'Existence as a freelance writer in 2017 has been a patchy, stop-start, fragmented affair punctuated by glimmers of hope, crushing defeats and, as ever, the grimly deafening silence that is an inherent part of the pitches-and-submissions world of media and publishing – a "silence with edges" as Omar Sakr put it in an essay on writing culture for Going Down Swinging. One ten-day period in August offers a snapshot of this writer's experience. It is by no means representative of the average Australian freelance writer, but it is representative of one Australian freelance writer who is very average.' (Introduction)