If workaday wordsmiths had silver jubilees, this would be Clair Rees' year. For the past 25 years the Orem writer has been wearing out typewriters and editorial eyes with his work.
And after 25 years he will not receive a gold watch, a bonus or even a day off. But if you have a story idea, he'll take that instead."In 25 years I've published 10 books and about 2,000 magazine articles," says Rees. "I'm one of the few writers in the world who has worked for both the National Enquirer and the LDS Ensign magazine. I'll probably be at this business in one form or another until I die."
Rees is one of a collection of Utahns who make pretty good bucks in the free-lance market - a directory that includes Raye Ringholtz, Patricia McConnel, Debbie Smoot, Rick Waters and several others.
Today, along with his free-lance work, Rees is also the editorial director for the WordPerfect magazines in Orem. And though he now gets a regular check, he hasn't always done "easy time." For years he lived by his wits and wit, earning his daily bread by wringing whatever he could from stingy magazine publishers.
"I've never worked harder in my life than the eight years I was a full-time free-lancer," he says. "My first year I wrote 728 articles. I tried to keep six to 10 pieces in the mail at all times. A free-lancer's greatest fear is waking up in the morning and not having something to do. My phone bills were $400 a month back then. The free-lance game is all marketing and public relations. The actual writing is only about a third of it all. I was pushy. I sold myself. And I made pretty good money."
Did he ever suffer from writer's block?
"I couldn't afford writer's block," he says. "I had to support a family."
"I've found you have to take free-lance writers on a case by case basis," says Greta deJong, publisher of Catalyst Magazine. "Each one's unique. Still, I have found that academic writers tend to be more concerned with the structure of their writing while the free-lance journalist focuses more on content."
It's true that each free-lancer seems to go against our notions of what free-lance writers are. For those who figure "human word processors" like Clair Rees come from the womb with pencils in their hands, Rees says "guess again."
"The truth is I'm a mathematician," he says. "I had a math scholarship to Kenyon College and studied physics at BYU. But by the end of my junior year I could see that I was about to become the most miserable physicist in the world, so I switched majors to English. I've never looked back."
Over the years Rees has published articles in hundreds of magazines, including Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, The American Home, True, Field and Stream and on and on. Years ago he scoped out the outdoor magazines as his main market and they've paid him handsomely and often.
"My worst sale was probably the poem I sold to The American Poet, he says. "They paid me in copies of the magazine - six copies - then billed me for those copies."
Needless to say, Rees grows a bit weary with people who constantly talk about writing but never quite get down to it. When he lectures to writing groups he often tells them that real writers are home writing, not attending lectures.
It is a sentiment, in fact, that's shared by a fair share of Utah's free-lance community.
"Personally, I feel that writing is a valuable art form to bring into anybody's life, and it doesn't matter if they publish or not," says Patricia McConnel, a Utah writer who now works mainly on assignment. "From a marketing point of view, however, I see a lot of people in Utah who call themselves writers but who have not gone through the preparation they should. They haven't learned form and technique. There's a mythos about writing that writers are born, not made, but the truth is it takes years to become a professional. My biggest bellyache is with the arrogance of people who consider themselves professionals, but who are unwilling to pay the price. They are usually willing to work for much less money, and often hurt the writers who deserve more for their work."
The upshot, of course, is that Clair Rees has paid the price. Looking back at the past 25 years what he sees is a lot of back-breaking work. But he also sees his life as a grand adventure.
"Yes, it's hard," he says, "but there is some romance to it - the trips, the perks, the sales, going one-on-one with editors. I've really enjoyed it."
In fact, people who wonder about getting their feet wet in the profession - Rees explains - may want to buy a copy of his book on the subject.
As the man says, it's all in the marketing.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Want to be a writing pro? Here are valuable tips
Clair Rees offers the following primer to would-be free-lancers:
1. First, study the magazines you want to approach. Then give the editor the same kind of articles you see there. Are they "how to" articles, first person, short, long? Don't try to break new ground. You have to find the flavor and duplicate it.
2. Never write an article and send it off cold - unless it's an essay or humor piece. Always query the editor in a letter before writing a feature. Pre-sell what you can. And make your query letter your best writing. That's how you'll be judged.
3. You have to have a thick skin, but I think the talk about needing to earn a trunk full of rejection slips is way overplayed. I sold the first 20 articles I wrote before I got a rejection slip.
4. There's no better way to learn to write well than to have a professional editor really chew through your stuff. Don't get defensive over what you write, take all comments and changes as an opportunity to learn.
5. Be aggressive.