Passion for writing leads author to jobs with Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV and more
Before Amanda Caswell submitted her first work to a magazine, her grandmother warned her to be prepared for rejection.
Caswell was 7. The magazine published the story.
“My family always laughs about that,” Caswell said.
That Spark magazine piece launched a career that now features work with Nickelodeon, MTVNews, The Onion, Christian Science Monitor and many others. She currently writes for Comedy Central’s “@Midnight,” and freelances for national names like website Huffington Post and Johnson and Johnson.
In October, the Robbinsville resident released an ebook on Amazon.com entitled “The Write Life: Make a Living as a Freelance Writer.” In the book, Caswell shares her experiences as a freelancer, and advises readers how to make the career work for them.
“I was getting so many questions all the time from moms or friends in New York who were looking for work,” Caswell said. “I was answering it the same way to the point that I was copy and pasting the same questions. I thought I should just write a book and let people know how to do it and how easy it really is.”
In many ways, Caswell has prepared for the career for her whole life. Now 34, she loved to write from a young age. She would fill journals with her thoughts, starting a new notebook as soon as she used the last line of another. Her grandmother encouraged her to explore her creative side, and when a young Caswell decided she wanted to be a newscaster, the pair wrote a letter to NBC anchor Jane Pauley. Caswell, who grew up in the Midwest, noted both she and Pauley were from Indiana. The journalist replied with a handwritten message.
Each success built Caswell’s confidence with and love for the written word. She tried other kinds of work, but always came back to writing. In high school, she was fired from a job making bagels—the shop owner didn’t like that she made the bagels into the shape of a heart on Valentine’s Day. More recently, she was let go from a job at at gym because she didn’t sell enough memberships. Those experiences reaffirmed her feeling that she couldn’t ignore her will to write.
“If you get fired from a lot of jobs, then maybe you should go with your passion,” Caswell said. “I like doing my own thing because I can’t really get fired from doing that.”
Family and friends are convinced the other jobs could have worked out, too, if they captured her attention like writing does. They describe Caswell as ambitious, organized, disciplined, sociable and funny—all traits she uses to her benefit as a freelancer.
Caswell’s mother, Nancy Gaubatz, remembers Caswell coveting a position in Walt Disney World’s college internship program. Caswell hustled until she got the job.
During a stint with a radio station in Boston, Caswell befriended Ben Taylor—the son of musicians James Taylor and Carly Simon. She turned that connection into a job as Simon’s personal assistant, then as a ghostwriter for Simon followed by some writing for Ben Taylor. The experience helped her land writing jobs for a handful of musicians and bands.
“Amanda will never do anything she can’t master,” said Emmy Brandon, Caswell’s best friend. “She doesn’t do things halfway.”
Her life now requires her to be a master in a lot of domains. She works from her Robbinsville home, where she lives with her husband, Steve, and their 5-month-old son Tyler. She’ll start her work at 7 a.m. and not finish until after 10 p.m. She tries not to count the hours.
Working from home allows her the flexibility to care for Tyler, but also presents some challenges. She’ll try to work as much as she can, but sometimes Tyler won’t allow it.
“It’s hard because I do conference calls or Skype calls, and I just hold my breath that he doesn’t cry or need something while I’m doing my job,” Caswell said.
But she loves being around for her son, and it’s an added bonus she can look after him while working for media giants in New York and beyond.
She lived in New York for more than a decade, graduating from New York University with a bachelor’s in creative writing and later working in the city. Eventually, she yearned to escape for the suburbs, and followed her sister and mother to Lawrence in 2011. (The trio still get together every Sunday to run errands.) Caswell lived in Lawrence for three years before moving to Robbinsville last spring.
She made the jump to full-time freelancing a year ago, around the time of her relocation to Robbinsville. That period was full of transition for Caswell as she prepared for a move, a child and a new career path. It was a process of trial and error finding freelancing jobs and the right way to manage all of them. She started out ghostwriting ebooks before earning more work writing blog posts. Her posts cover a range of subjects, from dating advice sites to parenting and exercise blogs. Some of her most recent work online includes, “Furnace Maintenance for Dummies” and “10 Benefits to Using a Dehumidifier.”
“It’s so funny,” Caswell said. “Sometimes, I’m like, ‘I can’t believe I just wrote a blog about humidifiers.’ … No, I didn’t set out to do it, but I feel like I could write about anything.”
Caswell works off of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that lists her tasks for the day. She dedicates about one-third of her day to her job as a writer for @Midnight, a game show where a panel of three comedians joke about weird and viral things on the Internet. She found the job on Mediabistro, a media career advice and job finding website.
It’s her task to come up with whatever @Midnight’s producers need, whether it’s jokes for the comedians or the game show questions. A team of writers builds the show remotely via Skype, email and telephone. Caswell said her jokes range from pop culture to political to anything else that can be turned into a hashtag.
The show allows her the chance to write comedy, something she always aspired to do. She’s grateful for the chance, but she’s even more thankful she has been able to achieve it in her own way.
“My initial goal was to only do funny stuff,” Caswell said. “I wanted to be a humor writer. But that’s really hard. One of my friends was 40 before he could. He was a waiter for his entire life. He knew he wanted to be a writer for SNL. Finally, he did. But I didn’t want to wait until I was 40.”
Caswell’s ebook, “The Write Life: Make a Living as a Freelance Writer,” can be found on amazon.com by searching “Amanda Caswell.”
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