More Thoughts on "Weird Cars" and New Audiences

On finding new pressures and doubts at new venues.

I've loved writing opinion pieces since about the dawn of my journalistic career. For my college paper, I wrote a series of scathing editorials, mostly focused on the school administration's missteps in managing the students' fledgling laptop program -- doing tech journalism, I suppose, before I really even knew what tech journalism was.

I've since written many weightier opinion pieces over the years, at CNET and Engadget and elsewhere, but my most recent one felt a little different. As I've been embarking on this freelance journey the past few months it's been an opportunity both to stretch my legs as a writer (which I'm loving by the way), but also to try and find new homes for my stuff and new audiences to entertain and inform. As I'm learning, though, that all comes with a host of new pressures, expectations, and doubts.

My most recent opinion piece, the "Weird Cars" editorial that was published on The Verge (it's here if you haven't read it yet), actually started out as something I just wrote on a whim. But, a conversation with an editor I greatly respect at a very esteemed publication encouraged me to try and find an editorial home for it. The Verge, I'm happy to say, became that home.

Writing and publishing these things feels a little different when you're freelance. At CNET and Engadget I got to know my audience, got to the point where I could more or less expect which sentences would stick like barbs and which would go down smooth like butter. When positioning this piece for a big, new audience, I confess I was an awful lot more nervous than usual as I gave it the final polish before sending it away for publication.

But then I always have a gnawing sense of dread when writing something like that. For me, opinion pieces usually start with a singular "Hmm" kind of moment, then they bounce around in my head for a few days, growing and picking up thesis points along the way before I finally start pouring the lot out into a text editor. It’s then the doubts start creeping in.

This latest piece formed quickly enough, but as I wrote I kept struggling mentally with two lingering doubts.

The first was that I wouldn't be able to come up with enough weird examples to make my point. That, it turned out, wouldn't be a problem. I was awash in wonderful weirdness. After the first draft I went back and even added a few more (the Hummer and Rivian examples), but I now realize I missed one very glaring example: Every styling exercise that BMW has released over the past few years. (Again, as I said in my Jalopnik review also this week, I'm a fan.)

The bigger concern for me, however, was the central, gnawing doubt I get as I'm trying to wrap up one of these things: Is this thing any good? Is this a point worth making? Does anyone else give a damn? I expected all my friends and colleagues to pepper my mentions on social media of earlier examples of weird cars, thus calling my thesis short-sighted and vacuous. 

But instead the reaction has been positive, more so than I could have imagined, and for that I'm extremely grateful. That Elizabeth Blackstock over at Jalopnik took the time to write a piece in support of my take meant the world. 

Freelancing is a lot like walking the tightrope without a net every day: You'd best bring your A-game to every assignment else it could be your last. Two-and-change months in, I'm finding that I'm enjoying that pressure. 

And, by the way, I still have plenty of opinions left on plenty of topics. Look for those at an inbox near you soon -- assuming I can keep those lingering doubts at bay.