Want to Write for the Big Publications? Here's How Rachel Sugar Does It

I found writer Rachel Sugar by accident, by reading a transcript of NPR’s podcast Has the vegan business bubble burst? She was entertaining, comedic and full of fascinating intel.

So like any fan, I went to Rachel’s homepage to find out more. I discovered that for the last decade, Rachel has written for the biggies: The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Eater, New York magazine and Vox, among others. She writes often about food and on contemporary culture.

Then I wanted to know how she built her career and contacts. I asked to interview her, so that we can all learn from her. Even though she doesn’t think of herself as a role model, I do.

For interviews, I ask questions people while I type the answers madly, but in this case, Rachel wanted to write out her answers.

Q. How long have you been a freelance writer?

A. I was late to journalism, or at least, late to taking it seriously. I still feel behind. If I’d been serious in college! (She has a BA in Theater, English and Interpretation Theory from Swarthmore College. D) If I’d really applied myself right after! If I’d interned more!

I’d always been obsessed with magazines and grew up in a household that got two different local newspapers plus The New York Times. But I wanted to work in theater, and immediately after college, I was pretty focused on that. I wanted to do weird experimental clown stuff. But I also wanted to be wildly commercially successful, and also, I was pretty depressed.

That lead to bouncing around for a while, including an unpaid stint writing about books for what I thought of as Chicago’s alt-alt weekly, which turned out to be incredible. There was essentially no staff. I got to write about all the big books, books no one else would have ever let me review.

That led me back to New York, where I once again bounced around a bit, doing various writing-related things. Once I was working full-time, I felt intimidated by journalists and journalism. I toyed with grad school briefly, but dropped out pretty much immediately to work at a dating blog.

I had this conversation with my boss there about how I didn’t know what I was doing, that I wanted to do ‘real reporting’ but didn’t have any training. And he was like, ‘Well, what you do is, you pick up the phone…’ And obviously there’s more to it than that, but that really was excellent advice. I thought there was a secret code or something, some official way to do it, and there really isn’t, or if there is, I’ve gotten by so far without it.

Shortly after we all got laid off from that job — the company folded —my boss recommended me for a gig he couldn’t take at New York magazine, writing recaps of the TV show Top Chef, which led to some offers to do food stories, which eventually turned into my career, both as a staffer and a freelancer.