Ten Years as a Fulltime Freelancer

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Author, Editor, Media Tie-In Writer

agent, Writer Advice
November 22, 2016

As of this week, I have survived ten years as a fulltime freelance author/editor and created a career I am proud of. The past decade has been nothing like I expected it to be. When I began, I wanted to “just write” and to see if I could make it as an author. Within the first year, I started editing. Time has flown by as well as taken forever. I had a plan and a series of professional goals to meet. I have met every single one of these. Though… the last one, “get an agent,” happened in the last couple of months.

Sell short stories to pro markets
Get into SFWA with novels or short stories
Sell a novel
Sell a trilogy
Get an agent
Be invited to conventions as a panelist

Ten years later, I have discovered there were a whole lot more professional goals I wanted to achieve that I didn’t know I wanted to achieve when I started out. Some of them shocked me when they happened. (Honestly, some of them still surprise me when they occur.)

Sell a short story collection
Have a story listed in a “Best of” collection
Have my books become audiobooks
Have a stranger squee over my forthcoming presence at a convention
Have a stranger come to a multi-author event to see me specifically
Learn how to say “no” to a gig
Be nominated for an award – any award
Be nominated for a Hugo award and a Bram Stoker award
Be mentioned in Locus Magazine and Kirkus Reviews
Win an ENnie award, a Scribe award, and/or a Cleo (Origins Game Fair) award
Be a Guest of Honor of a convention in America
Be a Guest of Honor of a convention abroad (Sweden, Finland)
Become a Director-at-Large in SFWA
Become an adjective (a “Brozek” book or a “Brozek” anthology)

It’s been ten years. I’ve achieved so much and I’m so grateful to the people who have helped me along the way—editors, publishers, other authors, fans, cheerleaders, shoulders-to-cry-on, friends, family, and my husband. I’m not going to stop now. I just have to set goals for the future. Here are the ones I know I want to achieve:

Sell stories to Analog, Asimov, Psuedopod, and EscapePod
Sell stories to Ellen Datlow and to John Joseph Adams
Create a long-running Teen/YA series (6+ books)
Create a successful fiction podcast
Have someone option my work
Have my work become a TV pilot, TV series, and/or movie

The more I know about the publishing business, the more I can narrow down what I really want out of my career. Now that I have a wonderful agent, I can’t wait to see what the future holds for me.

In celebration, and out of duty, I have filed ten years worth of editing and writing contracts… much to the enjoyment and annoyance of my cats. (The red folder is filled with 10 years worth of editing contracts and the black one has 10 years of writing contracts.)

Meet Jennifer Brozek

Jennifer Brozek is a multi-talented, award-winning author, editor, and media tie-in writer. She is the author of Never Let Me Sleep and The Last Days of Salton Academy, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Her YA tie-in novels, BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident and Shadowrun: Auditions, have both won Scribe Awards. Her editing work has earned her nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Hugo Award. She won the Australian Shadows Award for the Grants Pass anthology, co-edited with Amanda Pillar. Jennifer’s short form work has appeared in Apex Publications, Uncanny Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and in anthologies set in the worlds of Valdemar, Shadowrun, V-Wars, Masters of Orion, Well World, and Predator.

Jennifer has been a full-time freelance author and editor for over seventeen years, and she has never been happier. She keeps a tight schedule on her writing and editing projects and somehow manages to find time to teach writing classes and volunteer for several professional writing organizations such as SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. She shares her husband, Jeff, with several cats and often uses him as a sounding board for her story ideas. Visit Jennifer’s worlds at jenniferbrozek.com or her social media accounts on LinkTree.

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