Freelance Writer and Author Maria Del Russo
Maria Del Russo decided to be a writer before she realized how much she loved it. “I had been training for a career as a professional ballet dancer in high school (seriously — it feels like another life), and around the time of my junior year, I realized I didn't love dance enough to make it my sole focus. Around this time, my English teacher pulled me aside and told me I had a talent for writing. She was the advisor for the school paper, and encouraged me to join — so I did.”
She enjoyed it enough to make it her major in college, and that is where she really fell in love with it. “One of the adjunct professors in the communications department worked for the New York Times. He taught me how to craft a story and make it this dynamic, living, breathing thing. I minored in English, too, where I read a ton, and my Engish professor was also instrumental in opening my eyes to so many different types of writing.” Maria wrote for the newspaper and for her school’s literary magazine in school, and that is when her love for writing really started.
Maria’s career was built upon her essay writing, thanks to her sex and relationships column at Refiner29 and her subsequent stories as a freelancer. “But my real passion is in-depth feature stories talking to people, researching data, and crafting it into a narrative that teaches people something about the world or about themselves. Writers have the ability to forge connections between people and to make them feel less alone. That's what I love most about it.”
When looking at her career, she says that she has been lucky in that she has been able to write for a lot of really incredible publications that, “when I was a little baby journalism student in college, I would have only dreamed of writing for: The Cut, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Elle Magazine, InStyle. The list goes on. But I've also had the opportunity to flex my muscles in the indie space, for print publications like Gossamer.”
In college, Maria made it her mission to network. This was back during a time when there were a ton of mixers and events in the publishing space. “It felt a bit more accessible back then. When I was a junior in college, I blanketed the industry with my resume to find an internship and landed one in the beauty closet of Women's Health. I kept in touch with my editor after the internship ended and she put me up for my first job at PopSugar. Networking at beauty events led to my second full-time job at Refinery29, where I was able to build up my profile thanks to their audience.”
As a freelancer, her career is 95% sheer force of will and 5% who she knows. “I’m sure my writing has something to do with it, but so much of this industry and how you perform in it comes down to reputation. I make sure I'm constantly staying in touch with editors who I've written for and who I want to write for.” Maria says that she always makes sure to be gracious when it comes to edits. Beyond that, she always tries to be kind. “You never know if the assistant editor who is fact-checking your work will become the person you're pitching at a dream magazine in the future.”
The advice Maria would give to someone who wants to begin building their portfolio or begin writing for more publications would be to not get discouraged. "When you're starting out, especially if you're starting off as a freelancer without prior experience at a big publication, you're going to hear "no" more than you hear "yes." That's the nature of the game — editors at big publications want to see prior work before they start assigning work to you. So you have to start small. Pitch smaller blogs, or start your own that you contribute to regularly. As you start to build momentum, the opportunities to write for larger publications will become easier to nab.”
Maria wants to add that you shouldn’t be afraid of part-time work. “The majority of my income comes from part-time work writing SEO stories, updating stories for publications, and consulting. As a freelancer, it's really difficult to make money simply writing essays or feature stories. They take a lot of effort, so it's damn near impossible to write more than one of these at a time — and they don't pay enough for you to be able to live off of one at a time. Having that part-time work as a cushion will enable you to truly spend the time cultivating good ideas for those bigger features, which means they'll have a better shot at getting picked up somewhere.”
Maria is an author as well. Her first book was a collection of acts of love — “Kind of like a tip-based collection.” She says that there is not a super exciting story because the publisher came to her and asked if she wanted to write it. “I wrote it over the summer of 2018 at this little cafe in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, called Primrose Cafe. I'd sit at a little table by the window, down multiple cups of Earl Grey tea with cream, and listen to my writing playlist on Spotify (which is a weird mismatch of artists like New Order, Carla Bruni, Weezer, Run DMC, and Leonard Cohen). It took me a little over three months to write the whole thing.”
While Maria doesn’t want to dive too deep into the book she is currently writing, she lets us know that it is a memoir about the beginning of her freelance career. “I got laid off from Refinery29 in December of 2017, and what followed was a period of anxiety, missteps, and deep depression. The book is a retelling of that time in my life, but it's also a bit of a roadmap for would-be freelancers. I hope that people will read it for the story, but also for the tips and lessons I impart through my own experience.”
The process of writing this book has been incredibly difficult, especially through a global pandemic and with so much unrest being broadcasted on the news at all times. “I haven't gotten as much done as I'd have hoped. I have a hard time doing this type of writing at home. While I can get my work writing done in my home office, I prefer to do my book writing in a coffee shop or library. I set a goal of at least 1,000 words for myself every time I sit down, and typically surpass that. But being outside of my normal "work" space enforces that this writing I do for myself — not for other people.”
In five years, Maria hopes to have the book written and published by then. “I’d really love to continue helping freelancers through my consulting, whether that's by publishing digital guides, or digital courses, or by following in my college professor's footsteps and being an adjunct. I also just hope to continue writing, with a focus on longer features.” She would love to be able to write in Paris for an extended period of time and travel more with her boyfriend. “Maybe kids, Maybe a house upstate where I can write. I've also not ruled out going back to full-time – I would love the opportunity to mentor young writers and help shape the voice of a site. But who knows! I'm content with my career as it stands right now, and excited about how many different ways it can go in the future.”