If there’s been any big revelation to me in my career, it’s that all those people who told you it was unlikely for editors, publishers, and agents to come to you with opportunities just hadn’t had editors, publishers, and agents come to them yet.
Over a decade ago, when I was still a student in India, my first $100 check arrived from the US-based College Bound magazine for an article I’d written on surviving failure in college. My dad, ever so encouraging, said, “Now that you’re writing for American publications, soon someone’s going to discover how talented you are and invite you to America!”
I did what any reasonable freelancer does when faced with supportive parents: I blew my fuse. “That’s now how it works, Papa!” I said. “People don’t just discover you. There’s a process to this—you have to find ideas, write query letters, work your ass off. No one’s going to ask a nobody writer from India to go to the US. Can’t you just celebrate my achievement in the now instead of putting all these unrealistic expectations on me all the time?” (I may have a flair for the dramatic.)
Six years later, I was on the plane to California, where I’d been invited to share my experiences as an international journalist as a Visiting Scholar at the School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.
Since then, other extraordinary things have happened. At least two or three times a month, an editor finds my website and asks me to work for them. These editors have included publications you’ve never heard of in countries you’d never think to find work, to UN magazines and Virgin Atlantic’s websites, to magazines you probably read, such as US Weekly and Marie Claire.
Don’t forget: I’m not a famous writer or journalist and I probably don’t earn in a year to what the popular bloggers do in a month. There are barely 1,000 people on my email list. But I get “discovered” by editors looking for freelancers all the time. Weren’t we told that editors don’t have the time to go scouting for people?
And I’m not even done yet. A few years ago, the Government of India approached me for regular consulting work. I’ve also been approached by publishers to write books.
In January this year, an agent with a top New York City agency e-mailed to ask if I’d be interested in talking about representation and was genuinely disappointed when I told her I already had an agent. And just this week, I was approached by an editor at the British edition of Cosmopolitan magazine to write a story for them. Weren’t we told that agents don’t have the time to go scouting for clients?
All this to say that from magazine editors to publishers to even the Government, I’ve been “discovered” in one way or another. No one’s offered to change my life yet, but that’s another thing I’ve learned. It’s not the big life-defining things that help you reach your goals, but the little discoveries on the way.
Do your work in the best way you can, whether you’re earning a gazillion dollars from it or doing it for free, and I promise you, when you’ve done enough of it, people will start to pay attention and send many opportunities your way.
And if you do your work with the joy and passion that propels you forward and fills your days, you’ll find that you won’t care much either way.