A thread about freelancing and fatherhood:

Toward the end of 2014, I moved to Cape Town in the hopes of establishing myself as an arts-and-culture journalist. At the time, I worked as a parliamentary reporter for an online youth publication.

But what I really wanted to do was write for men's magazines (FHM, GQ etc) and most of them were headquartered in Cape Town. We'll cut a long story short and say, I landed in Cape Town and, for the next three years, did nothing but drink, smoke and feel sorry for myself.

Which was fine, because the stakes were low. But in March 2017, my life took on a new dimension: my girlfriend fell pregnant with our son. I didn't know what being a father meant other than the fact that I now needed a lot of money VERY QUICKLY.

I was earning 13K at the time (half of which went to my rent) and it had become astoundingly clear that wasn't going to change soon. I was good at absolutely nothing but had, when I bothered trying, always managed to convince people to pay for something I wrote.

That saying - it's not what you know, it's who - quickly proved true. I managed to secure some freelance work at the City Press through Charl Blignuat's recommendation. The work I did in 2018 for M&G was thanks to Neo Maditla and TO Molefe.

Some publications pay R3 a word. Others half, a shocking number pay a little over a quarter of that. I've written 1000 plus word articles for less than a grand and 750-word articles for close to R4000. It absolutely sucks but, when you're starting out you take what you can.

All my writerly pretensions evaporated as soon as I found out I'd be responsible for another life. Fatherhood tends to beckon the muse. Before my son was born, I think I'd written (three?) freelance pieces from 2014 - 2017. I wrote, on average, two a month from when he was born