Last week I wrote something I thought was really good. I finished it, did some editing and thought “this is too good for my blog.” And I’d already sent pieces to The Drum and Adfreak, so I pondered what to do with it. Ultimately I opted to pitch it to a site I haven’t written for before but which was accepting submissions. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

I did so, though, with the knowledge that this move might delay publication. I was essentially trading timeliness for what I hoped would not only be a bigger venue for my writing but also a potential payday.

Since then I’ve seen other people covering the same topic I wrote about in their own way. As is often the case, I thought many of these amounted to mere stenography, with otherwise talented writers just regurgitating some basic facts while my post, I felt, added some context and insight into what about the story was strategically significant. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I, like many writers, feel my prose is superior to that of others.

So was I right in trying to grab the brass ring but allowing others to decide the fate of my post or should I have just published it myself and gotten on with it?

That’s a question I’ve asked myself more than once in the last several months and there’s no clear answer I’ve been able to divine. And I imagine it’s one other freelancers like myself have struggled with on their own. I don’t get paid for the posts I publish here but I do for those that are run on other sites. But if I publish here I still get to be timely and be a small part of the conversation. What’s the right balance to strike? There’s likely no right answer here, so I’ll keep making the gut calls on what to post here and what to pitch out to new outlets.