freelance ends meet Making


Famine to feasts London-based Michele Kirsch also works as a chef I started out as a freelance in 1986 on the NME. Then I began


writing on lifestyle issues for broadsheets including The Times, The Observer and The Guardian Magazine. By 2009-10, it had got harder to place pieces. Supplements in the


daily papers got really, really thin. When I first started, they were fat with loads of pages to fill. Then people started tightening their belts. It reached a nadir when I got agency copywriting work describing


identical bras in 50 different ways using search engine optimisation words. A year or two before I was doing cover stories for Times2. My marriage broke up around 2010-11 and I moved out. For about


14 | theJournalist


a year, due to ill health, I was on employment and support allowance. Once I got a bit better, I had to find a course or work. That’s how I got into catering. For a year, I just washed glasses. I get depressed thinking about it. I also joined a cleaning agency and scrubbed houses. Now I work as a vegetarian chef at the Trew Era Cafe in East


London. I’m really happy there. I combine this with blogging, editing and some feature writing. A year ago a literary agent contacted me after reading a feature I’d written for a national newspaper about my experiences as a cleaner. I’m currently editing my book. All any freelance wants is certainty. If freelancing were stable and


the work was there, I would definitely be doing it all the time, because when it was good it was great.


PMPHOTOS


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