Natasha Khullar Relph on Organized Chaos
balancing financial security + creative fulfillment
Hiya writer friends,
Today we’re hearing from an award-winning journalist/novelist/entrepreneur who has a wealth of advice for every kind of writer, because she does just about every kind of writing.
Natasha Khullar Relph has written features for The New York Times, CNN, Vogue, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan, among others; she’s traveled the world covering breaking news; and she’s synthesized her experiences from 1000+ bylines into a library of resources for freelance writers, including her book, Shut Up & Write: The No-Nonsense, No B.S. Guide to Getting Words on the Page. And she writes fiction, too!
I’ve admired Natasha’s work and her “No B.S.” approach to freelancing ever since the start of my own freelance writing journey. So I’m very honored she took the time to answer some questions for us today! Writer friends, meet Natasha…
Natasha Khullar Relph on Organized Chaos and Creative Control
You seem to tackle an incredible variety of writing projects, from journalism and books to content writing and your many courses and communities for writers. How do you decide what type of new work to pursue, and what to work on each day?
Thank you! I love how you make it sound like a strength because the truth is, it’s been one of the things I’ve often worried about most when it’s come to my writing career. I’ve watched as friends of mine have focused exclusively on narrative journalism, for instance, and then gotten book deals out of stories they reported on for three years or blogger friends who focused the entirety of their attention on building an online audience and have tens of thousands of followers on social media that they can directly talk to. I’ve done a bit of everything and while writing is at the core of it all, it’s so incredibly diverse. This, unfortunately, means that I’m not known for any one thing, but that I’ve done a lot of things and have multiple identities. Some people only know me for my award-winning journalism and others only for the work I do with writers and my books. I like it this way, but it does split my audience a bit.
(If you’re interested in this, by the way, I found a trick to making this work for you, which I call layering. I wrote about it here.)
The way I choose what to pursue or work on is, let’s be honest, organized chaos. The only things I mark in my calendar are deadlines, things that I owe to other people, such as newspaper stories or edits that my agent’s asked for. Everything else, I just take it as it comes. Sometimes I’m inspired to work on a novel, other times a nonfiction book, or something else entirely.
My only rule is that I have to finish what I start. The problem with having this many varied interests is that you can start a lot of projects and get excited about a lot of different areas but never fully bring them to completion. If I get excited about something, I take it as far as I possibly can before I move on to the next thing. Last month, for instance, I got super inspired by an idea and so wrote up a book proposal and sent it off to my agent within two weeks. Then, as I waited for her to get back to me, I worked on writing some blog posts and pitched some freelance stories. As I wait to hear back on those, I’m working on launching a new course. After that, it’s back to the novel I’m writing.
This way I can keep myself interested and excited about a lot of different things but not fall into the trap of never finishing anything.
Earlier this year went through what sounded like a very stressful ordeal with leaving India and heading to the UK before lockdowns were enforced. How has the pandemic impacted your work? Is there anything you've done that has helped your writing career be more sustainable during difficult times like these?
Yes, I had to leave India with my husband and eight-year-old son within 72 hours and arrived in the UK just as everything was shutting down. We camped out on the floor, sharing sleeping bags and living without furniture or any kitchen equipment for about three months. My son thought it was a grand adventure for a while. My husband and I were a less enamoured.
There was a bit of anxiety around the entire thing, to be honest, but I figured if I was feeling thrown about and out of sorts, then my community would be too. I run an online membership site called The Finishers and so we started doing weekly Coffee & Cocktails with our members and just showing up and listening to everyone’s concerns and worries, both writing and otherwise. I also gave out my phone number and had individual one-to-one WhatsApp conversations with many members of my community.
Knowing that I was supporting and being supported really gave me both purpose and confidence during what was a trying time and I think those conversations (not to mention the cocktails!) definitely kept me going on the down days.
If you didn’t have multiple income streams before, I encourage writers to start building them now.
The thing that I have done that has sustained me during this pandemic is something I have been preaching since 2002, which is when I first created a presence online: I built my own audience and I have always had creative control over my work. I can write books and indie publish them, knowing that I have an immediate and existing audience for them. I diversified my income from the very beginning, which means that even if one part of my business or a certain income stream is struggling, the others make up for it.
If you didn’t have multiple income streams before, I encourage writers to start building them now. Recessions, pandemics, personal life changes—these are all a part of a writer’s life, and being prepared for them will serve you not just now but for years to come.
How do you find balance between journalism and other writing gigs? Do you try to maintain a consistent ratio of journalism to other work? Or does it change often?
It changes all the time, partly because the industry is so unpredictable, but also because I am, as I’ve mentioned, interested in so many different things that I don’t know what idea will catch my interest at any given point of time. If I’m excited about a novel, for instance, as long as I can afford to do it financially, I don’t force myself to write stories for publications during the time I’m writing it. In fact, for the many years that I was writing my first two novels, I didn’t. I created e-courses for The International Freelancer and wrote nonfiction books instead.
I have two goals from my work and I have learned the hard way that if I ignore either one of them, the other one goes for a toss as well. They are (1) creative satisfaction and (2) financial security.
I’m interested in both but I never pick one at the expense of the other. They are both equally important to me and I make sure that the projects I pick and when I choose to do them take both these goals into consideration.
Is there an article or project you can point to as a turning point in your career? What was it, and why does it seem significant looking back?
There is no particular project, but there is a specific experience that marks a clear before and after for me.
In 2009, I was invited to be a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism. I moved to the US for a year and it was there that I discovered how much my own mindset had been holding me back. I had always seen myself as an “Indian journalist,” assuming I didn’t know as much as writers in the West did, that I wasn’t as talented, and that I didn’t compare with the best of the West, so to speak.
I had never had any formal training in journalism and the media landscape in India is so different from what it is in the West. I held myself back because I didn’t think myself capable enough to be in the same league as people who had grown up reading The New York Times.
I had learned so much but also, I had come to understand that the only person who was putting me in a box was me.
By the time I returned to India, that was no longer the case. I had learned so much but also, I had come to understand that the only person who was putting me in a box was me. While everyone else was judging me on the quality of my work (they’d invited me to be a Visiting Scholar, after all!), I was judging myself on the quality of my training and background.
It won’t surprise you that within a year of returning to India, I broke into The New York Times and started working with TIME magazine as a freelance correspondent.
You say in your bio that you're never happier than when you're "on the road, pitching stories you care about.” How have you adjusted the way you find stories now that travel is restricted?
Can I amend that?
I’m never happier than when I’m on the road pitching stories I care about. But I’m also never happier than when I’m sitting in bed in my pajamas working on my novel. And of course, I’m never happier than when I give advice to a fellow freelancer that lands them an amazing writing gig or changes the way they approach their business forever.
I think the truth of it is that I really enjoy the process of writing. I’m the opposite of the writers who say they hate writing but love having written. I love the process of sitting down and watching stories appear on the page in front of me, as if by magic.
That’s not to say I don’t have my days of struggle and overwhelm, but for the most part, putting my thoughts on to paper and tweaking them to form a coherent narrative is still exciting to me, even now, twenty years after I first started doing this. It is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do and possibly the only thing I’ve ever been good at.
So, yes, to answer your question, I miss traveling. I miss going to villages nobody’s ever heard of and listening to people tell me their life stories over four cups of tea.
But at the height of the pandemic, I got on Zoom and listened as my community of writers, from 6 different countries and 10 US states, trusted me with their life stories and current struggles, and that’s incredibly special, too.
What's one piece of advice you can offer to writers who feel like they have to work ALL. The. Time. to make enough money with writing?
How about three?
1. Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. When they offer you a rate, ask them to double it. (You think I’m joking. I’m not. I did this all the time.)
2. Keep the rights to your stories so you can sell them in different markets, especially globally. Who’s to say you can’t sell the same story you wrote for a local US magazine to a market in Australia, Bahrain, Japan, Sweden, and India?
3. Build passive income streams. I know, I know, this will make you work more, not less, but only temporarily. Indie publish your books, create courses, start a Kickstarter campaign. Become a creative entrepreneur. This gives you control and also additional value for the work that you do once but can sell repeatedly.
You mentor writers so I imagine you've heard every question in the book. But what's a question you think more writers should be asking?
A question we all need to ask ourselves more, and one that I wished I’d asked sooner, is what are the most important things that I want from my career?
So many of the people who come to my work are impressed by the fact that I’ve written for TIME and The New York Times. But those publications don’t pay my bills and they never exclusively did. Even when I was a full-time journalist, the majority of my income came from trade magazines—I wrote for a bunch of construction and engineering magazines in the US and UK regularly and they kept me solvent.
People, including writers and journalists, are impressed by “big-name” credits, by social media followings, and by the number of people on a person’s email list. But those are ego metrics and don’t mean a thing in terms of income.
I advise every writer I work with to chase the “big names” because while writing for TIME and The New York Times won’t make you rich, being able to say that you’ve written for them will open doors to opportunities that you might not have had before. Saying I’ve written for the NYT has made me more money than actually writing for the NYT.
We all chase the ego metrics for a while and that’s fine. There will come a time in your career, however, when you’ve achieved those ego goals and you’re going to have to ask yourself what else there is. What do you want out of this and what are the choices you are going to have to make to get it?
The ego goals don’t always match up with the creative goals, which don’t always match up with the financial goals.
Know what you want and why you want it.
Your needs will change, your reasons will change, but as long as you stay true to yourself, you’ll always have something to build upon. Go forth and conquer, my writing friends! Good luck!
Thank you so much to Natasha for all of this great advice. You can read her work and learn even more about her approach to freelance writing through her portfolio and her site The International Freelancer.
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See you all next week.
Stay inspired,
Britany