National Freelancers Day profile – freelance writing and speaking

June 17th 2021 is National Freelancers Day. Ammaarah Zayna is a frontline worker in a domestic abuse charity, but also works in her spare time as a writer, educator and speaker. She spoke to us about her experiences.

So first, what led you into your roles – how long have you been involved in domestic violence work, and how did you start to build your writing, speaking and education work around that?

I have been in the domestic abuse sector since I was about 19. I started off as a volunteer for a women's organisation and I have always been really passionate about social justice. I think it comes with the territory – my mum works in education, my grandpa was a probation officer. There’s always been a really strong sense of community and working with the community in my family. When I was 19, I recognised amongst my friends, my family and within my own personal life that there was a massive gap on awareness about domestic abuse. I was always really passionate about gender equality and have been a feminist since day one. I started volunteering and basically just worked my way up into a paid position, moving from the generic sector (supporting any self-identifying woman) to specifically working with Black and minoritised women, reflecting my own experiences of marginalisation and how difficult it is for Black, minority and migrant women to come forward. Then in 2019 I moved to a specialist organisation, and I've been there ever since. My work there is predominantly casework now, one-to-one advocacy with clients, but it does also include a lot of work on awareness-raising. That includes working with community groups and educating professionals on how to best support people who are dealing with domestic abuse and other forms of gender-based violence.

And then it's actually a funny story how I got into writing. I’ve always loved to write, but I never really thought that my work needed to be read or was worth reading. I had a diary and I used to just keep all my thoughts to myself. Then one day a friend of mine contacted me and said gal-dem [an online publication committed to telling the stories of people of colour from marginalised genders] had put out an announcement on Twitter looking for writers to speak specifically about mental health and Ramadan, which we had spoken about a few days before. And I thought to myself ‘yeah I can say absolutely loads about this, why don’t I send an email and see if they want to talk to me for a minute’. I didn't really think much of it. The editor got back to me and said I sounded great and that she wanted me to write the piece. I was just thinking ‘oh my gosh, you're paying me to write this, are you serious?’ – I had no credentials, no portfolio. But I wrote a piece and was shocked at how well received it was and how many comments it got. It was on quite a niche topic too, speaking about eating disorders within communities of colour and how they get worse during Ramadan, and how to manage that month when you’re also struggling with food. It was after that when I had this moment where I thought ‘okay, I can write’ – it’s not just my mum telling me I can write, there is something here, my words are resonating with people. And then the editors got back to me to tell me how well-received it was on the website – it gave me a boost in my confidence that I never really knew I needed.

I thought that since I had been working in the domestic abuse sector for a while and gal-dem were specifically for writers of communities of colour and the issues that impact us (while being accessible to everyone), it would be interesting to write about the experience of domestic abuse for Black and minoritised survivors. I pitched them another article and then within a couple of months I had two paid commissions under my belt. It hit me that this could definitely be a career for me. I can share my writing. I reached out to all the magazines that I have always read, saying ‘I’d really like to write this for you, I’ve had an idea for an article and I think it would work with what you’re putting out.’ I’ve been really fortunate that a lot of magazines I’ve looked up to for a long time took my work on and commissioned me. From there I’ve been able to build a portfolio, a body of work, and a website. Now I freelance mainly with journalism – I’ll approach a magazine or a newspaper when I have something I really want to say. And sometimes I actually get consulted myself, which is a really special experience. I was asked by the Women’s Equality Party to speak on No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) and why migrant women were being left behind, and that turned into a piece that got commissioned by The Independent.

Outside of being a writer and the domestic abuse sector, I am quite politically vocal and have been invited to join podcasts and to do some public speaking as well. This has transformed my freelance journey. I was invited to speak on a panel recently about the ‘future of feminism’ and inclusive practice. And then there’s my educating work as well. Unfortunately most things in the charity sector are governed by budgets and borough restrictions, but I have had certain professionals who have asked me to come in and I’ve been fortunate enough to do some of that on a freelance basis. Education in schools is restricted by the Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) syllabus, which I often find is not particularly inclusive. I don't see the point discussing gender-based violence if you’re not discussing the gender binary, colonialism, all aspects of the problem. I also don’t believe gender inequality is an isolated issue and needs to be considered intersectionally.  This is why I am really grateful to be able to freelance. People pay for my work, my words, and my voice. I get to speak on gender-based violence through an intersectional lens that is inclusive, or works towards being inclusive. Recently I was asked to work with Beyond Equality, a men’s group who work to promote positive masculinity, and they paid me to come in and do a two-hour session for their volunteers and their trainers. It’s not something I would ever get to do in my day job and the impact that work has is phenomenal – that’s how I got to where I am now.

Community also underpins everything I do in life. I’m a staunch anti-capitalist and don’t subscribe to a capitalist perception of work. I don’t think work is just the 9-to-5 and tangible outputs. For me, valuable work is work that gives back to my community and makes the world safer and better for people who look, sound or resonate with me. In social justice, these things all combine – the work I do, the freelance stuff I do, the noise and protests I make. In a strange way, my day job and my freelancing work really feed well into each other and help me navigate different systems. I may be challenging the police and pushing for abolition, but then working in spaces where survivors have to engage with the police. As a freelancer I can say what I want because it’s my own voice. But in a work environment, I have to think about how I am using what I've learned outside of work in my practice and how to incorporate that meaningfully. When I'm speaking about gender-based violence in an article, how am I making sure that the survivors I work with are heard? How am I bringing their opinions and their voices into my work? It's been a really interesting few years since I left school, but I'm really grateful for everything I get to do.

That’s an amazing story. You started to touch on it there, but I wanted to ask how you balance the time and emotional demands and also the potential political constraints of a charity job with your freelance work – do you ever find issues with that?

I definitely find issues with that but do understand why I can't always say things that I want to say. It’s important to look at how oppression currently functions in our society. As much as I believe we can dismantle that system, it’s not going to happen right now or in my lifetime. And in the charity sector, a lot of our money comes from the government, who may also be attacking the groups we are trying to protect, so there are parameters we have to work with. Don't get me wrong, the minoritised women sector do speak about these injustices, but you can’t vocalise it in a way that will endanger our women and the funding needed to support them.

And domestic abuse work is social work ultimately. It does come with campaigning and advocacy, but the social work is still bound by rules and regulations. Not having a party-political affiliation is important - a Black and brown women's organisation might feel left-leaning, but if for example you’re an ethnic minority person from a conservative household seeking support, this place may feel unwelcome. That's not the kind of image that we want to be putting out. We want to call people in and then get them to engage in certain discussions, rather than just putting up barriers straight away.

In terms of talking about balance – the good thing about freelance work is you can pick and choose what you want to do, though not necessarily at the start. When you first start freelancing you can feel like if you’re not putting out work every month, you’re not doing it correctly, but the privilege of having a full-time job and financial security in that, means I can choose what I want to get involved with as a freelancer. Working in domestic abuse, talking about domestic abuse and how violence has impacted my life is definitely a lot and there are times when I want to switch off, though you can’t get rid of that lens once you start seeing life in that way.

How did writing and speaking evolve into your education work and how did you go about structuring it?

In my paid work I do run workshops on awareness-raising and prevention. My first job within the minoritised women sector was as a community engagement worker doing these kinds of presentations, challenging certain things within community groups and going into schools.  The other thing when working for people is it’s never going to one hundred percent reflect you and that's absolutely fine, but there were definitely points where I thought ‘no, I would really like to speak on this’ and if I was running my own sessions maybe I would. Maybe I would have a session on the creation of the gender binary, and then onto gender-based violence, but because I’ve just got an hour in this one school, I just have to focus on that.

And then speaking about the wider work I do and in wider networking, you just hear people say, ‘it would be really great if you could come in and speak on this, it would be really interesting to get your input on that’. And from that again, I had a little light bulb moment where I realised ‘my work is good, my work has value’. If people want me to come in, then I should go in, but charge for that instead of always doing it on a voluntary basis.

You’ve talked about charities, but have you worked in or found much interest from private organisations - are charities or local authorities more aware of the need for your type of work?

No, in all honesty, the majority of the work I've done has always been for charities or independent organisations like the magazines I write for, run by and for minoritised and marginalised people. And I'm quite grateful for that. It’s quite niche, I accept that, but corporate spaces are not for me. They're often quite harmful and violent spaces for marginalised folk, or at least that’s how my experience often feels. I’m grateful that I don’t have to enter spaces that I don’t really want to. I have a lot of friends who are racialised people and do diversity and inclusion work in very right-leaning white spaces, where their identify is attacked. I was on a panel speaking with a trans activist who was saying that as part of her work, she goes into transphobic spaces to try and change people's perspectives. And hats off to her, that’s incredible work, but I couldn't do it. I'm really fortunate in that I've been able to pick and choose spaces I want to work in and I’m definitely really happy to be working in grassroots organisations. If you look at race for example, a lot of the time I think there’s an expectation to go into white spaces and educate white people and that doesn’t factor in how traumatic that might be for me. It should be a choice of whether or not you want to engage in spaces like that, instead of just an expectation. I personally choose not to channel my energy in this way and instead centre my efforts on working within communities of colour and tackling anti-Blackness within communities of colour.

How do you find your demand and the nature of your work has changed with COVID and virtual working?

I find especially with journalism, it's fine to do from home. If anything, most journalists I know have missed being able to go to the coffee shop to write an article instead of having to do it at home!

And then with COVID…I don’t like to label myself, but obviously I do specialise in social justice,  and within that racial and gender justice work, and throughout the pandemic there's been a huge awakening on gender-based violence and the shadow pandemic we’ve had with domestic abuse. In that sense it’s definitely increased the demand for my work. I freelance for a group called Spark & Co who are a resource hub for communities of colour. They commissioned pieces of mine on basic domestic abuse information - where to go, what to do, what signs to look out for. If you have experience of gender-based violence or you know someone who does, then you know how big of an issue it is. But until that happens to you, you aren't really aware – it’s not like a common thing that the public is speaking about. Now even if you go to the local pharmacy, you can see a poster saying ‘if you need support, speak out’ - I've never seen that before in all of my career. That definitely translated into a lot more ‘hey do you want to speak on this, or can you write on this’, because it just seemed more relevant now.

I actually started doing the education work freelance during the pandemic, which again wasn't something that I planned, but it’s happened, and I think it works quite well. I think online spaces can be a lot more accessible for people – they can pick and choose how they engage. Safeguarding in sessions can be quite hard because you can't read people's expressions. But equally, if you’re talking about a really heavy topic like domestic abuse and someone does need that quiet time and to reflect in on themselves, they can turn the cameras off, have a breather and then come back. I’m always available at the end for a check-in and to signpost for support. I think if anything it will be strange for me trying to adapt to go back into real life, when all I've been doing is Zoom sessions.

What's the most rewarding piece of freelance work you've done?

I feel like it’s such a difficult question to answer because so much of my work is deeply personal to me. I've written about my mental health, I've written about my experiences as a young carer, I've written about my experiences of race. I’m not really sure I can pick just one if I'm being completely honest. I think being published in The Independent was massive for me. When I went onto the website and saw my face online, I was literally speechless. It was just so shocking to see my work read by so many people, and then subsequently to see so many people commenting. That was definitely a highlight. And then I was on a panel recently by Lon-art on the future of feminism with Mandu Reid from the Women’s Equality Party and Megan Key, a trans activist I’ve admired for a really long time. It was such a beautiful experience, a welcoming space, and to be on that panel and be described as an outstanding community member was really special.

What advice would you give to someone considering making a similar change or getting into freelancing alongside their day job as you do?

I actually made notes on this one because I feel like I had so much to say! What would I tell young freelancer?

I feel like the first thing is to know your worth. If I could go back and tell myself a few things, it would definitely be to see the value in my own work and not to wait for other people's praise or other people’s money to recognise the value of it. All our stories have value. First and foremost, it doesn't really matter how many people read your work, how much you get paid for a commission - you have to value your own work. And then within that, knowing the price of your work is incredibly important. Being bolder about money when it comes to freelancing is so important – there were so many situations early on where I didn’t feel comfortable or they didn’t pay me as much as I deserved or I can’t believe they asked me to do it for free. But at the start of my career I really did think, ‘I just need to say yes’ and get out there. I wish I’d factored in how much research I do for articles, for example. And I always tell people that if they are second-guessing the price of their work, just email with the confidence of a cis-het older white man. The difference between people who get paid properly and people who don't is so often that level of confidence, which society has intentionally deprived marginalised people of.

Another tip I would give is to speak about money. As a society as a whole, we have a lot of shame surrounding money. We never talk about working conditions, we never talk about how much we earn, we never talk about pay rises. We don’t talk about workers, and I think that is intentional because it creates workers who are silent and subordinate. If you don’t know if other people are getting paid more or less,  then you don’t know if you’re being exploited in your work setting, and then you can’t unionise. Things like that have a really big impact. I would say that if you are freelancing, talk to your friends about it, talk to other freelancers about it, ask for advice. I have no issues speaking to them about money, how much I charge for something. That shame around money needs to go. Collectively I want all of us to do better because I don't want to just have all the money for myself. I am always happy to share my experiences with other freelancers

There’s a great platform and book called F*** Being Humble – I actually met the founder [Stefanie Sword Williams] at a networking event and just listened to how she spoke. I thought to myself, ‘this is it.’ Know your worth and ask for it. Seeing transparency with what people charge, what going rates are, what’s reasonable and what’s not is really important. Know your rates and ask early on in chats with someone whether and how much they’re going to pay you, because that can determine how much effort to put towards something. If I’m not being paid properly, then that’s exploitation. It comes back to colonial ideas, that the work of Black and brown bodies is simply not valuable.

Alternative networking is something I would advise people to do. Networking as it's commonly understood is not particularly accessible for a lot of people. I've never been invited to a fancy dinner or to schmooze, that's just not me. But with technology - and with COVID I’ve seen this even more - you can find collectives of people of colour and queer people. People of different groups coming together sharing expertise and art, looking for creative partners. Spaces like The Other Box and Don’t Sleep On Us.

I feel like one of the other things is that it’s really important not to beat yourself up, to factor in kindness and self-compassion. Freelancing is such precarious work and for the majority of us, it's not something that we can do full-time. When I used to work in retail, all of my friends from retail were artists, designers, editors. But they had to do it on the side. Grind culture, hustle culture, is a capitalist thing really. We’re not afforded the luxury of doing the things that bring us the most joy all the time. Like for me, I love writing more than anything, but it's not feasible for me right now to do that full-time. That’s not because the words I say don’t have value, but right now I’m a cog in a machine and I don’t have that creative licence every day of the week.

And trust your gut has also got to be a really important one with everything, really. If there's something that you want to write, write it. If there's work you want to put out, just do it. Also, if you don't like the aura of someone commissioning your work, don't go along with it. You can re-evaluate your boundaries as you go. I get pigeonholed a lot in certain roles because I’m a woman, Muslim and mixed race - I'm asked to only ever speak on certain things. I got an invitation once saying ‘you're a Muslim feminist, come and speak on Islam and oppression.’ The organiser didn’t realise how offensive that was. I am not defined by my trauma. Asking oppressed people to solely speak on their oppressions is extremely problematic and reductive. Just because I’ve written about race once, doesn’t mean I want to do it again. I found this last year after the murder of George Floyd. I was inundated with people wanting me to speak on race and I thought to myself, ‘why now when I’ve done this my whole life’. My whole life, my whole career, I've spoken on race and racial injustice. You’re treating Black life as a trend and it's not something I want to be a part of. It was about saying ‘no, I'm not going to be a token. I don't want to write about this right now. Maybe I wrote about It last month, but right now I'm feeling too triggered and I don’t want to do it’. Know your boundaries, revaluate your boundaries as you go and trust your gut.

How did you find some of those networking spaces and collectives?

If I'm being honest, I think I found a lot of these spaces either online or through friends. When I worked in retail and specifically when I worked at Doc Martens, I had the most creative team you could imagine. We shared resources, shared ideas, and through them I found some of these other spaces. I feel like community is definitely something that we all long for, regardless of race, religion, gender, anything. Community is something that most people find pretty grounding. And community is something that exists out of the corporate space. Personally, I just wanted to find other people like me. Community, collective struggle and mutual support also go hand0in-hand. Once you find one person who's willing to chat to you and welcome you in, you’re just inundated with people willing to share spaces, advice and chat to you. The Other Box is actually a group on Facebook for anyone who feels othered by society – it doesn’t have a definition as long as you can explain what it means to you, and it’s a group where we share opportunities, advice and just connect with one another.

Any final thoughts?

One other thing I’d like to mention is working for free, which I think definitely needs to be addressed with freelancing in particular. Voluntary work or working for free is still something I balance. Sometimes I really want to work in a community that do not have the money to pay me and I don't think that a strict approach of ‘if it’s not paid I won’t do it’ is right, it doesn’t sit well with me. The questions that I ask myself whenever I'm entering into some paid work or any kind of freelance work is ‘what do I get out of this and what am I putting into it?’ And sometimes working in community spaces or with small magazines starting out is so incredibly rewarding, and what I get out of that is more than a paycheque.

But equally, don't let people bully you into working for free. I used to get this a lot when I first started. I remember a conversation I had with a magazine editor who called me and said ‘look this is brilliant exposure for you, so you're going to do it on a voluntary basis’. And I remember just thinking ‘why are you exploiting me? Why are you expecting me to work for free?’ Unpacking that and looking at the roots of where that kind of exploitation comes from is really important. It goes back to knowing your worth and challenging people. Clients and commissioners are not actually as high up as they would like us to think. And that sometimes needs to be said. I used to get really scared when editors would send me emails. I'd think, ‘oh my God, if I make one typo in this email, I'm going to be Blacklisted from journalism forever’. But it's not that deep, honestly, it's not that deep. Just remember you can say no and if you don't feel comfortable, then you don't have to do it. Don't get me wrong - I have done pieces for exposure and I'm glad I did because it was genuine exposure. But if you approach me with a tiny readership, zero community grounding, and are just expecting me to work for free, it’s an absolute no.

And I think it works pretty well when you think about balance in freelancing too. You do definitely feel this pressure to accept everything because we live in a society where you have to stay relevant. I think a lot of the balance comes from picking and choosing what you do and examining what creative work brings you joy.