Life as a freelance journalist

Michael Malone, a former business writer for the San Jose Mercury News, writes on the ABC News web site about life as a freelance journalist.

Malone wrote, “In 1981, I quit my job as a business reporter at the San Jose Mercury-News. I was young, cocky and frustrated with writing too many quarterly financial stories and not enough creative features. Oddly, the paper punished my temerity by giving me a promotion — and I spent the next glorious year as an investigative reporter, coming and going as I pleased, chasing down the really big stories.

“Unfortunately, there are only so many big scandals floating under the surface of a place like Silicon Valley at any one time. And so, after a year, I found myself sitting in my 1969 VW bug in the Merc parking lot, holding a cardboard box filled with all of my office possessions.

“I was 27 years old, I had $200 in the world, and zero job prospects. Both my friends and my professional peers thought I was completely out of my mind — and I didn’t necessarily disagree.

“Yet, I somehow survived. Indeed, over the last 25 years, I’ve only had a real job — as editor of Forbes ASAP magazine — for a total of three years. For the rest of the time I have worked at home as a freelancer.

“During those years my wife (she’s a painter, so she hasn’t had a steady job either) and I have lived in a converted chicken coop, bought gas with quarters, and I have driven as much as 75 miles just to pick up a check instead of waiting for it to get mailed.

“But we’ve also been comparatively wealthy, bought houses and property, driven fancy new cars, and traveled the world.”

Read more here.