One of the hardest things about working for yourself as a journalist or producer is keeping in the habit of finding, researching and producing stories.
At first, you’re not as exposed to them as much as you would be in a newsroom. Inspiration is hard to come by. Good contacts even harder.
It’s easy this way to find your creativity and your productivity stalling. It happened to me when I started. You get tied down with short-term gigs which bring in the money, but which aren’t what you went freelance to do.
Here’s my solution: get a project.
Design some kind of project which gets you producing some form of content at least once a week. It could be a project to document the residents of a unique town or of an estate about to be torn down; it could be to get stories from local elderly people and put them into multimedia; it could be to put in a Freedom of Information Request once a week and run a blog posting the results.
You don’t need to get it commissioned first, or even someone to pitch it to. You don’t need to know it’ll make you any money. Just go out and do it.
If anything it’ll get you out of the house. But more importantly it’ll get you practicing your storytelling, get you in front of people who may have story ideas, and give you content for your portfolio. You can share it too and get feedback with sites like Finding the Frame, and events like Foto8′s monthly Slideslam Carousel.
Stuck for ideas?
The video sharing website Vimeo runs a Weekend Project for its users to contribute to, err, over the weekend.
This weekend they want stories:
Find or create an audio recording of an interview that you’ve made with a friend, family, or anyone with an interesting story. Take that audio and illustrate it whether through animation, abstract imagery, or shoot footage you think best complements and helps show the audio you’ve found or recently recorded.
Deadline’s Tuesday, and you get a Vimeo Plus account if you win.
If you’ve got a quiet few days ahead, my advice is take part.
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