How I Ended Up Writing for Teen Vogue
Or rather, here’s what you can and can’t replicate.
For those who have been following my career trajectory for the past 12 months, it’s gotten a little nuts in the best possible way. Over a year ago in March 2016, I wrote an article about my writing success in college, which I published roughly two weeks before I applied for a Teen Vogue gig I saw online.
As a lot of you fine people reading this probably know, Teen Vogue has kind of exploded since December 2016, and lots of people from all demographics and generations are reading it now.
Thus, here’s the point of this post: The question I get asked constantly on Twitter, Facebook, and email (and obviously IRL) is how I ended up writing two to five articles a day for Teen Vogue and then subsequently taking on a bunch of other really cool opportunities. I think a lot of people believe that by recreating my steps, they’ll somehow end up in the exact same place or that there’s some secret sauce involved in the whole thing.
However, I can assure you that there’s not really anything wowza about this sauce. As I’ll lay out here, circumstances change constantly, and often, the best opportunities are about luck and then working your hardest once those too-good-to-be-true moments occur.
So, how’d I end up writing for Teen Vogue, you ask? Here are the three biggest things to take away.
I Got Lucky
This section is the shortest because, quite frankly, it’s the most boring.
I hate to break it to you, but you’re not going to be able to replicate this step. A little over a year ago, I saw a job listing for a freelance writer position for the site, I applied, and I got it. My editor later told me that she’d been inundated with applications and picked two at random. Guess which lucky lady was one of those two?
My mother says that sometimes God gives you a free one. This was just that.
I Worked Incredibly Hard
Women have a tendency to downplay their accomplishments, so I won’t downplay mine here: Once I got the gig at Teen Vogue, I worked my goddamn ass off.
As any editor who’s worked with me can tell you, I take virtually every assignment, and if I don’t, there’s usually a very good reason why. I write at superhuman speeds, I’m reliable, and I learn quickly. I wrote almost 500 articles in my first year with Teen Vogue; you don’t get to that point by just sitting around.
Personally, I also feel like I caught a second lucky break within the lucky break, because although I was technically hired as a tech writer for the site, I wrote all kinds of lifestyle and news coverage, including politics. Once again, I happened to be in the right place at the right time in November when Big Orange was elected president; I’d covered politics for the site previously, and this was a time when there was a need for people who could write about politics. I worked really hard at my writing once the opportunity presented itself.
For me, my Teen Vogue experience has been a confirmation of the fact that lucky breaks are great, but the easy ride ends there. I’ve had to earn my stripes every day at Teen Vogue and at every other publication I’ve written for and/or write for now.
Again, I apologize for the lack of secret sauce here. I wish I had something flashier to say.
I Worked Incredibly Hard Long Before Teen Vogue
I think one of the most frustrating parts of having my professional profile elevated a little bit is that people act like this all just came out of thin air. And while there were elements of luck into getting the position followed by pure grit as I ran with the opportunity, Teen Vogue certainly wasn’t my first time putting pen to paper (er, cursor to Microsoft Word). Hell to the no.
Again, if you want to hear more about my writing experiences in college, you can check out my longer Medium post on that as well as my LinkedIn. But here’s the long story short: I wrote over 1,000 pieces of published content during my four years of college about virtually every topic under the sun (except fashion and beauty of course, because oof, that’d be disastrous). I built several successful blogs during that time and learned about editorial strategy, social media distribution, email marketing, headline writing, networking within the industry, and so much more.
Am I an expert at any of those things? Ha, that’s cute. Of course not. But all of these experiences made me much more confident in my abilities so that when an opportunity like Teen Vogue came along (and then subsequently took off into the stratosphere while I just happened to be clinging onto the spaceship for dear life by a single pinky finger), I’d be prepared to go along with it.
The bottom line is this: Whether you believe in the 10,000-hour rule or not, I put in my 10,000 hours long before Teen Vogue came around. Every opportunity prepares you for what comes next, and I can say without a doubt that I wouldn’t have been able to handle what’s happened from writing for Teen Vogue if not for the blood (yes, I once cut my finger on my laptop!), sweat, and tears that came from the four years before that.
What Advice Do I Have for You?
I get a lot of emails nowadays from people, particularly young women, asking about how they can end up in a career trajectory like mine.
First off, thank you to all of you for the kind words and the ego boost. As someone who was told she was a terrible writer in the 10th grade, the encouragement still means a lot.
Second, here are my three key pieces of advice:
- Find inspiration from other people’s careers, but don’t try to copy them. Circumstances change constantly, and unless you can replicate a person’s entire life from birth until now in the same vacuum of time they lived it, it’s not going to work. That said, stalking people’s LinkedIn and Twitter profiles is an incredibly efficient way to know what sorts of opportunities are out there. Some trusty internet sleuthing will help you figure out very generally how people got where they are, and I think that’s super useful.
- If you want to be a writer, write. I know, that sounds obvious, but you’d be shocked how often people reach out to me saying they want to be writers when they’ve only written a single blog post on their Tumblr. The fact is, you don’t know if you actually love something until you do it under the worst circumstances (like writing about Kylie Jenner’s Snapchat habits during finals week while having an allergy attack), and you can’t do that unless you’re actually writing consistently.
- Oh, and write a lot about a lot of different things. I’m going to take the “just write!” advice a step further: You need to be writing all the time, and you shouldn’t just be writing what your ~dream beat~ is. I’ve seen so many great people sabotage themselves by only trying to get writing gigs in a very specific vertical (“I want to be a sci-fi film critic or it’s a bust!”) or only when the timing lines up. Real talk: Great opportunities require sacrifice, and they hardly line up perfectly with what’s going on in your life. Dive in, forgo some sleep, and write as much as you can about a lot of different topics. Obviously much can be said about writing for free or writing about things you don’t necessarily want associated with your name, but you’re smart; use your discretion.
Anyways, that’s all of I’ve got for today, y’all.
***
I’m a writer, editor, and social media manager. In recent months, I’ve been published on Teen Vogue, Refinery29, Glamour, TIME, Newsweek, Forbes, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, and Mashable.
Say hey to me:
