Eight years in: Reflections on full-time freelance life

Hand holding an ice cream sundae in front of the Blue Moon Dine-In Cafe at the Minnesota State Fair — One of my favorite writing assignments of the year: covering the new foods at the Minnesota State Fair

It's been eight years since I quit my day job as a intellectual property paralegal to plunge into self-employment. As I've mentioned before, the first year was tough—making a living wage off freelance writing was challenging in 2018, and would be even more so now. Since 2019, I've worked on a part-time, contract basis for a small law firm, and the income from that gig and the benefits from my huband Mike's salaried position make self-employment possible.

Over the past eight years, publications and clients have come and gone (RIP City Pages) but my writing work today is remarkably similar to what it was at the beginning: covering the Twin Cities dining scene for small local publications, writing travel content for regional convention and visitor's bureaus, and covering Minneapolis or specialized food and drink topics for national publications. I've taken on plenty of additional projects over the years—writing guidebook chapters, leading food tours, doing administrative work for a grantmaking organization—but on a day-to-day basis 2026 is a lot like 2018.

Row of cows outside a barn eating hay — Best research moment of the year: visiting Redhead Creamery for a farm tour

That was not the original plan. I had hoped that after gaining a few years of experience, I would either land a staff job at a local publication or transition to doing more travel writing for national publications. Unfortunately, the collapse of the media industry has put those goals out of reach—there are fewer and fewer jobs and more and more incredibly credentialed candidates competing for them. Over the past couple years, I've struggled to figure out how I can continue to grow professionally when there are so few opportunities to do so.

So I'm writing a novel.

I've tossed around the idea of writing a book for most of my writing career—I think most journalists do. I always assumed it would be non-fiction, maybe something about food history or Minnesota, potentially a cookbook or memoir. However, none of those concepts got past a very vague brainstorming phase, and I made peace with the idea that my book writing would be limited to guidebook projects. But then last summer, a title popped into my head while I was driving southbound on Highway 169. "Huh," I thought, "What would the novel behind that title be like?"

Plate of pasta topped with cheese and breadcrumbs — Highlight of this year's pair of Wisconsin press trips: dinner at Madison's Fairchild

A story started to gradually take shape, piece by piece: characters, plot points, dialog, flashbacks, settings. I spent January writing down all of my ideas on color-coded index cards, and then I spent the first half of February arranging the notecards into an outline. My goal is to write half of the novel in 2026, finish it in 2027, and then hopefully, find an agent and publisher (or at least made some progress in that direction) in 2028.

My novel will be a coming-of-middle-age story, exploring identity, community, and making peace with the person you've grown up to be. I am well aware that the state of the publishing industry is challenging, and I know that writing a novel will not be a profitable endeavor. But it will be a meaningful one, and I'm at a juncture in my life where I need to take another leap into the unknown and hope I stick the landing.

As I work on my novel part-time, I'll also be continuing my paralegal gig, and writing for publications and my blog at a slower pace than past years. Thank you for following along on my ever-evolving journey—it means a lot.

Some bylines from the past year I'm especially proud of:

Further reading: