Gimme Schalter

Archive

Failure, Success, Gratitude & Growth | Gimme Schalter No. 2

Gimme Schalter

A few weeks ago I stepped out my front door to run a couple errands, checked my phone, and saw an email that froze me solid.

“After reading it and taking some time to consider it carefully, I’ve decided the article is not the right fit for [our] audience,” it read. Still stuck on my front porch, I frantically scanned the rest. An editor I was working with for the very first time, at an outlet I’d been excited to break into, was telling me the story I’d just filed had missed the mark so badly there was no point in giving me a second shot. They were simply offering me a kill fee and moving on.

In over a decade of freelancing, I’d only been offered two kill fees ever. Once, the entire website got shut down just after I’d filed. The other, the editor changed their mind on the angle so many times that the story had become moot by the time I finished my third rewrite.

#2
July 29, 2021
Read more

Gimme Schalter: A Journal of Everything Awesome

Gimme Schalter

In the past year I’ve launched a twice-weekly national podcast, been diagnosed with ADHD, written a bunch of cool features for premium outlets, and done a host of interviews on radio/audio/video shows.

But it seems like no more than 72 of my 10,000-plus Twitter followers ever found out about any of those things. For a professional creative who’s spent over a decade building his Twitter account as his main self-promotional tool, this is a problem.

About four years ago, I thought making a newsletter might be the only way writers could build an audience without being beholden to the whims of vulture capitalists. I thought it…but I didn’t do it.

#1
July 22, 2021
Read more
Find Gimme Schalter elsewhere: Twitter YouTube linkedin
Brought to you by Buttondown, the easiest way to start and grow your newsletter.