A typical workday for freelancer Ashley Abramson

Ashley Abramson’s freelance writing career started with a bold move: cold-emailing Arianna Huffington a pitch for the Huffington Post in 2014. Though Abramson had written for her high school and college papers, and had studied English as an undergrad, she was a new stay-at-home mom at the time — not a journalist. 

And yet, Huffington personally accepted the pitch — a humor-infused listicle about new parenthood — and Abramson’s interest in covering health and parenting took off. At first, she contributed personal essays to mom blogs like Scary Mommy for fun. But after her son hit preschool, Abramson started to monetize her hobby by working on stories that included reporting and expert insight.

“I realized how fun and important it was to be able to demystify evidence-based information in a way that laypeople can understand and easily digest and apply to their lives,” Abramson said. She also realized her drive could be especially useful to parents who were sleep-deprived and needed clear, concise answers to their many questions. “Having information that was easy to understand quickly was really important, and I wanted to be that person [to deliver it],” she said. 

I talked to Abramson — now a Milwaukee-based journalist who’s been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Guardian, among other outlets — about her career trajectory, her daily life these days and her advice for other health freelancers. 

What was that learning curve like — going from blogger to journalist? 

My first paid health-adjacent story was for Refinery 29 in 2018. It was about some of the medical risks of the “crunchy mom” mentality. 

I didn’t even know how to find experts. I think I asked my son’s pediatrician and a friend who was a doctor if I could interview them. They were like, “Oh, you have to go through PR.” Then, I just Googled and got connected to a university medical center. I interviewed a pediatrician or two with the guidance of my editors, who I still work with today. 

It’s still one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. I realized that as a journalist, I can have access to experts on topics that I want to learn about for my own health and my family’s health, but make a public health impact at the same time. 

I also had a journalist-mom friend who was in the trenches with me. We figured this all out together. We texted every day about who we should pitch and what ideas would be great at Health or Self or Allure. Slowly but surely, as I built up my portfolio, I had more leverage to pitch. And now, it’s all I do. 

What kind of stories are you writing now? 

My bread and butter is health service. I’ve covered nutrition and sleep and women’s health and sex and relationships, but also parenting and children’s health and infectious diseases and breast cancer. I don’t think there’s a health topic that I haven’t covered, and that’s what I love about this because I get to learn so much about so many different things.

What does your daily life look like these days?

As a parent and with my personality type, flexibility is why I freelance. I can have weeks where I’m working 50-plus hours, and I can have weeks where I’m on vacation and not working at all. In the summers, I work way less, because my kids are home and they’re young enough that they need a parent available. And during the school year, I work more to make up for it.

On a weekly basis, I tend to plan around appointments and existing commitments, whether that’s a kid’s pediatrician appointment or my own therapy appointment or going to the gym. I usually have one appointment like that per day.

I typically start working after I drop my kids off at school at 8 a.m. I pick them up at 3 p.m., and usually work for about two hours after that. I do really well working in three- to four-hour chunks at a time. Anything more than that, and I tend to lose steam and it compromises the quality of my reporting and writing. 

That 3 to 5 p.m. chunk where I feel the most chaos and pressure — my kids are home, I need to start dinner at 5 p.m., it’s noisy, my kids have friends over — I’m actually the most productive because I like to work under pressure. So I’m pretty efficient, and I don’t really stress about having certain hours that I’m working, other than knowing I need to maximize the time when my kids are out of the house for calls and interviews.

What’s your home office setup like? 

My husband is a software developer, and we both work from home. We have a dedicated office and we have a desk adjacent to our dining room. Both workspaces are identical, so either of us can hook up our laptop and work at either one.

The upstairs office is usually for meetings or interviews because it’s a more private space, but the downstairs area is right by the coffee and the snack drawer, and it gets better light. So there’s not a consistent space where I work. The overarching theme of flexibility is just really important to me.

Any recent stories you’re excited about? 

I just did a big feature for the American Psychological Association’s magazine about Dungeons and Dragons therapy. That was really interesting to get immersed in the space of how psychologists are using tabletop role-playing games to help their clients engage with therapy. There aren’t really studies about it yet, but there’s lots of anecdotal evidence that role playing in and of itself is a really powerful tool. 

I also got to write a quick online story for Consumer Reports about measles. It basically answered questions like, “My baby’s not a year old yet, should I get them the vaccine early?” 

And then, I am doing a package for my local Milwaukee Magazine about the pros and cons of telehealth. It’s been really cool to be connected with local physicians at the Medical College of Wisconsin for that. 

How do you find community as a freelancer? 

I’m a very extroverted, outgoing, social person, and so talking to experts on the phone is a really stimulating, fun thing for me, as is trying to stay in touch with editors and finding new ones to work with. 

As for other journalists, when I find someone who’s written similar stories for similar publications, I’ll usually reach out and introduce myself and try to build a relationship, whether that’s hopping on a Zoom or just emailing to run things by each other every once in a while.

I don’t live in New York, so there aren’t a lot of folks in my area that I know of who are doing this. But I do try to stay connected with people at Milwaukee Magazine. I go to a lot of their events and have developed a close relationship with some of the editors there. 

What advice do you have for other health freelancers, or aspiring freelancers? 

Don’t be afraid to be a generalist before you find your niche. I had to start with entry-level type stuff like personal essays and listicles and e-commerce, and then use the clips that I had to pivot to new spaces. So using your existing work to transition to new topics, new areas, new publications is a really valuable thing.

Another tip is to stay on top of the news cycle — and I don’t necessarily mean politics. With the fires in California, for one, there were so many ways to cover service angles like how natural disasters affect mental health or whether you need to wear an N95 mask outside if you live nearby. So I try to keep an eye on what’s happening — even cultural phenomenons like Taylor Swift or Coachella — and find health or mental health topics to spin off of that.