I saw this question posted on Renegade Writer a long time ago, and I wanted to throw in my two cents. One of the great things about freelance writing is that there’s not necessarily the same sort of “dues paying” as in other professions. A young lawyer spends years studying, learning the ropes, and proving herself before she makes partner (if she’s lucky). Unless it’s a family business, a restaurant manager gradually moves his way up the food chain. A professor struggles through a PhD program, pays her dues, and, in many cases, waits for someone else to retire before earning tenure.
Theoretically young writer with good clips can do just as well as an older one. But do they?
Case in point: a little over a year ago I submitted an essay to a women’s magazine. The editor wrote back right away, saying “I love your take on dating, but do you mind my asking your age? Our target audience is women ages xx-xx.” Knowing I was on the younger end of the spectrum but that other women would relate to my story, I rounded up to my next birthday still a few months away (yes, a white lie, so sue me!). I never heard from her again, and a few months later I learned that the magazine had folded. Still, part of me always wondered if she found my perspective “too young and cute” for her v. important and mature readers. Or maybe she somehow found out that I had fibbed.
In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have given a number at all. Still, when you’re that age (and I’ll leave the number to your imagination), saying “this essay should speak for itself” is hard, especially if you’re trying to win an editorial’s approval. Of course, now that I have a website anyone can see my photos and guess (correctly) that I’m in my twenties. I choose to leave them up, because I think the photographer (my pal Rachel) did an excellent job of capturing my personality. Plus, as they say “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
I still sometimes feel that my relative youth can be a liability. I can’t write credible essays about getting married and having children (two favorite topics in women’s mags), because I don’t have those experiences yet. (When I was doing high school theatre I desperately wanted to fall in love so I could channel those feelings into my performance as the leading lady and make it more believable. Now I think I could have done without some of the offstage drama.)
Of course, it also means that I am qualified to write about the college-to-work transition, dating (do you think the IRS will let me write off those cocktails and bikini waxes as research materials?), and other mainstays of the twentysomething set. What do you think? Should writers deal strictly with words and dismiss age as a meaningless number?
Interesting question. I do believe, and always have, that work should be judged on its own merits. Age is a publicity and working relationship matter.
That being said, I think the quality of a working relationship depends on personality more than age. A 30-year-old can be just as difficult as a 17-year-old, if not more.
Good points, Tori.
Hey Susan,
Just found your blog through my writer-pal Jody Mace’s site. Love it so far!
I have dealt with this a bit myself. I started freelancing when I was 24, and part of my problem was that though I could legitimately write about parenting and marriage topics (I married young and already had two kids by that point) I always wondered if editors would take me seriously if they knew how young I was. I can’t be sure if it made a difference to any editors…maybe, maybe not. At any rate, it didn’t have any obvious effect on my career, though during a pitch session with a national women’s magazine at a writer’s conference, a certain (not too old herself) editor looked doubtfully at me when I pitched her a parenting idea and told me it would have to be a “really good query”, then asked if I had any experience with preteen issues (you mean, besides the fact that I have a tween and an almost-tween? I wanted to answer).
Anyway, for the most part I think I’ve gotten around this problem simply by being as professional as humanly possible AND sticking to topics I know something about. I mean, even though I may have been in the demographic you’d expect of a music writer when I first started freelancing, I would have made a horrible music writer because I wasn’t tuned in to what was going on in the music world. So you’d have thought my youth would be a plus, but really, I don’t think it would have helped me at all.
By the way, I just turned 30 two days ago and am so excited to be in my 30s. In some ways, I do feel like it will help others take me seriously. Though I will say that many of the editors I work with are younger than me, by a little or a lot, so it seems to balance out in the end.
Anyway, great topic. Looking forward to reading more.
Hi Meagan,
Thanks for stopping by and for helping with my article about online portfolios. Sorry to hear you’ve experienced ageism, but it is heartening to know that others have faced something similar. So many young writers I know just brush off any hints of ageism and say “editors love me, there’s no age issues.” I suspect there are. Oh, and happy birthday!