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Episode 31—Jen Miller on Freelancing, Tenacity, Running, and Swinging Her "Where's My Money Bat" (It's a Thing)
355 Plays8 years ago
Jen Miller is a freelance writer and wouldn't have it any other way. She talks about that and her most recent book "Running: A Love Story."
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Transcript
Introduction and Twitter Connection
00:00:00
Speaker
You ready to grill me? Yeah, are you ready to be grilled? I have been grilled quite a bit in the last years. You know, whenever I doubt the utility of Twitter, I need look no further than episode 31 of the hashtag CNF podcast. This one with Jen Miller, freelancer to the hilt and author of Running a Love Story.
00:00:27
Speaker
After my episode with P. Croato, episode 29, go download the shit out of it, Jen pinged me on Twitter saying, I like doing podcasts too. I was like, well shit, so do I. So we made it happen. So in any case, please subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends if you think they can glean some wisdom from the episode. And before I forget,
00:00:54
Speaker
Thank you for listening. So without further ado, here is Jen Miller. Thank you.
Jen Miller's Early Writing Journey
00:01:07
Speaker
So what inspired you to pick up the pen, so to speak? Oh, well, let's see. I never thought I would be a professional writer because who does that, right?
00:01:18
Speaker
But when I was a kid, I would steal my mom's typewriter or borrow it without asking her and write stories. I wrote a sequel to the Bridge of Terabithia, believe it or not, when I was in sixth grade. Early fanfiction. Yeah. Yeah. Before they called it that, I would write short little stories. And usually when I cut the lawn of all things, I would make up stories as I would cut the lawn to occupy my brain.
00:01:45
Speaker
And I was, I didn't always did very well in English classes in school. Uh, I opted out of taking AP English in my very competitive high school because I thought I was going to be a marine biologist. Oops. Um, I still write about science. So I get seasick, I get seasick so that, that wasn't going to work out too well. And I didn't want to spend my life in a lab. So I switched to an English major because I really liked literature.
Lessons in Journalism and Academia
00:02:10
Speaker
And I think writing goes hand in hand with really liking literature because you have to write papers. And I joined the student newspaper because I thought that would be something to occupy my time when I went to college. I went to college in Florida and was extremely homesick. And my first story for the student newspaper was about a speaker who had appeared on campus. And the advisor of the newspaper used it as an example of how not to write a news story.
00:02:37
Speaker
He didn't know I was in the room. Wow. Did you just sheepishly raise your hand and say, Professor? He said, as soon as he looked at my face, that he knew I wrote the story. And he pulled me aside after and apologized profusely. And then I became the editor in chief of the newspaper three years later. So I guess I learned something. What did he point out about the story that was so problematic to him?
00:03:04
Speaker
I wrote it like a five paragraph essay or five paragraph paper. I didn't know how to write a news story. We didn't have a journalism program at the University of Tampa at the time. They do now. But and there was one journalism class at the time and nobody on staff ever took it. I think the most we got out of that journalism class was somebody wrote a letter to the editor that she wanted published anonymously. And I'm like, no, that's not how that works. But I learned by doing and making terrible mistakes, just being a bad writer and
00:03:33
Speaker
Fortunately, those archives are not online. They are. They're not easily searchable though. I just thought, well, this is fun, but again, I never thought it was a career because who becomes a professional writer? Seriously, who does that? I wanted to get my PhD in English because I thought maybe teaching would be ideal. I had spent a semester at Oxford University where two very intense literature classes where I would
00:04:02
Speaker
pretty much go write a six to eight page paper a week, and I really enjoyed that. So I thought, well, let's do that for a living. And I applied to 14 PhD programs that got rejected from 13. And the one that accepted me offered no financial aid and no teaching or anything like that. And Rutgers, New Brunswick, which is the main campus, Rutgers College, I think is what the technical name is. Sorry, Rutgers, I know I write for you, but sorry.
00:04:29
Speaker
But said, listen, why don't you go to Rutgers Camden and get your master's degree in English? And then if that works out, then apply again. The Rutgers Camden is near where I grew up.
Breaking into Professional Writing
00:04:38
Speaker
So I moved home and did that in my very first class, which was a poetry class. Our professor was asked by the Philadelphia Inquirer if the students in the class would like to write commentaries because at the time the poet laureate of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka, I think I'm saying that wrong. I apologize. It's been a while.
00:04:57
Speaker
was kicked out of his role as the poet laureate of State of New Jersey, and I said, do you have opinions? And I'm like, I have an opinion. I had won a Society of Professional Journalism Award in college for writing editorials. So yes, I had an opinion. I said, again, never thinking I would do this for a living. And the editor at the time said, they ran it, and they said, you should write for us. We'll pay you. I said, really? I said, yeah, we'll pay you. So that was the start of me being a professional writer. And here we are.
00:05:26
Speaker
So how did you endure a lot of that early bad writing that all writers really have to do? But how did you find sort of the thickness of skin and the momentum to go through all those sort of those novice amateur drafts of anything you were doing to the point of proficiency and now to the point of being a pro? That's a very good question. I think part of it's a personality. I'm incredibly tenacious, which my dad told me when I was 11, I think.
00:05:56
Speaker
and just hammering away at things that I probably shouldn't, uh, including sports. I was a, I was a very short first baseman in softball and I just didn't care. And I said, I was going to play first base anyway, and it worked. I ended up being captain of my high school softball team. I've likened myself sometimes to captain America, not because I have biceps like, um, captain America, but because I think he sometimes does the same thing where he will continue doing what he thinks is right. Even when he knows there's no chance of it working.
00:06:22
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure that's how my writing career took off because when I was a baby freelancer, I was pitching national magazines without clips to back it up. And sometimes people just said yes. And when I was a student journalist, I have to say my advisor at my college newspaper, even though he was the one who said I messed up that first story, said that
00:06:44
Speaker
he thought I had the personality to just keep trying and I was encouraged quite a bit by him and senior editors on the staff to just keep trying and I did and eventually it worked out and once you keep doing that over and over again and overcoming mistakes and overcoming rejection it just becomes part of your life and you know that's sort of running too I mean my first marathon I bombed but I kept trying and and I've run eight now and an ultramarathon so I think that's part of my personality and it's
Feature Writing vs Hard News
00:07:11
Speaker
It's not that it doesn't bother me. It totally bothers me. I hate it sometimes. I've had moments of wanting to kick the wall when something didn't work out or there was a whole book deal before this book came out that went south that just sent me into somewhat of a flying rage. But I understand that it's part of the territory and that if you don't try, what's the worst they can say? No. So yeah, they can tell me no, that's fine. Actually, I think the worst they could say is nothing.
00:07:39
Speaker
but I'm just used to it. It's worked out so far, so even in those times when something doesn't work out or I get a no or I get that deafening silence, I have enough experience with it to know that it'll turn around eventually. Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely. I kind of liken the rejection process to a game of tennis where you're the one person on the one side of the net and then there's like,
00:08:05
Speaker
ten people on the other side and you hit one at one they hit it back and that's a no and they get in line again and then the next guy comes up and you just gotta whack that ball right back and eventually it's one of those things where you just gotta you almost gotta see that rejection as an incoming shot that you just need to rebound right back at them and then eventually if you do that enough
00:08:27
Speaker
you're gonna land you're gonna land some stories you can't just like pitch to say runners world and then give up when they say no it's like you got to keep going and keep going and keep going and I think yeah it took me years to break into runners world yeah and and think I think a lot of my career has been based on me being told no I mean if I had gotten into one of those PhD programs I wouldn't be here now
00:08:49
Speaker
I did an internship in college at a news service in Washington, D.C. that was horrible. I hated it. And it taught me that I didn't want to do news. I didn't want to do hard news. And at first, I thought it was a waste of time, but boy, what a valuable lesson to sort of strike that from what you want to do. Now, I've written hard news. I just don't pursue it because I don't think I'm good at it or that it's, you know, that adrenaline junkie that my news friends have. I'm just not that person. But, you know, doing the wrong things has steered me to the right path.
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah, I'm the same exact way, like temperamentally. I can do features all day long, but for hard news, forget about it. Just the idea of having to, all right, there's a fire and there's this family crying outside their house, and then you have to go to that house and talk to these people while they're in this extremely fragile state. To me, I just...
00:09:45
Speaker
I can do that maybe three days after the fact and do something a bit longer, but I can't do the stuff in the moment. I applaud the people who can, but it just, it does not suit me. It gives me like a wave of panic over my body. I just can't do it. Yeah. And you know, I, I've never worked full time in a newspaper and I'm sure if I did, I would have had to do that. But I used to feel bad that, you know, I write these kinds of stories. Should I be writing those kinds of stories? And as a friend who teaches journalism said,
00:10:11
Speaker
Not everyone can write features. You should do what you want to do and keep on keeping on. Yeah, I've kind of come to that realization too that maybe some of the real hard news people, maybe they look at people who do features and be like, man, I just can't do that. No, they don't.
00:10:30
Speaker
I'm just kidding. News friends, please don't hate me. So what has to be in place for you to pursue a story or what it needs to excite you in life? Money, no. Money, money. That's an interesting question because I write often for a website called CIO.com, which is for chief information officers.
00:10:54
Speaker
I was recruited to write for that site by a former editor there who was a runner and read all my running stuff. And he kept saying, you got to write for me. I'm like, I know nothing about any of this stuff. And we finally found a story that I pitched. I'm like, well, I think this would be interesting to chief information officers. It was about technology used in the city of Camden to fight crime. And I wrote that story and they said, okay, well, what about this? Are you interested in this? And I often write about things that seem like
00:11:21
Speaker
They don't interest me at all, but I find the world of data hacking and healthcare apps and all that stuff fascinating. And what fascinates me about it is I get to learn stuff by writing it, if that makes sense. I know a lot more about things I never would have known. And that's really the case for almost everything that I write. When I started writing about running in 2010 for the New York Times, it was because I had an injury that I didn't know enough about. And I thought, well,
00:11:49
Speaker
Let me write about it and then I'll get paid to explore it. It also had the name of dead butt syndrome, which when the doctor told me that I had that, I'm like, well, that's a story. And I, I sold it immediately. And I've been writing for that section of the times for six years now. So, um, I just, there's a lot of things I write about because I want to know more and that's pretty much it. And then the business end of freelancing, you know, paychecks and contracts and all that sort of stuff is important too. Um, but I'm just curious all the time.
00:12:18
Speaker
You know, people said, oh, you became a running writer because you knew so much about writing, running. And I said, no, I didn't know anything. And that's why I think I was the best person to ask a lot of those inquisitive questions. Yeah, there's the one school of thought that's like, all right, write what you know. But I'm kind of like the opposite. Like, why not write what you don't know? That way you go in as a blank sheet of paper and you go in and you can free willing ask
00:12:45
Speaker
the stupid questions, because you don't know. And frankly, if you're talking to these experts, they're more than happy most of the time to inform you and educate you on what they do. It's kind of like this mutual give and take. And then you get to convey that to a reader. So I think it's like what you're doing exactly is exactly right. Like write what you don't know in that way and let your curiosity drive your reporting.
The Business of Freelancing
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah. I wrote a story a couple of years ago called The Lion Sleeps Tonight for a publication called the magazine, which is no longer around.
00:13:15
Speaker
about a safari park that Warner Brothers Studios built in northern New Jersey. I had no idea what it was all about. I read it about it in another friend's book and I pitched it pretty much saying, I need to know more about this. I need to know everything about this. And my editor's like, okay. And then I wrote the story. So my curiosity and enthusiasm for finding out more I think was what made that story work so well.
00:13:40
Speaker
So how has your strategy or your approach to pitching changed over the years? I imagine early on, it has to be a lot more in depth in terms of firing. And maybe with some of the people you're not familiar with, you still have to approach it that way. But I suspect now that you've forged a lot of relationships, that pitches are a lot more like, you could almost tweet at an editor, hey, here's an idea for a story. I have done that. So how has that changed for you over the years?
00:14:10
Speaker
Well, when I was new and didn't have the clips to really back up what I was saying, or when I started, not everything was online and you had to mail clips. Um, I would just write very long queries and I would do more. I mean, I still do research before pitching now, but sometimes I would just pretty much write the story, which I don't really recommend. Um, I, I, that was probably a mistake, but yeah, I just wrote longer queries and could show that and she wanted to show editors. I know what I'm doing. Here's why.
00:14:40
Speaker
Now, I've been freelancing full-time for almost 12 years. Yes, you're right. I don't have to do a lot of that heavy lifting, especially with publications that I've written for and editors that I've worked with. I said that I've written for this section of the New York Times for six years. I don't have to do the super long queries anymore. I'm a known entity. I've been in their offices. I've had coffee and lunch with them and written how many stories? I don't know. With people who are new to me, yes, I still fall back into the longer queries, although now sometimes
00:15:10
Speaker
I will tend to introduce myself at the start of the query to show them, hey, I do this. This is what I do. I'm not, you know, some random person off the street. I mean, I technically am, but I have experience doing this and here's my pitch. So I usually flip it now since I've been in the business for so long and I have a backload of clips like that are good. I hope I just introduce with I am the qualified person and then here's my idea. And sometimes,
00:15:38
Speaker
They'll reply saying they don't want that idea. However, do you want to write this story or what other ideas do you have? Because it's just, you know, there's a level of professionalism that I hope that I exude. I hope. So freelancing like clearly isn't for everyone and I wonder what about it resonates with you as a freelance journalist?
00:16:02
Speaker
Well, I taught a class about this at Temple University a couple years ago, and it was a master class of mostly older students. And I told them at the beginning of the class, this isn't for everybody, and please don't feel bad if it's not for you. Because I'm very adamant that freelancing is the perfect career for some people. And their response to that was, well, I couldn't do it. Is there something wrong with me? I'm like, no, no, no, there's nothing wrong.
00:16:25
Speaker
You have to, it's a business. It's as much as it is about writing. It's much more about a business. I spend 80% of my time doing the business end of this. And you have to be able to run a business. And that's not for everybody. You have to constantly be pitching and hustling and evaluating contracts, which a lot of people hate. I just finished watching the Gilmore Girls revival and kept screaming at my iPad about how terrible freelancer Rory was. Because she's just wandering around with this New Yorker clip.
00:16:55
Speaker
You know, my first question was, did you sign the master services agreement at Conde Nast that basically gave away all your rights for all eternity to that company? And people were like, what? And like, that's, that's the freelancing part, you know, evaluating. I had a publication who wanted to publish one of my essays for $350, which at that point, the essay was already written. It's a high profile website. And I thought,
00:17:15
Speaker
Well, okay, that's fine. The story is already written, but I wouldn't agree to it until I saw the contract and I got the contract and they owned all copyright intellectual property for that piece for everything that ever came from it. You have to be able to say, no, and not everybody is comfortable with that. I am comfortable with it. I ended up telling the site that couldn't run my story because let's say something
00:17:39
Speaker
You know, that that story went viral and then somebody wanted to make a movie out of it. Well, I get exactly zero dollars from that. So it's it's part of it is, you know, standing up for yourself and asking for contract changes and going after late checks and turning down low fees. And part of it is your long game. You know, would it have been nice to have three hundred fifty dollars in on, you know, in January? Sure. Would it be better to sell that essay to somebody who's going to respect your rights as a writer? Yes.
Freelancing Challenges and Strategies
00:18:06
Speaker
Um, you know, and that's not the most popular, um, take I, my agent, when I told her that, um, that site
00:18:15
Speaker
wouldn't negotiate contracts. Her response was, I know so many agent who write writers who write for them. I said, I bet half of them didn't even read the contract. You have to be on top of all this stuff. And it's it's a lot of not writing and not everybody's comfortable with that. And that's totally, that's totally fine. I mean, you know, would I like a steady paycheck and to not have to pay self employment taxes? Sure. Do I like not commuting and working in my sweatpants? Yeah, I like that a lot more. So it's it's a trade off. And, you know, I probably make more money if I was on staff somewhere. But
00:18:45
Speaker
how often do staffers get laid off? In journalism in the last 15 years, this is probably the most steady job I could have had. So what's the name of that contract that you were specifically about the rights to reprint and so forth that you requested from that website? They wanted to work for hire. And I have only signed work for hires in instances where I'm writing for
00:19:14
Speaker
Alumni magazines because it's not stuff that or a ghost writing for something now they they pay me well for that But it can come under a couple different names but work for hire typically is We're gonna pay you a fee and then we own the content and there's usually a nasty thing called identification clause in there that if they get sued over what you wrote you have to pay all the legal bills for the publication and
00:19:40
Speaker
Yeah. And the way that this contract was also written was they had the right to change anything and everything in the piece without telling you. So how can they change something? And then if you get sued, they don't have any legal responsibility. You know, I've written for a lot of publications that have been more than happy to change your contract or there's another contract just sort of sitting there that you have to ask for. You have to be smart enough to ask for. Um, but I just, I can't sign stuff like that. It's, it's too risky. And, um,
00:20:10
Speaker
I just can't. Yeah. What's that other one you had to ask for? The identification clause. Okay. All right. I thought that was just something like sort of embedded in the contract. It is. It is. Okay. Yeah. It typically is. Okay. Those are the things I zoom in on. Got you. What are the rights that I'm selling and if there's an identification clause? There was one contract that I turned down because
00:20:35
Speaker
It was all right. They had an identification clause and they said you could not disparage anybody involved with the magazine or their relatives for the rest of your life.
00:20:44
Speaker
Gee, zoo, no. Yeah. Well, so, all right. So we've established that 80% of the time is more business stuff. And you already laid out a lot of really good stuff about contracts, stuff that I, shoot, I don't even know. So what are some of the other administrative tasks that you have to do, but also take a lot of time away from writing and reporting, which is what a lot of people go into freelance journalism thinking that, well, that's all it is.
00:21:14
Speaker
Um, pitching because that's, that's writing, but that's also pitching also involves researching the publication, finding out the appropriate editor. And sometimes that's as basic as looking at the masthead and knowing the email formula for the publication. And sometimes that's networking with other writers. So pitching can also be going to writing conferences in New York city or San Francisco. It wasn't the San Francisco is Berkeley a couple of years ago.
00:21:39
Speaker
Um, and just staying in touch with other writers and talking to other writers about their experiences at publication. So, you know, who's good and who to avoid. Invoicing is important. And I always invoice, always invoice with the story so that they got the story. I know they got the invoice and they can't say that they lost it. And a big part of this job is chasing money. I just had two publications, one of them I worked for for a long time.
00:22:03
Speaker
They're knowing that the checks relate and saying, hey, where's my money? And in both cases, somebody didn't process the invoice. If I never said anything, I never would have gotten paid. And that's a huge part of this. And it's frustrating. And I have no idea how it can get better. I have some friends who are photographers for publications who have an easier time of it. But I found that publications tend to treat photographers better than they do writers.
00:22:26
Speaker
So I just try to be my best advocate and noisy and I don't let publications slide on that sort of thing. And if they do, then I fire them. So yeah, it's a it's you know, it's a business. It's just like my family, my father works in construction and like big buildings like the Philly Stadium and and big hospitals and things like that. And I deal with the same stuff that they do, but on obviously much, much, much smaller scale.
00:22:54
Speaker
You know they they will fire clients who don't pay them on time or treat them poorly or treat their employees poorly I just I don't have time for that yeah, and you know I don't I I was writing for a publication for a long time when a new editor came in and just started treating me like crap and I quit and The owner of the publication was upset. I said I can't work for that guy I'll come back when he retires and I'm still waiting but you know that it just released a lot of stress in my life not to have that
00:23:23
Speaker
that client, and it released time for me to work on other stuff, that too. Yeah, sometimes you find that maybe cutting ties with that, the stress of not having to deal with people of that nature, even though you might take a little hit and pay, and the early onset, it just gives you such a better peace of mind, and then your work just tends to get better going from there. Yeah, and then I started pitching magazines that were more high-profile, paid better than that magazine, and it worked out.
00:23:52
Speaker
Yeah, so what would you say is maybe like a number one tool, a freelancer needs above all others?
00:24:01
Speaker
Stick to it in this? Is that even a word? Or do you mean like a physical tool? I think that, no, no, you're exactly right. It's something a little more like that, like the tenacity you were talking about earlier. Yeah, I mean, once or twice a year, I want to quit this and get an office job. It just, it always happens. It's usually when I'm fighting for money or nobody's paid me for three weeks. I just, you just gotta, sounds really cheesy, but
00:24:29
Speaker
If you've been doing this for a long time, you gotta trust the process. And Sixers fans will get that. I just know, I mean, belief in yourself and that you're doing the right thing. I mean, when I turned down that publication for $350, they almost tried to make me feel bad. And I knew I was right. And I was like, well, you know, nuts to you. I didn't say that, but just knowing that you're right and not letting people push you around,
00:24:56
Speaker
Is a big part of this and I and I keep telling myself in times when I really? Just get really frustrated with this job because it is incredibly frustrating and it's been a long year with the book coming out in a book tour Just sometimes it's taking a deep breath and walking in the woods for a while and reminding myself Why I do this and then I'm okay, and then I swing my where's my money back and get paid so that works, too
00:25:17
Speaker
So what are those conversations like that you have with yourself that you need to remind yourself that this is why you do it and it brings you back from the ledge of jumping off into the nine to five? Well, sometimes I go back and look at previous times when it's been hard and remind myself what happened after. So in 2013, I was approached by a very large publisher to write a book for her. It was her idea.
00:25:44
Speaker
And they promised big contract, big book, hardcover, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And after getting an agent and writing the proposal and then revising the proposal because this editor wanted it to be revised, but everyone's saying, oh, it's fine. It's fine. You're going to get this contract slam dunk. You're going to get a big book, blah, blah, blah. This editor decided her idea wasn't a good idea. The book never happened. And then my agent at the time said she sent it around to some other publications and then quit being an agent.
00:26:14
Speaker
and didn't tell me. I professionally have never been so enraged in my entire life. Because it was a colossal waste of time. I felt like I was disrespected on multiple fronts. I was sent on a wild goose chase for somebody who just brushed it off. And the agent at the time, this is not my current agent, said I should have felt honored that she even asked. I got zero dollars from the whole thing. I mean, just like,
00:26:43
Speaker
I've written about this before, but lying in the bottom of the tub when it turned out water on as hot as it possibly could be, and lying there sobbing until it was cold, just decimated. And you know what happened after that? I wrote Running a Love Story, and here we are.
Perseverance Through Setbacks
00:27:00
Speaker
So it's like when I'm in tough spots in races, I think about the worst workouts I had training for that race, and knowing that if I could get through that, I could get through this, and it just reminds me to keep pushing and keep moving forward.
00:27:12
Speaker
Yeah, a friend of mine who is or was in ad sales, he was always saying that no is one step closer to a yes. So it's kind of like that same thing. All right, this person totally screwed you. Well, both of them did. But that put you on a path that led you to writing your memoir. So it's kind of like, yeah, when you look back on it, be like, all right.
00:27:40
Speaker
He didn't see those dominoes were necessarily in line at the time, but it's like that that missed opportunity or lost opportunity like turned into something that ended up being a very positive thing for you. Yeah. And somebody said, you should thank that editor agent. And I said, no, no, no. And I actually, after that all happened, I said I would never write another book again.
00:28:03
Speaker
I actually thought I had been like, I would be blacklisted from the industry just because that happened. And I was so down about myself and I ended up talking to an agent who does not represent my kind of work at all. She follows me on Twitter and I said, can I just ask you a question? Is my career dead? And she's like, no, what are you kidding me? So that was very kind of her to answer my questions. And when I went out to get a new agent, I explained what happened and nobody seemed to have a problem with it. Actually, when I went out to get an agent, I had three offers. So that made me feel much better.
00:28:33
Speaker
And then obviously here we are today with the book has been out since March. So there you go. Hooray. Not to you other people who tried to bring me down. No, I'm just kidding.
Daily Routine and Productivity
00:28:45
Speaker
So how do you structure your time? Oof. Well, since I slept in today, it's probably not a good day to ask me that. Um, I'm not that freelancer who works in her pajamas and sleeps until noon. Um, sleeping in today was eight. So,
00:29:01
Speaker
Honestly, it depends on my running schedule. When I'm training in the winter, I tend to train for longer races in the winter. And I say that having just run two fall marathons. So I usually will get up, walk the dog, eat breakfast, make a pot of coffee, and then work until about 10 o'clock. I write best in the morning. So I like to get up and get those golden hours in. And then I'll go run, have lunch, take a shower sometimes.
00:29:31
Speaker
I live alone and work at home, so sometimes I don't get a shower until later. And then in the afternoon, I tend to do my administrative stuff, which also includes interviewing. I like interviewing people at two o'clock in the afternoon. We're talking at three o'clock, so that's why we're chatting now, not in the morning. And then I tend to get nudged in the legs by my dog at four o'clock and then walk her. And we'll sometimes answer emails or do West Coast interviews after four o'clock.
00:29:58
Speaker
And then I read and make dinner and read some more and go to bed. But when in the summer, when it's too hot to run before lunch, I will be that person who's out running at 5.30 in the morning. And then I just sort of, it still allows me to get those morning writing hours, but just flips it around a little bit. And I tend to go to bed a little bit earlier in the summer.
00:30:18
Speaker
So I was listening to Tim Ferriss and I believe it was Josh Waitskin on Ferriss' podcast. And they talk about finishing the day strong. That way you have a very good sense of momentum going into the next day. And I wondered if, how do you finish your days so that you have essentially a lit fuse going into the next morning? I finish my day by writing my to-do list for the next day.
00:30:48
Speaker
Um, and I, and I like to try to cross as many things like at the end of the day, after I walked the dog, I'll look at my to-do list and think, is there some annoying thing on here? That's going to annoy you tomorrow. Just do it now. And that's how I tend to, to not avoid tasks. I don't want to do like rewrites. Oh, um, I also listened to dub set for run the jewels while I do rewrites for some reason that helps. Um, but knowing what I'm doing the next day.
00:31:17
Speaker
Um, helps a lot. I like crossing things off lists. I'm a big fan of that. But, um, I also like to set, have activities that end the workday so that I'm not working late unless, you know, there's something I have to work late on sitting down to read before dinner. And then I like to cook. So those two things, because my office is in my house, so work is always here.
00:31:38
Speaker
segmenting the day that way and having a hard stop to the end of the day is helpful too. So how did you start to level up and graduate to higher degrees of writing visibility and what did that feel like? As you maybe took that step from local and regional to some of the more national stuff you've written for, how did you make that leap? I started with some advice from other freelancers who've been in the business for much, much longer than me.
00:32:07
Speaker
started at the end of every year reviewing my clients and then firing too, which might sound mean, but reevaluating and seeing who was a low performer or who I didn't really like writing for anymore or who was sort of eating up too much of my time for how little they paid. In some cases, I would say, hey, I enjoy writing for you. However, the world being what it is, I got to increase my income.
00:32:37
Speaker
And sometimes they would give me a raise and sometimes they wouldn't and we'd part on good terms. But I just, you know, before the running book, I actually wrote two books about the Jersey Shore that were travel guides and they did okay. And I wrote a lot about the shore for a lot of publications, including, you know, the New York Times and inflight magazines and all sorts of places. And the publisher said, do you want to write a third one? And I ended up saying, no, when it gets too easy,
00:33:07
Speaker
I need to challenge myself and make it harder again. So I turned down what would have been an easy paycheck to do another one of those books so that the rights, they changed the rights agreement, which was part of the reason I said no. And I said, you know what? I'm going to take a risk and write the big book. And I had no idea what that would be. And it ended up being running a love story.
Balancing Projects and Growth
00:33:25
Speaker
It's just keep challenging and pushing myself. You know, I have an idea of what I want to, where I want to be in 10 years, and I'm not going to do that by doing the same thing over and over again.
00:33:34
Speaker
I don't know if that makes any sense. Yeah, absolutely. And how do you balance, maybe you don't necessarily have to do this anymore, maybe you had to do this earlier in your career, but so how do you balance some of the higher churn slash lower pay stuff with some of maybe the higher pay stuff that takes a lot more reporting and writing time, if that makes any sense? When I was in graduate school, it was a master's in English literature with a focus in writing. They have an MFA now.
00:34:03
Speaker
But at the time I took the focus in writing because I really liked writing. I thought it was pretty cool. And I heard a talk by a freelancer, Lise Funderberg, who's fantastic, still is, I follow her on Twitter and read her stuff. And she used to talk about work that was waitressing. It was the things that paid the bills to let you do the things that you really wanted to do that might not pay as well. And long-form journalism is wonderful and I love doing it, but when you work it out to a per hour rate, it usually doesn't pay well.
00:34:33
Speaker
Yeah. Excuse me. A cup of coffee an hour. Yeah. So I only do one or two of those a year. And this year I did end up doing two of them. I kept thinking that I didn't do any because I was I was working on the book tour and book promotion. You know, I wrote two pieces for ESPNW. One was about how women have changed running.
00:34:58
Speaker
because more women run down in the U.S. than men, and the other was a profile of Bobby Gibb, who was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon 50 years ago. And the piece with Bobby Gibb involved me taking a train to Boston and back in one day. And from Philadelphia, that is a long day. But I really wanted to spend time with this person. So part of it is, again, the enthusiasm of, I want to write this story because I believe in it, and it's not gonna work out. BSPNW paid me very well.
00:35:28
Speaker
But in a per hour rate, I would have made more money writing for CIO.com, three articles for them. But part of it is just things that interest me and I want to spend more time in because I think they make me a better writer and a better person. That's the one great thing about this job is I think I've become a better person because of it. And sometimes that means writing those long form stories.
00:35:48
Speaker
that the pay isn't as great when you work it out per hour, but I love that story, and I think a lot of other people paid attention to it, too. And now when I'm pitching other stories, that's one of the clips that I share. In what ways has this type of reporting and writing made you a better person over the years? Oh, geez. I've talked to so many people from so many different walks of life and been exposed to so many things.
00:36:17
Speaker
I'm a voracious reader. I think I'm on track to read 60 or 65 books this year. And I think that makes me a better citizen of the world, I guess. I don't know. I just did a story where I interviewed the head of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council who talked about how books, she grew up in a town with 6,000 people and books were the way that she saw the world differently outside of her town.
00:36:43
Speaker
And in reporting, it's the same way. I've come into contact with people and ideas and things that I never would have in any other career in my life. And I think it's just, I don't know. I can't imagine not constantly learning. And I think, you know, there's been a lot of talk after this election about not understanding other people. And I think if we all talked more, it would be better even if talking more made you realize how people think and how terrible it is and all the work that we need to do.
00:37:12
Speaker
sorry listeners if you don't like me when I say that, but it's true. You know, I've talked to people who believe in things that I'm opposed to in every fiber of my being, but you know, I feel, I think it's better that I talk to them than not. So what advice would you give to your, let's say your 30 year old self?
Writing a Memoir: Personal Challenges and Societal Pressures
00:37:33
Speaker
Me six years ago. Yeah. Oh gosh. I was in a bad relationship.
00:37:41
Speaker
which you can read about my book, please buy my book. Hashtag please buy my book. No, I'm kidding. I doubted freelancing at the time and I doubted myself in a lot of different ways, not just in my writing. And I would tell her to just keep going and keep pushing and you'll break through. Just keep trying. Just keep gashing your head against the wall, Jen. You'll break through it eventually and save more money.
00:38:05
Speaker
That's the other thing I would tell her. Yeah, live below your means. Yeah. So segwaying into your book, because a lot of those themes of keep going and tenacity play a big part in your development as a runner and a writer and as a person. I wonder, first, when people write memoir, and I've spoken to a lot of people who have written them, my first question is always, why?
00:38:33
Speaker
Oh, God, me too. And I love memoir, and it's not a judgy question, but there is a certain, you have to wonder, all right, why is my story worth telling? Well, and you need to be able to answer that when you start pitching agents and publishers, because everybody, I've talked to so many people, like, oh, when I retire, I'm going to write my memoir. I'm like, well, when I retire, I'm going to be a brain surgeon. Like, no.
00:39:00
Speaker
wrote personal essays in college and some of them were terrible. And I kept going through my writing career and I kept sometimes writing about myself and I thought, why am I special? And sometimes it's the reaction of your editors and your readers that tell you this is valuable. I wrote some essays for the New York Times and they're sort of testing
00:39:24
Speaker
Not testing, I guess testing to see if anybody cared. The first barrier was if my editor thought it was good enough to write about myself, then I wrote about myself. After the whole debacle with the book that never happened happened, I got a writing partner and every two weeks we would swap an essay. Just an exercise in getting ourselves to both write. She was at a more beginner stage than I was. And she just read my ideas and I kept writing about running. And I thought, well,
00:39:55
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe there's more here. Maybe somebody will care about my experiences in this and what's happened to me in my life. And I, in January 2014, locked myself in a hotel room facing the ocean, very cold, very empty hotel, and wrote the terrible first draft of what became running a love story. I mean, terrible to the point that, you know, I had a relationship with an alcoholic.
00:40:19
Speaker
And that chapter in the first draft says, this chapter goes here and I skipped it and I kept going. I mean, it was that bad. It was awful. I have it. It's I'm staring at the file cabinet where it's in. Um, and I, you know, I invested two or three days in just seeing how that went. And then, um, I thought, well, okay.
00:40:42
Speaker
And then I pulled from that writing 800 words or ended up writing an 800 word essay about running as therapy. And I sold that to New York Times and the response to that was so huge just from the emails and the tweets and the people I knew who read it, who saw me in person and told me things about them that I never knew. I had so many friends who were divorced and I never knew it because they were older and never talked about it and how running was the same thing to them than it was to me and I thought,
00:41:14
Speaker
Okay. Uh, I guess I should try this, but I kept telling myself that if it wasn't a good enough idea, if nobody would care, it would never get published. Like there's so many hurdles you have to get over to publish a memoir to the point that when I started meeting with agents, I thought that I had to have the whole book written. Um, because that's what I was told when I was 23 and I tried to sell a memoir and thank God I didn't get published.
00:41:41
Speaker
I'm a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. And at their April or May conference in New York, you can have what's almost like speed dating, where you list how many editors you want to meet with for like eight minutes. And that year in 2014, I met with agents. I met with, I think, 12 agents in one day. And I thought, well, I have a two-page pitch for running a love story, which is what I called it then. And I can't believe it actually ended up on the cover. I'm going to test the waters and see if there's any interest.
00:42:11
Speaker
I had planned to go back and write the whole book and then submit the book in full in September to agents. And the response was, no, no, no, no, pitch it now. We'll talk now. I had a 12, I think six S to see a sample and I got three offers of representation. So at that point I thought, okay, I guess people are going to care. And, and then really I let the market dictate it. Cause if I went through that whole exercise and nobody gave a crap, then that would have been it. I would have said, all right, I hear you.
00:42:39
Speaker
Because at the end of the day it is business So and then I wrote the proposal I finished the proposal with my agent and she sent it out for you know to have editors Consider it and it didn't sell it almost sold it was so close to selling in so many instances that I then locked myself in a hotel room again and Wrote the chapter about my relationship with an alcoholic and that's what sold the book and that's what the New York Times excerpted so
00:43:07
Speaker
You know, tested the market and the market responded and said, yeah, we'll publish this now. Response to the book has been pretty positive, but there are a couple people who didn't like it. One of the reviews, it was a blogger somewhere. Sorry, bloggers, I used to blog. I shouldn't say that, I shouldn't say that, sorry. She didn't like what happened. And I said, I didn't like what happened either.
00:43:32
Speaker
But I was so mad about that, because it's like a reading comprehension thing. But I went back and read the review again, and part of it was, well, why does Jen Miller get to write her running story? And I'm like, because I asked. I don't think a lot of people realize how much work gets into even the stage of saying, I want to write this book. Proposals are long and painful, and they're rarely what the final book looks like. And it's that stick-to-it-iveness again.
00:44:02
Speaker
Once I got the responses to that New York Times essay, I believed that it could be something and here we are. When I was reading it, I was struck by, it seemed to me, a book really about control. Control in a lot of ways. Discipline for the running, but control of
00:44:26
Speaker
of you over your body or you in your career or some of these sort of sour relationships and how they were trying to control you. So I got this undercurrent of that throughout the whole book and I wonder maybe how cognizant were you of that theme throughout the writing of it or is that just something that just kind of bubbled up on its own without any real coaching from you. It just kind of came up through the writing of it.
00:44:53
Speaker
Well, I saw a lot of themes after I wrote it. And I went to therapy after I wrote it because I think for a long time in my life, I just let things happen to me and that didn't work out so well. So then I flipped it and my mom read the book in three hours.
00:45:14
Speaker
She sort of knew what was in there, but didn't really. And she said, this is a feminist book. And I'm like, no, it's not. She's like, Jennifer. And I'm like, OK. Because I grew up in a fairly progressive, but still somewhat old-fashioned, Italian Catholic family, where women are supposed to do what other people tell them to, somewhat. Not the way my mom grew up. My parents sent me to college. But still, I just
00:45:44
Speaker
I grew up with this idea that you're supposed to get married and have kids, and if you have a career, well, that's nice. But in trying to do that, I called it the treadmill of tradition. It didn't work out for me. And when I stepped off the treadmills, when things really started to happen in a positive way, and I don't think this book would have happened if I hadn't done that, I guess. I also drank a lot. That's the other thing that I realized after reading the book, so then I stopped doing that so much. So that came out of it too.
00:46:13
Speaker
That was that was a good thing. Yeah, I had a yeah highlighted a handful of passages in the basically with the you just alluded to one of them that I have here like no one in my family had drawn outside the lines They all got married had kids sure college a job and career were important
00:46:30
Speaker
but in the early 20s only. My late 20s were supposed to be dedicated to motherhood and family. Already in my 30s, I was behind. My sister had quit her job as soon as she had her first son. The Miller kids were expected to march along in the same direction and I had thrown us out of step. What was the challenge in approaching that head on? You had a whole wave of tradition, treadmill of tradition in your face and you were still able to dive under it and come out
00:47:00
Speaker
Come out the the way you are Well, it's I gotta say it's still challenging a little bit because I just you know Thanksgiving just passed and and somebody made a joke where the punchline was how ridiculous would it be that Jen ever got married? It's still not an easy path to walk especially because I'm 36 now and
00:47:25
Speaker
Oh, you're running out of time. I'm like, for what? It's a hard question. I still get tripped up on it. Writing the book helped me solidify my feelings that I was correct in stepping off the treadmill of tradition. And some people who tell me I should get married and have kids have been divorced twice too. But I think that section that you read,
00:47:52
Speaker
was part of the hardest part about talking to my family about this book. My mom read it and cheered. Some other people in my family read it and thought I was knocking them and that's not the case. I think part of the point of the book and I say I'm wearing my shirt that says feminist AF and I think a lot of people know what AF means while I'm talking to you.
00:48:12
Speaker
is understanding that there are choices and there are different paths. I just happen to pick one that's a little bit different than what the norm is. I don't know if I'm making any sense. Oh, yeah, definitely. My wife is kind of the same way. She's got her own treadmill of tradition that she's bucked. We don't want children and that. And she has to deal with that all the time. And finally, people are relenting and sort of have
00:48:41
Speaker
I have stopped questioning her and all that, but it's been a decade of having to tell people that. It wears her down. It's annoying after a while. I had to stop letting it annoy me. When people say stuff like that, I'm like, is my life so terrible? Seriously, if I had gotten married, I'd be divorced by now. I just live my life.
00:49:11
Speaker
as it is, and I think that's the best example, that there are other paths out there. And once I gave up the pressure, or stopped putting the pressure on myself to be what other people thought I was supposed to be, life got a lot better. And I think writing the book really helped me say, yeah, you're right, Jen. Good job. Good job, Jen. And my dog just walked in and wants to say hello to everybody. Very nice to see the same Jack Russell from the book. Yeah, she turned 15 yesterday. She still kick it. Yeah.
00:49:39
Speaker
I'm sitting in her chair, that's why she's... What are you doing? That's great. I have a Jack Russell mix and he's almost 15. Wow. I thought she was a mix and then we did the DNA test on her and turns out she's purebred, so good job, Emily. Nice. So what surprised you most in the writing of the book? Oh, dear.
00:50:05
Speaker
I knew it would be a long process because I tend to write lots of drafts. I wrote probably a dozen drafts of each chapter. I show people when they say, oh, you know, they said, you wrote the book so quickly. I said, no, you know, there's a lot of writing that went into it even before I got an agent. And I showed that I saved all the drafts and sort of show them the pile. It was how hard it was to. It's how hard things were when it was done.
00:50:29
Speaker
because as I said, I went back into therapy because I ended up confronting head on all these things that I knew had happened to me or things I had been through, but when you write about it and then it's in your face and then other people are starting to read it and treat it like a book and edit it in questions. It was hard to confront it in the writing, but then when it was over, it was like, oh, okay.
00:50:53
Speaker
And then other people are going to read it. So that was tough. I ended up when I finished writing the book, I hopped into my Jeep and drove the Blue Ridge Parkway, you know, a long road trip because it just there was a lot of stuff there. And I'm I'm sort of flubbing this one. So I didn't I didn't expect to have that. I expected the writing of it to be hard. I didn't expect the after of it to be hard.
00:51:14
Speaker
And I'm glad that I, people say, are you glad that you wrote it and got all this stuff out and told people about the stuff that happens in your life? I said, yes, absolutely. Because it sort of helped me finally put the nail in the coffin on saying that happened. Okay, moving on and therapy help with that too. So I didn't expect that outcome. I also didn't expect to have nightmares before the book was coming out. I did. I had a, actually before the New York times, excerpt came out was when I had the most nightmares because people sort of knew I was writing a book about running. They're like, Oh, be fun. Jen's funny stories.
00:51:44
Speaker
And there are funny stories in the book, but there's a lot of seriousness too. And there was a point where I had a dream that runners, all dressed in neon, came into my bedroom and were stabbing me. And I'm a vivid dreamer. And I snapped, my head snapped back and hit the headboard on my bed and I gave myself a concussion. Holy shit, wow.
00:52:06
Speaker
Yeah, and I tell that story because it happened as it was training for a marathon. I ran the New Jersey Marathon again, which is the main race in the book. I ran it in 2016. Writing is physical. It's mental and it's physical and it's draining on both levels. I'm glad I did it, but my agent and I have been talking about the next book and I'm like, can the next one not be about me?
Running and Writing Synergy
00:52:33
Speaker
She said, well, it's always going to be somewhat about you. So I've already told that story. So that well is dry. Yeah. Yeah. How did running help and hinder you throughout the whole process of of the maybe the story of the book? You know, I guess at some point it's it's also it's it's medicine, but also poison a lot of the time.
00:52:55
Speaker
I did not train for a marathon while writing the book, because I do like myself. It would take up way too much time. I write better when I'm training hard, but there's a certain level where that doesn't work. So I think the longest distance I ran while I was running the book was a 10 mile or a half marathon or something like that. With anything, it's a balance. I find when I'm running the most and writing the most, other things suffer.
00:53:23
Speaker
usually it's my friendships and my relationships suffer and I just have to be careful of not like sheltering myself in my house where all I do is run and eat and sleep and write. I don't think it, I don't think, I mean I ran an ultra this September and I thought well maybe that'll be too much and it'll affect my writing and it really didn't. I've reached a really good balance with both and I think part of that too is that I work from home. So you know I don't lose time commuting
00:53:51
Speaker
I can run in the middle of the day. I can take a nap in the middle of the day. I don't know how people who have office jobs train like I do. It's beyond me. But I I've been running for so long and it's such a part of my life that I can't imagine not doing it. Does that make sense? Yeah. And running is a place where my brain can expand because I'm not staring at a phone or a computer. And I've been running a lot lately without I tend to listen to podcasts when I run.
00:54:16
Speaker
But I've been listening to nothing lately which has been great and something I should probably do more of just because my brain is all mixed up sometimes and the best way to unmix it is to go running and let my brain wander and figure things out on its own. Running in a lot of ways is just very meditative too. Do you find that you have a lot of your best ideas come while you're mid run or something you need to jot down? I do have a lot of ideas when I'm running. I also have a lot of ideas when I'm in the shower.
00:54:46
Speaker
I tend to run out of the shower and sometimes slip or skid on the floor. I actually have a lot of ideas right before I fall asleep. So I've gotten better at telling myself to wake up and type them into my phone. But running puts me in the same kind of dream state too, where if I don't have my phone with me, I try to run home and write it down and we'll maybe go back out and run again. But when I was writing Running a Love Story,
00:55:11
Speaker
And I was running, you know, cause it's just part of my life. I would keep running, even though I wasn't training for a marathon, I would stop and write stuff into my phone. And during that time I made sure to have my phone with me because when I'm revising too, I find that more of the more flashes of what should go into a revision come to me than ideas do when I'm running. If that makes sense. Yeah. It's the, it's the honing of the imagery that happens to me when I'm running more than the actual idea. Mm-hmm.
00:55:39
Speaker
And before I kind of let you go here, because I want to be respectful of your time, of course, I want to ask you, as a writer, freelancer, author, where does your optimism lie?
Optimism in Writing and Freelancing
00:55:55
Speaker
You know, I graduated college into the dot-com recession right after 9-11. And my freelance career really started to take off during the Great Recession.
00:56:08
Speaker
So I've been, and media is sort of trying to figure out how to deal with the internet still. So it's not been a stable time. I don't think at any point in my career to be a writer. Um, but the way that it's good ideas still find homes, good books still find homes. And I still been able to manage a pretty good life out of this. That's where my optimism lies. You know, I, I, I want to eventually write more books than I write articles.
00:56:35
Speaker
And sometimes I feel like that's challenging just because, again, everything seems to constantly be in flux and never be settled. And, you know, everybody talks about how terrible writing is and books and all that. And, you know, I just got to keep reminding myself that it's worked out pretty well so far. It's been hard work physically and mentally. This is a challenging lifestyle. It is. But it is the best thing that I could do with my life ever.
00:57:00
Speaker
and I just have to keep reminding myself, especially when I break out that where's my money bat and ask people where my money is. Like Negan on The Walking Dead, your barbed wire rap baseball bat. It is my high school softball bat. I used to when I was a new freelancer and I felt bad about asking where my money is, which is ridiculous.
00:57:19
Speaker
I used to put it in the corner of my office, and once a week, look at it and call and write emails asking where my money is. I don't have to do that anymore, but I still have the bat, and I'm not giving it up ever. Very nice. And where can people find you online, Jen? My website is genamiller.com. My Twitter handle is by genamiller.com. That's Jen with one N, so J-E-N-A-M-I-L-L-E-R.com. And that's probably the best place to find me.
00:57:46
Speaker
Just because I tweet and share pictures of my dog quite a bit and she's cute. So that's it. Awesome. So
00:57:57
Speaker
That's it for another episode of the hashtag CNF podcast. This was interviewed, produced, and edited by yours truly. Here is just one last call for action. Just subscribe to the podcast and thanks for listening. Thank you. Bye.