Kristin Wong

Kristin Wong is a freelance writer and journalist. She's written for the New York Times Smarter Living and Medium’s Joint Accounts column, New York magazine’s The Cut, Refinery29, NBCNews.com, and Glamour magazine. Wong also authored the book Get Money: Live the Life You Want, Not Just the Life You Can Afford.

Tell us about your day-today writing work right now. What kinds of things do you create, and who are you writing for?

I have a column that offers pretty consistent income. It's fun and it also allows me to focus on exploring and pitching topics that I find deeply interesting. Typically, I write about human behavior and pop psychology. The last few places I've written are the New York Times, Refinery29, and Well + Good.

Speaking of your current gig: I saw that you decided to switch careers and focus on creative writing in LA after working as a technical writer. What made you decide to switch paths?

I always knew I wanted to be a writer, but I couldn't get the kind of writing work I wanted in Houston. Everything centered around the oil and gas industry. Plus, I just wanted to live someplace new and have different experiences.

Switching careers was an excellent decision for me, but looking back, that tech writing job taught me a lot of skills I use as a journalist now: interviewing, analyzing data and information, communicating that information.

Would you encourage writers today to pursue creative writing?

Of course – I would encourage anyone to pursue the thing they're passionate about. I was terrified of moving to Los Angeles to try and become a writer, but the scarier prospect was never trying at all.

Tell us about your writing focus on personal finance and how you landed in that world.

I've always been interested in money and not letting it get in the way of the things I want to do in life. So I started blogging about money ages ago as a way to learn more about it myself.

The more I learned, the more I realized it's not that hard, really – the basics of personal finance are incredibly simple. It's the psychology, behavior, and habits that most of us have a hard time with.

So I decided to write a book, Get Money, for people like me who want personal finance advice that's 1) not too serious 2) not too judgmental 3) addresses the psychology of money.

I also see you do speaking gigs around this topic and travel quite a bit--do you enjoy doing that?

Yes, I love it! Speaking is tough for me because I feel like I communicate better through writing. So it takes me longer to prepare a speech than it does to write an article, even a complicated one. I absolutely love moderating panels, though – I get to ask questions and learn new things.

What's one of the common misconceptions about the work you do that you'd like to set the record straight on?

New writers always ask how I get over the fear of putting myself out there. I used to scramble to give them advice until I realized...I've never gotten over that fear. It still terrifies me to put my writing out there, to be open about my emotions, to lay it all out there for people to see and judge.

I'm an anxious person, and I sometimes wonder if my anxiety is made worse by what I do for a living. But I guess you could say that about a lot of jobs!

You've been published in a lot of interesting places, so if you had to give one piece of advice to people writing pitches, what would it be?

Think like an editor. They're less interested in who you are and where you've written than whether or not you have a good story idea. So get to the point quickly.