Job Q&A
by Eileen O'Reilly
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Elizabeth Royte is a freelance writer based in New York City. She writes for Harper's, Outside, National Geographic and LIFE Magazine. She has written extensively about the natural world and recently published a piece in The New York Times Magazine about women who survived the Rwandan genocide.

Monster.com: How did you get started as a writer?

Elizabeth Royte: I started as an intern at The Nation. Back then, I didn't want to be a writer, I wanted to be an editor. I was working as an assistant editor at GEO magazine when it folded, then I began writing small pieces for the Village Voice and the now-defunct East Village Eye. I supplemented my income by freelance copyediting, which I learned at The Nation.

Mc: Is copyediting a natural stepping-stone to writing?

ER: It's a good way to meet magazine people, but there's a danger of being pegged as a copy editor. Gradually, I got longer and longer writing assignments and I could give up copyediting.

Mc: Do you have a special subject that you write about, and is it important to have one?

ER: I write about lots of different things, but mainly people think of me as a science/environment writer. At first I thought I was in a rut, but then I realized it was valuable -- it helps editors hire you. You know the issues and you have the contacts. I discovered my specialty at a time when environmental issues were hot.

Mc: How did you choose that subject?

ER: My brother is an ecologist and I spent a lot of time outdoors growing up, camping, etc. I was always asking questions about why things were the way they were.

Mc: What is your day like?

ER: I get up -- I work at home -- I walk around the wall that separates my bedroom from my office and I turn on the computer and collect my email. Depending on the phase of the story I'm in, I'll either be on the phone or doing research online. I also write a column, "The Wild File," for Outside Magazine, in which I answer readers' questions about the natural world.

Mc: How do you get started writing a story?

ER: Most of my stories involve traveling. I take six or seven trips a year. Most of my research is in my notes from the specific trip. When I start to write I think about the best scenes I have and what each of these scenes illustrates. Then I make an outline, which starts out looking fairly traditional but gets gradually more detailed.

Mc: Your job sounds pretty exciting; is it?

ER: It can be exciting, it can be hard, it can be boring. It just depends on the subject. For the piece I'm writing now about wild dogs in Botswana, I had to get up at dawn to track the dogs and go back out at dusk. It was really fun, but there was a big chunk of time in the middle of the day with nothing to do. Also, the downside is being away from home when you don't want to be, missing my boyfriend, spending a lot of time in airports and eating alone in strange cities.

Mc: So, what are the good parts?

ER: Writing gives you a license to satisfy your curiosity and get people to answer your questions. Writing these stories is so personally satisfying to me. I really DO want to know why wild dogs developed highly social behavior.

Mc: How hard is it to make money writing for magazines?

ER: Writing for small publications, you are lucky if you get a dollar a word. Once you're established you can get at least a dollar or two a word. A place like Harper's pays far less than the going rate, but it's a great clip, a good magazine, and it can lead to other assignments.

Mc: How competitive is your field?

ER: I'm glad I'm not starting out today because there are fewer good places to get published. And for economic reasons, there are fewer editorial pages in those magazines and they're less willing to take chances on new writers.

Mc: What advice would you give would-be writers?

ER: It's not enough to write a letter introducing yourself and sending your clips. You need great ideas and you need to show how you'll do the story and why you are the only one who can do it. You get your clips by starting small. Smaller publications will pay you less but you'll develop your writing.

Mc: How did you end up in Rwanda writing about rape victims?

ER: I went to the Human Rights Film Festival and saw a Belgian film about women who were raped during the Rwandan genocide. I was so moved that I wanted to do something. I wanted to get out of my insular life in New York and a friend suggested writing about it. I wrote a query to The Times Magazine and they accepted it.

Mc: What was that experience like?

ER: I hadn't anticipated how circumscribed my access to people's lives would be. As a member of the foreign press, you stay at a hotel, you arrange interviews and hire drivers and interpreters and it all stops at five, because government offices close and your interpreter wants to go home. I spent my days listening to harrowing stories, then met with the other hacks to decide where we'd go drinking that night. It was very disjointed.

Mc: Did you like it?

ER: When I was done reporting my story, I immediately wanted to go to Burundi to cover a recent massacre but I had a prior commitment, in Buffalo. I was doing a story on giant pumpkin contests. Such is the freelance life.

Mc: So what does a freelance writer do after writing articles for years?

ER: The next career move for me is to write a sustained piece of nonfiction. The big question is whether I can maintain my interest in one subject for two years.