May Writer’s Life: My first month at Romper was huge [#yearofwriting]

Posted on by Irina Gonzalez

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Hello there, May. In my fifth month of the #yearofwriting, I’ve done spectacularly well.

As I announced last month, May 1st was the start of my new Lifestyle Writer role at Romper — a part-time gig that involves writing mostly about sex, love and relationships for the millennial moms site.

It’s honestly been a joy to not only invest more time in actual writing (and get a regular paycheck) but also to write about something that I truly love and find interesting. I’ve learned a bunch and am pretty sure I will continue to do so for as long as I am with them… which I hope will be for a long time!

The only thing that hasn’t happened much, I admit, is pitching. Because I am now pretty busy between my Brit+Co Food Editor job, Romper and my other contributor roles, there’s almost no time for anything else. Still, it’s been super productive. Here goes!

What was published: 

Romper, specifically: 

My proudest moment of the month happened right at the beginning: My Weight Loss Success story published in Women’s Health! I absolutely love that magazine and website, and it was an honor to write about how I have changed my body throughout the years and the way I have been able to maintain a healthy attitude towards my weight. And, of course, my absolute favorite trick to keeping the weight off. But you’ll have to read the story to find that out, hehe.

The other great successes of my month were, of course, starting at Romper and writing a TON because of that. I blogged a bit, too, but I think the vast majority of my writing and income came from Romper.

How much I wrote: 34,450 words

How much I made: $2808

Look at those numbers! Pretty exciting, indeed.

I wrote more than 10k words and made more than $1k more in income in May, versus April. In fact, I wrote almost as much in May as I did during all of Q1. And the same goes for my income. That’s pretty impressive, and I can’t wait to see what my numbers will look like in Q2.

Pitches sent out in May: 2 (one sent to 6 publications, simultaneously)
Pitch rejections: 0
Pitch non-replies: 0
Pitch acceptances: 2 (unless you count the 5 that didn’t accept the simultaneous pitch, which you can)
Pitch reply with question: 0

Follow-ups with previous pitches: 2
Pitch rejections: 0
Pitch non-replies: 1
Pitch acceptances: 1

As I mentioned before, I didn’t get to pitch much in May… That will likely impact my income in June, which isn’t great. That’s actually something that my writing coach warned me about but, since I am lacking in time anyway, I’m okay with it for now.

Actually, what I am probably going to focus on in June is just pitching the stories that I *really* believe in. With limited time, my priorities come into a different kind of focus. I tried to pitch as much as possible before, and that worked fine… but now I can focus on pitching the stories I very much want to write and pitch them to the editors that I very much enjoy working with. We’ll see how it goes.

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