Finding the perfect home

Amelia Arvesen on pitching and creative spaces

Last October, I found myself on a press trip to Central Oregon with Amelia Arvesen. We’d never met, but I knew that she writes about outdoor recreation and sews and has excellent taste and style because I read her newsletter regularly. That’s always a funny thing, isn’t it? When you know random details about a stranger’s life because of the internet?

I tried not to be weird about it, but I was dying to ask her about sheep semen.

No, really. She’d written an issue of her newsletter about this story she was pitching about sheep semen, but she couldn’t find an editor who wanted it. I was shocked that such a specific, unexpected, and delightfully strange angle would be rejected again and again. I wanted to read this story! So I was relieved when she brought it up herself on our long drive to Bend.

For several hours, I was so engrossed in our conversation about the sheep semen story, and how to find good story ideas, and where to pitch them, and what the hell is going on when editors don’t want a pitch like this one—that I didn’t realize I was getting very car sick until suddenly I had to excuse myself from our conversation to focus on not throwing up while we lurched and careened through a mountain pass.

So, this was a great excuse to return to that conversation, to hear more about Amelia’s writing in the outdoor recreation and travel spaces, her latest big story for Outside Magazine, and yes, the story about sheep semen, which she is now writing on assignment!

Writers, meet Amelia…

Amelia Arvesen writes for Outside, Backpacker, Field Mag, and many more outdoor and travel publications.

First, tell us what a week in the life of Amelia Arvesen looks like. What are the different types of work you’re focused on? How much are you working? What are you doing to balance out the work hours?

In a typical week, when I’m not traveling or crunching for a big deadline, I’m working 9 to 5 Monday through Thursday. I like to leave Fridays open for creative projects or personal time, but sometimes it ends up being a day for tying up loose ends from the week.

My days are bookended with walks or runs with my dog. In between, the work days are filled with scheduling and conducting interviews, writing stories to meet deadlines, looking for and researching new stories, sending and following up on pitches, and other email maintenance. I usually have a few stories in the hopper that I’m chipping away at until they’re due. I used to have a consistent copywriting client that I’d check in with daily, but I don’t anymore as of January, so I’m trying to reconfigure my days. I’ve liked having more space to research and explore new story ideas. In the evenings, I’m either sewing in my home studio, hanging with friends, playing tennis at a rec center near my house, catching up on a show, or reading and going to bed early.

You wrote a great article for Outside Magazine recently, about small gear companies struggling to survive and keep manufacturing in the U.S. with rising costs and new tarriffs. And you mentioned on social media that this story idea actually originated from a PR pitch.

I think that sometimes, writers are a little too dismissive of the PR pitch and the reps who write them. Sure, a lot of those pitches are boilerplate and uninteresting, but sometimes there are also great stories in there—like this one. What is your relationship with the press release like, and how do you find the angles worth writing about?

You’re so right. This is such a good reminder, even for me after writing this story! I get so many press releases in my inbox. The ones I get from PR people I don’t know I either delete, ignore, or respond to with “no thanks.” But sometimes one comes through that sparks my curiosity, and I wonder if there’s a bigger story just waiting underneath the surface of the PR pitch. With those, I think it’s always a good idea to dig a little deeper.

In the instance of the Outside story, the email subject line was: “The way we manufacture outdoor apparel in this country is broken & Youer is building a factory to fix it.” It was already a curious pitch, but my editor and I had follow-ups. Like, okay, in what ways is manufacturing broken? How will building a factory fix it? Has a brand as small as Youer ever built a full factory before? How many small brands are manufacturing in the US? Why is it hard to manufacture apparel in the US? When those questions come easily, that’s when you know there’s a bigger story.

You worked on this story for three years. I love hearing that people are still taking their time with important pieces like this one and letting them unfold as they need to. So much of the way our industry works is stacked against this kind of time and thoughtfulness. Tell us about the breakdown of that time and what made it worth while?

Yes! Almost exactly three years from pitch to publish. Three years and two months if you count the pre-reporting required for the first pitch. The lengthy lead time had less to do with taking my time and more to do with the publication’s internal disruptions. At first, the story was slated to run as an online feature in 2022, but then my editor departed. My next editor wanted to use it in a print package, but then he left. And finally, a third team of editors couldn’t agree on an angle, so it sat waiting for a full year until I aggressively bugged them to run it. By then, I had already rewritten it twice and been paid. I just wanted to see it published.

The third rewrite happened in December 2024 when an interim features editor, who was brought on while two editors were on parental leave, provided guidance for the final outline. I’m not sure I would volunteer to go through all those delays and rewrites again, but the story, which focused heavily on domestic manufacturing, ended up being perfectly timed with the Trump administration’s tariffs and my primary source’s decision to downsize her factory. I also learned so much during those three years of reporting that now I’m pretty well-versed in trade, supply chain, and apparel manufacturing. The next time I spend three years reporting, I hope it’s for a book.

Let's say it's a cold rainy day in Portland, and you don't have any impending deadlines, so you carve out time to look for new story ideas. What do you do first? And then?

We haven’t had nearly enough rainy days in Portland lately so this question gets me excited to cozy up at my desk on the next stormy day, which is only a matter of time.

I’ve been really intrigued recently by water, textiles, and manufacturing—and the intersection of the three—so I’m looking out for any news about those topics. I like to look at Science Daily, a source for the latest research news, for any interesting studies that align with my interests and specialties. I’ll also check if environmental groups, like the Center for Environmental Health, have released any reports that could be newsworthy. Throughout the year, I’m always jotting down half-baked story ideas in a spreadsheet, so I’ll often turn there to see if any have legs. Developing these studies, reports, and ideas into pitches usually requires a few phone calls to potential sources for background conversations to see if they’re worth exploring further.

How did you get started in gear testing/reviewing?

I was a reporter at daily newspapers, the Boulder Daily Camera and Longmont Times-Call, and freelancing outdoor rec stories on the side from 2016 to 2018. A friend of mine was an editor at Outside and hired me to write about Black Diamond’s new genderless climbing shoe line. I was climbing a lot back then. That was my first gear story.

I started testing more gear once I left the newspapers to work as an editor at an outdoor industry B2B publication called SNEWS (which was later acquired by Outside). We were sister publications with Backpacker, Climbing, and Ski magazines, so I was surrounded by editorial teams who always needed extra testers. On my first day in the office, I was handed a climbing harness to test. When I went freelance, a colleague at Backpacker hired me to manage the testing of men's and women’s hiking apparel. Since then, I’ve reviewed gear for Men’s Journal, Gear Junkie, The Inertia, Field Mag, and others. But I only write about gear every so often now.

You probably get a lot of comments about how cool it must be to get to test (and keep, sometimes?) some really nice products. What's something those people might not know about your job? Or, what do you wish people who read gear reviews knew about the process of writing them?

It is really cool, and I feel lucky that it’s part of my job! But I rarely get paid enough to afford the gear I’m writing about (like testing a $1,000 ski kit for a story that pays $250). Free gear doesn’t pay the bills, even if I eventually resell it, which I don’t do often for ethical reasons. Testing also requires lots of time and logistics. To write a really detailed and honest review, I have to put miles and/or hours into a piece of gear. Ideally, I’d get to use something for months up to a year to really put it to the test. Deadlines are usually sooner than that. And rates would have to be a lot higher to fairly account for all the testing hours that go into reviews.

What has changed in the industry of outdoor and gear writing since you first got started? What's the biggest challenge of working that beat right now?

Oh gosh, so much. How much time do you have? When I first got started, readers still really valued and trusted gear guides from publications. My husband was one of those people who upheld the Outside Buyer’s Guide as gospel. But affiliate links changed the game, and people who used to be readers are now looking more to influencers and buyer reviews for guidance.

As for outdoor writing, there used to be a hunger for human-interest storytelling from both readers and publications. As budgets and staff have shrunk, publications don’t have the bandwidth to take on human interest pieces anymore. Stories have to have some SEO hook, not just a news hook anymore, otherwise it’s not worth their time and money. But that’s the type of writing I want to be doing, so I’m feeling a little lost. Where do I go next? What’s worth chasing?

On the Oregon press trip we did together, you told me about this fascinating story involving sheep semen, and you had been pitching it to multiple outlets. I honestly couldn’t believe you were having trouble pitching this—it’s such a good story! But you did finally place it. Can you tell us about that story, now that you’re working on it? Did the piece evolve at all as you continued pitching? What do you think finally made it work?

Luckily, the assignment is still pretty much the same as the idea I first pitched. A farmer in Oregon is importing semen from a special kind of sheep in Scandinavia to grow the breed’s population in the U.S. I think that because it’s just such a niche story, editors (and myself) were confused about what to do with it. I didn’t want to limit myself to only pitching B2B agricultural publications, but it’s not quite environmental enough to fit into a mainstream publication. I got a lot of “this is interesting but it isn’t for us” responses. I was persistent though, and the story is now slated for the summer 2025 edition of LAINE, a knitting magazine out of Finland. Not only will I get to ask how in the world one might import sheep semen (in a bucket of ice?), I also get to write about how this project will improve the quality of yarn and textiles for knitters. I found it the perfect home.

How do you stay motivated when editors don't respond to pitches? (Which is something we ALL experience, and it really sucks.)

Ugh, I don’t think I do. Getting ghosted is so much more discouraging than a rejection because somehow, it plants even more doubt in my mind that the pitch wasn’t even worth a response. A mentor once told me to focus on the things I can control as a measure of my success. So rather than framing success around the number of pitches that led to an assignment (very few), he advised me to frame my success around the number of pitches submitted (many). That motivates me to send as many pitches as possible rather than giving up after one or two editors ghost me.

Let's talk about press trips. How do you decide which invitations are worth taking, and how do you prepare to make the most of them?

This year is a bit of an anomaly because I’m not accepting any more press trips for the rest of the year—unless it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Anyone going to New Zealand? I want to renovate my yard and build a garden, spend more time with friends, and plan personal trips instead. In the past, I accepted invitations that aligned both with my interests and viable outlets. I hated having the guilt of going on a press trip that I knew I couldn’t pitch hanging over me. My rule was to accept no more than one or two press trips per quarter. Even that felt like a lot.

To make the most of them, I’d outline some ideas I’d be interested in writing. For instance, on a press trip to Tennessee, we stayed in these cool mirror cabins, and I had those on my list of possible stories. I ended up writing about something completely different, but it’s always nice to have options to explore once I’m there and on the ground.

What's one story that came out of a press trip that you're really proud of?

This is a throwback and maybe not exactly what you’re looking for, but I went on a press trip hosted by the online gear seller Backcountry.com. We went cat skiing in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, and the CEO at the time came along. I interviewed him for a brand profile, but then when the brand was under fire for filing trademark suits against smaller brands, which was big news in the outdoor industry, I was able to reach out to him for an exclusive interview since we already had a relationship. Not all press trips help inform breaking news stories like that, but all press trips lead to deeper relationships, which is what I value most from spending time in person.

Any advice for someone who is looking to break into outdoor or gear writing?

Two things. First, start your own newsletter. There, you can develop your voice and hone in on what type of writing you’re good at and actually enjoy. You might think you want to write about sewing and find out that it’s actually not something you want to document so meticulously (me).

And secondly, pitch indie pubs. They’re much more likely to take on your niche ideas, and in some cases, they even pay more than traditional pubs. Like Trails Magazine, for instance.

Your Substack newsletter is one of a handful that I always open. It's obvious in reading Honing Her Craft that you really enjoy putting this together. But also, these newsletters can take a lot of time to produce, and when you're trying to piece together a freelance writing career, that time can be hard to find. What makes it worthwhile to you?

Thank you so much! It’s true that I love putting Honing Her Craft together. But it hasn’t always felt enjoyable and that was when I was producing it for other people, for results, for subscribers. I was putting so much time into interviews and posts with the hopes that my newsletter would grow, and when it didn’t, it became a total drag. I almost quit. I decided that if it was going to survive, I needed to write it for more than growing my subscriber count. I needed to write it for myself and actually enjoy the process and not give as much weight (or any, honestly) to external validation.

My newsletter has evolved as I have evolved. It’s the most flexible space I occupy. Right now, I’m mostly publishing mini-essays, freelancer updates, and artist interviews. Every time I come back from an interview with an artist, my creativity is restored. I don’t know how else to describe it other than I feel as if I could be interviewing artists in their studios for the rest of my life. This feels like my calling right now, and I just want to find more ways to do this kind of work.

I LOVE your studio visit series. What is something you've learned or noticed about creativity in visiting all these spaces where creative magic happens?

It’s really interesting. Even the most prolific artists I’ve visited with didn’t feel like they could call themselves an artist until they had a space of their own dedicated to creating. It’s as if the space itself gives them permission to play, explore, experiment, make—to fully commit to the identity of an “artist.” For each of them, it’s an important part of their process to be able to step away from their work and then return to it with new ideas. Time away gives them a new perspective. I’m not sure what to do with that other than to dedicate a space in my home to writing and, for now, sewing.

Can you share a photo of your own creative space? Where do you most often work?

Amelia’s writing office and sewing studio.

My home office moonlights as my sewing studio. As such, I sometimes get distracted by sewing projects that sit in my peripheral vision while I’m at my desk, and I have to work in my living room or, admittedly, in bed (especially on bitter winter days). But on my most focused days, I’m sitting or standing at my desk. I just got a new chair from Branch that has helped my posture. When I really need to get stuff done or I’m on a tight deadline, I take myself to a coffee shop. The faster I work, the faster I get to go home and the less money I spend on matcha lattes.

I'm asking everyone this, since our industry is generally pretty bleak right now: What are you feeling good and excited about when it comes to writing or journalism in general?

I graduated from the University of Kansas’s journalism school in 2015, a time when even my own journalism professors told me that I was entering an unstable career. Ten years later, I’m still in journalism. I’m still making it work, as are so many others. The thing I’m most hopeful about is that because it’s an unstable industry, it’s made me really resilient, adaptive, and creative. It means I’m always learning and changing and rebuilding. So even when things feel scary and uncertain, a new opportunity is always right around the corner, even if I can’t see it yet. And as I learn and adapt to the next thing, that fear dissipates. I’m in the scared phase right now, which can only mean that an opportunity is coming my way. Nothing is ever stagnant, and I like that.

To learn more about Amelia and her work, follow her on Substack, at Honing Her Craft, and Instagram.

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Stay inspired,

Britany