Freelancing Is Like Baking

or, a study in forced metaphors and The Great British Baking Show

For a little less than a year and a half, I contracted with TechCrunch to write nearly a dozen posts a month on automotive technology. As of July 31, 2017, that contract came to an end. This is how things work in the freelance writing world. No hard feelings.

There did seem to be a misunderstanding, though, on the part of PR firms and startup companies who often thought that I worked for TechCrunch as a regular employee. That’s not true. I’ve always written for other publications at the same time as I wrote for TechCrunch, including US News and World Report, Popular Science, How Stuff Works, and B2B work that most people never saw. I also edit books, mostly nonfiction, and I’m starting my own publishing and production company. TechCrunch was a fun piece of the pie, but it was never the whole pie. I didn’t even live in the same city as the TechCrunch pie; the office is in the Bay Area, and I’m in Oregon.

Now I have time to bake a new pie.

Tweak the Recipe

I’m still an expert on automotive technology, from electric cars to autonomous vehicles to smart cities. I’ll be pitching interesting ideas to editors (and accepting assignments, if you’ve got one in need of a journalist on the automotive tech beat), but I’ll also still be doing all the other things I do. Today, for example, I’m doing some research for a ghostwriting project, I finished the last round of revisions on my first novel, I’m writing a blog post for my site Carsplaining, and I’ll be prepping for a talk on the past, present, and future of electric vehicles that I’m giving on Monday.

My work is still a pretty big pie with a lot of layers. Because I’m binge watching The Great British Baking Show on Netflix, I’m obsessed with layered foods. I’m also obsessed with trying new things and experimenting with freelance flavors, which is why I work the way I do. I’ve been at it since 2006, and I cannot imagine doing anything else.