On the fourth month of the year - which is my favorite month - I had my worst month financially since I started writing full time about four years ago.
Look. I was scared. Then, I had to pay my credit card bill - which had my baby girl dog’s emergency vet bills, so it was unusually high. And my bank account was shockingly low.
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The last time I had been more broke than that was about 14 years ago, when I got pregnant. True story = I had a car, a dog, a cat, $300 in the bank, a part-time job, and was living with family. Now that was scary.
I remembered my husband telling me something recently about business owners who swore they would have never “made it” if they weren’t broke when they got started - or at some point. I thought about this and wondered if it was true…
The more I thought about being this old and being this broke, I figuratively caca-ed myself more and more. I’ve heard people say that something really put a fire under their ass, well… maybe that heat was from figurative caca.
Because the more scared I got - as the days passed with my quiet inbox, selling zero pitches - the more I grinded. I wanted to give up. I wondered if writing was over. But that made me mad, and so I pitched and pitched and pitched… for weeks.
Until I sold twice as much in my horrible, awful month in only two weeks.
The lesson I’ve learned is that there can come a lot of good from pressure. It’s a terrifying way to cook anything - in the pressure cooker - but have you ever had anything that was cooked in a pressure cooker? It’s always fire.
A place to pitch:
Exciting news: BuzzFeed Editorial is expanding our freelance roster!
What we’re looking for:
Timely/trending writers covering pop culture & celebrity, internet trends, and lifestyle.
Are you someone who follows celeb drama like it’s your job? Are you the friend who sends the group chat a TikTok trend before it’s even a trend? Do you have a wealth of pop culture knowledge that lives in your head rent-free? If so, we’d like to hear from you!
Ideally looking for writers who can accept and turn around timely assignments quickly, i.e., within 1-2 days, or, depending on the assignment, 1-3 hours.
If this sounds like you:
Please send your pitches (whether pitching yourself or a specific article) to buzzfeedpitches@buzzfeed.com. For more information on what to include in your pitch and the kind of content we’re looking for at the moment, refer to the page or pitch sheet below.
We look forward to hearing from you!
2026 Pitch Sheet:
Write on,
Ashley
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