, like me, become freelancers by choice. We love our lives. We love our independence. We love the control over our environment. We love the money we can make if we work hard. And we love the fact that, if we have a bad night of dreams about a guy with a knife, we can sleep in a little and make up the time later that day, because we get to set our own hours.

For me, being a freelancer has been a life-changing career choice. I know how to fight for my life, and I won’t let any misguided lawmakers take my career away from me.