We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jenny Adams. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jenny below.

Jenny, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I work primarily as a freelance travel writer. Certain years, I’ve made great money. Others, not so much. In a global pandemic, it turns out no one needs a freelance travel writer and photographer.

This job is, in some ways, all the job seems to be. You get paid to go travel, to dine lavishly, to soak up amazing cities and meet cool people. Then, come home and create a piece on it. However, what people don’t see is the other side of this career. You’re alone. A lot. Relationships can really take a hit. There is no health insurance. The job comes with zero safety net. Hello, pandemic!

It also isn’t you merely discussing whatever you want. You have to pitch ideas to editors before you go somewhere, and you have to build a thick skin, because you are going to hear, “no, I don’t want that,” more often than, “yes, that’s a great idea.”

To make a full-time living, I say I work primarily as a travel journalist, because I seek out other writing opportunities to bolster my financial base. I work in photography, as well. I also create copy for brands, from web site copy to brochures and internal marketing packages. These days, the brands have a lot more cash flow than publications.

Jenny, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a writer and a photographer. I started out working as an intern at a magazine during graduate school and eventually rose to the role of associate editor. I quit to start my freelance writing business — Jenny Adams Freelance — in 2007 and by 2010, I had enrolled in the School of Visual Arts in New York City, to add a photography component.

For the last 20 years, I’ve largely covered travel stories for publications, from small city papers to magazines like Conde Nast Traveler and National Geographic. I also work with brands, both lofty and little, from start-up single-person companies to Pepsi and Penfold Wines. I help businesses with compelling web site copy, internal marketing packages, brochures and company tag lines. I’ve written two books on New Orleans along the way, and I now reside there. At the moment, I’m about 400 pages into writing a horror novel set in the city.

What I’m most proud of?
All of the incredible, interesting, worthy, wonderful people and places I’ve gotten to not only adventure with and to, but then also highlight in various ways.

There is a Mark Twain quote:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

I believe that. I think travel helps to break down fear, racism, boundaries, anger, poverty, and greed. It broadens ones mind, and if done correctly, it links culture and people.
It’s a real honor to work in the field of travel writing, and, coming from a lineage of five women before me, all of whom were writers and photographers, it’s a way to honor my own family and heritage.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

In my earliest days of working as a freelance writer, around 2007/2008, I often had photographers journeying along with me. They would be on a trip to capture our moments visually. There was discussion of what we planned to feature heavily within a topic, and they would shoot to that. I started to notice, particularly as iPhone began to increase it’s camera capabilities, and as budgets were slashed at magazines, that I was asked ‘if’ I had taken any photos. Editors always wanted these for free, since the writers weren’t professional photographers. I also noticed that the PR firms were hiring photographers to come in and shoot their restaurant and bar clients, so that they would be able to just provide stock imagery.
In 2010, I enrolled in a few photography courses and bought a Nikon. It was one of the best decisions of my life. Not only was I now able to market myself as a writer who could head to Hong Kong or Myanmar, capturing not only the story but also the imagery, I was able to charge for those images. My magazine rates went from around $1000 per story to $2000.
I was more valuable to editors, because I could do both. I also began contacting PR firms and I would shoot all their stock imagery of cocktails and dishes and restaurant design.
My side hustle became a full component of my business after about 2 years, and personally, it’s been incredibly rewarding. I love the art form. When I moved to New Orleans, I got interviews with a few galleries and I now am represented by one, and my work is hanging in a hotel, in a couple of restaurants and in several medical buildings.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

My job in travel writing is particularly lonely at points, and I think people who work in other fields might cruise through Instagram or flip through a magazine and dream of a big, white hotel bed or a gorgeous beach. They might think it’s the breeziest job in the world.

As a travel writer, others are paying for you to go somewhere. No one is coming with you. The pace is grueling. We are often in a destination covering something that should take a week in only 48 hours.
That means waking up at 5am, doing multiple hotel tours, eating in six to eight restaurants per day, talking to 20 people and going to bed at midnight in a time zone where your body thinks it’s 9am,
It means taking copious notes. If you also produce the photos, you are hauling tripods and lenses. Your digestion takes a major hit. As do your relationships. I was single for six years. I would come home for a week, maybe two, and there was no time to start anything serious. I was very in love with my work. But, I often came home to find my friends had fresh people they were hanging out with, the inside jokes didn’t make sense, and jet lag was rampant. I missed a lot of birthdays and a ton of weddings.

I would not go back and change anything, but it’s something that I think people are shocked to realize when they truly dig into what this job entails. I loved every minute of the experience of being a full-time, very busy, international travel journalist. However, as I began to approach 40 (I’m 43 now), I took a little step back and began focusing more on my home city, more on American destinations, more on family and friends. I don’t regret that either. It’s forced me to shift my career and my coverage slightly.

Sometimes, I see a photo of Cambodia or Uganda, and I long to be back out there, totally single, sweaty and swatting mosquitos and being totally out of my element for a minute in a huge city where I don’t speak the language.

Then, I look over and realize I have a dog and a cat and a husband. Can you have all those things at the same time? Can you be on the road 199 days a year and still make time for a deep, nuanced home life? Perhaps, but I couldn’t. Not really. Life has many twists and turns. Your career can, too. Creativity can and should have those twists, as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jennyadamsfreelance.com
• Instagram: @jennyadams_22 ; @jennyadamsfreelance
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennyadamsfreelance
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-adams-689a13192/
• Twitter: @jennyadams22
• Other: My photography is represented by Where Y’Art Gallery in New Orleans. The link is https://whereyartworks.com/artist/jenny-adams/1321

Image Credits
Images by Jenny Adams Freelance