Reporting on Grief and Balancing Work
Q&A with freelance journalist Adina Solomon
Writers! Happy Saturday. Today we’re chatting with freelance writer, Adina Solomon, who tackles a wide variety of topics in her work, from death to city planning. She recently wrote a longform article for Fenix magazine about mourning during the pandemic. It’s a sobering look at an aspect of the past year that too many people are now familiar with—and something I think we all feel on some level, even if we haven’t lost someone.
Adina was super generous with details on the type of work that makes freelance writing work for her and how she handles the unpredictability of that pitch life. I love to hear how people with lots of different interests and specialties piece it together into weeks and months that are both fulfilling and sustainable, and Adina has shared just that with all of us today.
So, let’s get to it. Writers, meet Adina!
(Pssst: Did you catch the round-up of writing opportunities I sent on Tuesday? It included pitch calls from The Muse, Aurelia Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and many more. And if you want those delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, click that button right there!👇 )
Q&A with Adina Solomon: Reporting on grief, pitching, and resume writing
B: I'd love to get a snapshot of one month of work for Adina Solomon. Can you tell us what a recent month of assignments looked like for you?
A: Every month is a little different, so I’ll talk about February 2021. I wrote a few news stories of 800-1,200 words related to my beat in city planning. My longform story on mourning during COVID-19 came out in Fenix, so I spent time promoting it on social media and elsewhere. I started doing content writing for a start-up that helps people settle the estate of someone who dies. I also have a quarterly email newsletter talking about the behind-the-scenes details of my stories, so I wrote and sent that out in February. Between all of this, I interviewed sources and did research on future story ideas. And I’m a freelancer, so you know I spent time pitching stories and chasing people down who owed me money.
I also did work on a long-term reporting project profiling people who work in the death care and end-of-life care industries. I want this to be a book, which is my first time saying this in a public forum. It feels weird telling that to a big audience, but if you want something, you gotta make it clear, right? Anyway, I created and started disseminating a survey to get to know more people in those death-related fields. (Side note: If you work in death care/end-of-life care or know someone who does, check out my survey.)
I also wrote, edited, and consulted on people’s resumes. I work with people in a lot of different professions, but I specialize in media workers and freelance writers. That business did really well in February, so that means people either feel confident enough to look for a new job or got laid off from their previous one. With my clients, it’s been the first thing, at least last month.
You recently published a longform piece with Fenix about mourning during the pandemic. I read in the interview you did with Fenix that you worked on that piece for months. How do you tackle big stories that require a serious time commitment when you also have a bunch of other work going on?
There’s an ebb and flow with long-term stories. For me, they always start slow. I do research in between other work and start looking for and contacting sources. Then depending on the story timeline, most of my interviews end up happening in the same span of 1-3 weeks. I can mostly do interviews while managing other work, unless there’s travel involved. I only occasionally travel for stories, but if I am, then that usually takes up 2-3 days. I transcribe interviews and compile notes in the midst of doing other work.
I then roll into outlining and writing the story. That can take a few days of solid work, which is when I spend the largest percentage of my time on the story. I set aside a day just to do the outlining and another day to do the writing, usually separating those days so they don’t follow one after the other. I clear my work schedule of everything else. Sometimes, I finish earlier in the day than I anticipate, but instead of doing other work, I usually take that time to unwind. It’s a lot of mental energy to write a longform piece, so I reward myself by vegging in front of the TV for awhile.
For me, reporting with empathy is about remembering that these sources are people. I don’t remember learning much empathy when I was in journalism school.
This was such a heavy topic to cover. Did the grief you were covering ever get to you?
Yes, it would be hard to not feel something when talking to people who are in mourning. It could definitely get to me. My therapist sometimes heard about it.
Honestly, it can also feel voyeuristic. I don’t want sources to feel like I’m asking about a painful experience just because. I recognize that it’s a task that I’m asking them to do. This person is already giving a journalist their time and on top of that, they have to talk about a difficult thing. That’s why I really try to practice empathy with the people I talk with and work to make sure I report and write that way.
For me, reporting with empathy is about remembering that these sources are people. I don’t remember learning much empathy when I was in journalism school. It was more about the antagonistic source who’s trying to hide away from reporters. That’s definitely a thing that exists and something I’ve dealt with, but there are different types of sources. To talk with people who are grieving, I think you need to show empathy. Otherwise, what am I doing covering a topic like this?
It's kinda strange to talk about enjoying the process when the topics we cover are sad like this one, but as freelance writers, we really have to love what we do. So I'm wondering if you can tell us where you found joy in the reporting of this piece?
I love getting to talk with people. I’m one of those journalists. So I really did find joy in talking with sources, even if the topic at hand was a sad one. I also find joy in the writing process and in having the space, especially with a longform story, to really work on characterization and details. It’s also exciting to know that my reporting could help someone.
This really summarizes one of the things I like about journalism. I want to be able to talk with people, have interesting conversations, and then retreat into a quiet space by myself and write. I like being around people, but also I want alone time.
You report on city planning and death, and also do resume writing. How did you arrive at those specialties? And how do you decide when to stray from those verticals and write something completely unrelated?
I got at these specialities by accident, really. If you had asked me 5 years ago what “city planning” was, I wouldn’t have known much. Then I read the book Suburban Nation when I first started freelancing. I don’t know why I read it or how I found it, but it was this wakeup call. I had never thought about the problems in our cities and towns as functions of our environment and vice versa. The book was a good jumping off point for me to learn more about city planning and I just became fascinated. It encompasses race, environmentalism, money, class, housing, land, health, and so much more. I wrote one story and then two and a few more. I remember pitching CityLab quite a few times before they accepted a pitch. Then I wrote more and more until city planning became a specialty.
Death happened in a similar way. Many years ago, before I was ever freelancing, I read The American Way of Death, which is an exposé about the funeral business. It was so interesting, but I wasn’t in a place professionally to be reporting on death. When I went freelance in 2017, I finally had the space to write about it. It’s especially a good beat because it’s undercovered. So I wrote and wrote until death too became a specialty.
Resume writing came about because I was looking for a non-journalism source of income that I could do part-time. I had helped friends and family with resumes for a long time, and I always had a knack for it. I also liked that it involves interviewing people. So I started doing more, learning more, and eventually took the leap with my own side business. It took me awhile to get going because it’s not just about writing resumes. It’s also finding clients. So I had to learn about advertising. I’ve been writing and editing resumes professionally for a few years now.
But I do stray a lot from these verticals, as you said. I’m really driven by what I’m interested in. I write very occasional stories on food because I love to cook. I report on things in Atlanta because I live here and it’s important to me. I occasionally report on tech. If I think of a story idea that’s interesting to me, I don’t usually have qualms about pursuing it, even if it’s unrelated to my beats.
Do you think resumes are important for freelancers? Since we don't send them off with pitches like you would for a job application, I think a lot of us freelancers let our resumes gather dust. What's one piece of advice you can offer freelancers on keeping their resumes fresh and relevant while self-employed?
I’m asked this question a lot. It really depends on what a freelancer is doing. A lot of fellowships and residencies ask for resumes, so it’s a good idea to have one handy if you apply to those. If you’re applying to a part-time job with an organization, those often require resumes too.
One piece of advice is to remember that your resume isn’t going to capture everything you’ve done. I don’t know how many conversations I’ve had with people to tell them that no, you don’t need to have a job from 1999 on your resume. Unless you’re a student or recent grad, you also don’t need to have internships or college jobs on there either. Try to focus on the last 5-15 years of work experience, though that number will vary by the person and what you’ve been doing. A resume is about capturing the highlights in order to market yourself.
Also, don’t feel timid about including your own projects. So many freelancers have email newsletters on their areas of expertise or teach courses or run media outlets on Instagram. That’s all fair game for a resume. Do you manage, hire, or consult with anyone for your business or project? Do you market it on social media or elsewhere? Do you do research? Do you do audience engagement? Do you manage a content calendar? Think about including that sort of information as you write about your project on your resume.
Has freelance writing as a career ever felt like it wasn't going to work for you? How did you move past that and make it work?
I have spells like that all the time! I think the nature of freelancing is that there are very busy times and then times where there’s not as much. And during those sparse stretches, I always have the thought, Well, it’s been a nice run, but I guess I’m done freelancing now. I’m never working again. I even say that to my husband, who rightly points out that every time I say that, I just find more work.
I guess that’s the answer to moving past that. I’m an anxious person and I have these worries, but just going ahead and finding more work is how I push past those feelings. I’ve used downtimes before to diversify into more marketing types of writing or work on pitches. I also work on personal projects (like my goal of writing a book) or take care of business things that I don’t have a lot of time for otherwise (because I still need to do my taxes). Sometimes, I just take a light work day for what it is, knock off early, and bake a loaf of bread. Managing that time myself and figuring out what I need is one of the perks of freelancing, after all.
What does your pitching process look like? (How much of your work is pitched, and do you have a system for pitching regularly?)
So for this question, I looked back at my earnings spreadsheet for 2020. I love percentages, so I’m curious to know about my breakdown. It was very even. 52 percent of my stories were pitched, and the rest were assigned. I only included journalism work in that count.
I wish I had a better system for staying on top of pitching, but it’s pretty sporadic. Sometimes, I pitch a lot. But when I’m busy, I can go weeks without sending out new pitches. The most organized thing I do is I have a pitching spreadsheet where I keep track of each pitch I send, along with what publication received it, the date I emailed it, the follow-up email date if necessary, and whether the pitch was ultimately assigned. I also have a comments section for each pitch where I write if the editor encouraged me to pitch again or why the pitch was rejected if a reason was given. It helps me keep on top of pitches, especially because I simultaneously pitch. It would get out of hand otherwise.
Besides the article we've already touched on, what is one piece of writing you're especially proud of and why?
I’m really proud of my work covering the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a proposed natural gas line that was going to end in Robeson County, North Carolina. That’s the home of the Lumbee tribe, the largest Native tribe east of the Mississippi, so I reported on the effects on the tribe and how people were reacting to this pipeline. I also worked with another freelance journalist, Asher Elbein, on the story.
I’m proud of all the work and mental energy I put into the piece. I first learned about the Lumbee tribe in college when I spent a spring break volunteering with the tribal office in Robeson County. I was a student journalist at the time, and I thought to myself that someday, I wanted to write a story about something having to do with this tribe.
About 5 years later when I went freelance, one of the first things I did was start doing research to figure out what story I could tell. I got in touch with Malinda Maynor Lowery, a member of the Lumbee tribe who has written books on the Lumbee and is now director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was gracious enough to share her knowledge and talk with me extensively about Lumbee history. We also spoke a lot about how to report as a white journalist not from Robeson County. My first thought was to write a story about the long history of the Lumbee tribe trying to become federally recognized, but that changed when she told me about the pipeline ending in Robeson.
I’m so pleased with how the story turned out. I traveled to Robeson County, made all the contacts there, and talked with people who were against and for the pipeline. It took a lot of time and research, plus of course the considerable time spent on writing and editing. I think the story ended up being a powerful piece, especially because there had been no big stories about the pipeline’s effect on the Lumbee.
A few days after the story was published in February 2018 in The Bitter Southerner, the Lumbee Tribe officially came out against the pipeline. I don’t know if my story had an influence on that decision, but I like to think it did since the tribal government was silent until then. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline was ultimately cancelled in July 2020. I think the many journalists who did regular reporting on the pipeline over the years had some effect.
That’s all for today friends. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a lovely weekend! I’ll be back in your inbox next week!
Stay inspired,
Britany