data + words + sustainable freelancing!
January 23, 2019 10:00 AM Subscribe
Freelance/self-employed writing filter: What are some good approaches for pitching & sustaining work in data journalism/technical tutorials/data science & visualization-backed nonfiction writing? I'm curious to learn more about (1) writing in these specific domains and (2) sustainably writing on the side of a full-time position.
I've been dabbling in this intersection for the last couple of years, on the side of my primary pursuits, and I really like it! Now I'd like to start to gather more information about what this looks like as a sustained, on-the-side pursuit (I could invest, say, 15-20 hours a week into this going forward). I also know pretty much nothing about self-employment/small businesses,etc. How would I learn more about this all?
Projects I've enjoyed immensely with any technical element:
* a few blogs using data science to investigate various social/community issues (creating visualizations and often sharing Jupyter notebooks along the way) (unpaid)
* a couple creative non-fiction essays that touch on tech/internet topics peripherally (paid)
* a a short how-to guidebook on filming stop motion animation for children (paid)
* a long-form tutorial essay on text analysis with Python for an open access journal (unpaid)
What I'm most excited about currently:
* data journalism pieces - essentially more extensive projects that follow the blog model of investigating a topic and using machine learning/dataviz along the way
* technical tutorials, especially for newcomers from outside traditional technical backgrounds (e.g. teaching data science from a specifically feminist and critical perspective).
* at some point, I would love to pitch and write books that combine elements of creative nonfiction, data science, and data storytelling. not 100% sure what that looks like, but I think I'd very much like it.
Any guidance would be wonderful. Thank you!
I've been dabbling in this intersection for the last couple of years, on the side of my primary pursuits, and I really like it! Now I'd like to start to gather more information about what this looks like as a sustained, on-the-side pursuit (I could invest, say, 15-20 hours a week into this going forward). I also know pretty much nothing about self-employment/small businesses,etc. How would I learn more about this all?
Projects I've enjoyed immensely with any technical element:
* a few blogs using data science to investigate various social/community issues (creating visualizations and often sharing Jupyter notebooks along the way) (unpaid)
* a couple creative non-fiction essays that touch on tech/internet topics peripherally (paid)
* a a short how-to guidebook on filming stop motion animation for children (paid)
* a long-form tutorial essay on text analysis with Python for an open access journal (unpaid)
What I'm most excited about currently:
* data journalism pieces - essentially more extensive projects that follow the blog model of investigating a topic and using machine learning/dataviz along the way
* technical tutorials, especially for newcomers from outside traditional technical backgrounds (e.g. teaching data science from a specifically feminist and critical perspective).
* at some point, I would love to pitch and write books that combine elements of creative nonfiction, data science, and data storytelling. not 100% sure what that looks like, but I think I'd very much like it.
Any guidance would be wonderful. Thank you!
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this is my field, i am a "data storyteller." though i don't freelance. when I did freelance, in another area, i found it really helpful to have one boring, central, high-volume client that provided a baseline income that let me be comfortable enough to look around for other work (and sometimes not succeed). i think that's a really helpful way to make any freelance work sustainable.
more about writing in these specific domains - there's a lot of data visualization research about what types of visualizations *work* ... there's also a lot of design research about information design - this closely connects to stuff around web usability (ux). i have some other specific resources that i use - feel free to memail me.
I think that a lot of places need to put data journalism-type narratives on the internet, too, and that right now there are a whole host of open source options for creating interactive multimedia narratives. you don't need to be a developer. which is nice.
posted by entropone at 12:26 PM on January 23, 2019 [5 favorites]