Having a writing career: Interveiw with Rebecca (Journalist and writing coach)
I had the pleasure of having Rebecca Weber on the podcast. She is a journalist and writing coach, most of which she does remotely. She also has her own podcast called The Writing Coach Podcast. I like talking to other people about different types of careers since I mainly talk about small businesses and side hustles. We get to see how they handle other types of jobs and how they do so as an introvert. I always find that interesting!
Rebecca talks about how she came into journalism and coaching. She originally had a background in education and taught English for a while. Then, she took a semester off for editing and thought she would be really good at it. She wound up doing it for a few years and started freelancing on the side about fifteen years ago. After freelancing for a while, she thought she would share what she learned and became a writing coach, which is something that has organically grown on the side for four years now.
She finds being able to work remotely and be a freelancer helps her be much more productive. She can do most of it when it fits into her schedule and can take control over the sensory details. Not having to deal with the chit chat of an office setting makes a world of difference in her life in both aspects.
Being a freelancer doesn’t come without its struggles, though. Rebecca didn’t come from a journalism background or have any formal training. She feels as if she made every mistake under the sun when she was starting out, just learning how to do the writing part well, doing it consistently, and writing what the readers would actually like to read. She also struggled at finding good stories and articles that she could pitch. She feels as if those things held her back, but she was always able to find solutions and keep going. As a writing coach, she found out most people needed help more with the mindset side of things, rather than hearing what they needed to do.
Even as an introvert, Rebecca likes getting out and socializing. She loves having some social interaction, especially one on one. She likes to show the stories in their own environment and do on the ground reporting. In her work, she looks at the kinds of stories she wants to do, thinks about how the real world reporting is going to look like, and finds a balance to do it all. That means spreading things out, interspersing on the ground reporting with days to do the writing. This shows that you can have a job that anyone can do, while doing it in your own way.
When she felt like she couldn’t communicate very well in her newsletters, Rebecca decided that it was too limiting and started her own podcast. She explains how the podcast episodes are short, but have so much content packed into them, with the conversation, the depth, and more. She loves how she can give more information and provide more sequence, as it is something that her listeners can catch up on instead of not being able to catch up on the newsletters.
