Sylvia Howe explains how a freelance writer can become an expert in anything, given a little time
Sylvia Howe
Sylvia Howe is a freelance journalist writing on travel, interviews and profiles, homes and gardens, food, health, family, countryside, and sustainability for publications ranging from The Times to The Lady. When she isn’t writing for work she works on her novel. She tells us how she got her big break by entering the Vogue Talent Contest.
What inspired you to become a writer?
Reading. Enjoying writing and having an unspecified itch to do it!
Did you receive any formal journalistic training?
No, just an English degree and A-levels.
How did you find your first journalism job?
One cold and rainy day, at home with sinusitis and feeling snuffly and sorry for myself, I decided to enter the Vogue Talent Contest.
I was the only finalist in my year to be offered a job on the magazine, and started as a sub editor which, completely fortuitously, gave me the best possible training I could have had.
After a year of this, I became Assistant Travel Editor, writing and travelling a lot, with my own page each month.
Then when I went freelance, I just rang people up and offered them ideas, some of which they accepted, some not.
Where are we likely to see your work?
Wherever I can sell it. Most recently Natural Health and The Lady, but am upping the ante this year and spreading my net wider.
Do you specialise in a particular topic or genre?
No, I am a hack! Give me time to research and I become the world expert on something, which flies out of my mind a week later.
I prefer writing travel, interviews and health and lifestyle pieces with a bit of food thrown in! But if it is a business brochure, I enjoy the challenge of making something dry read well and look good. Re fiction, I like description and making a character live. Dialogue, real true-to-life dialogue, is the hardest, I find
What are the biggest challenges of being a freelance journalist?
Self doubt - dealing with the little voice inside that says: “‘this is rubbish”; “Will I ever work again?”.
Selling your work. Never being able to say no in case nobody ever asks me again.
What are the biggest perks?
Freedom, freedom, freedom. Of time, subject matter, workplace.
How do you divide your time between journalism and fiction writing?
Journalism pays so I write what I am commissioned to write by deadline. Fiction is a discipline too, and I am training myself to write every day. This year I am sticking to this.
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
I don’t have just one. Travelling; getting a job at Vogue; editing the Courier for the European Commission; doing radio reporting for the BBC - I’d love to do more of this.
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
Stick at it, be disciplined and don’t worry about rejection. If you are good you’ll be OK!
For more on Sylvia, please visit www.sylviahowe.com
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