Serena Renner (@serenarenner) is a  young freelance journalist and founding member of Meridian Collective (blog.meridiancollective.org, @mericoll), a cooperative for emerging journalists. She also interns for Spot.Us, a nonprofit news organization pioneering community-funded reporting in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

In the past few months, I’ve thought a lot about work—working to live as we all do to sustain ourselves but also the concept of working to work. By this I mean the creative pursuit so many artists undergo: to work just enough to meet one’s basic needs but also reserving enough free time to realize one’s true ambitions. In a perfect world, we’d all get paid a living to do what we love, but in case you haven’t noticed, this is not a perfect world and many fields—especially those artistic in nature—require talent and notoriety, which fruit from years of practice and climbing the ranks.

Journalism is not unique in this regard, although we like to victimize ourselves, particularly amid the current economic climate and media transformation. But actors, fine artists, designers, musicians, as well as creative writers and the like all have to start at the bottom, working random jobs or unpaid internships–living on couches or in closet-sized apartments–until they build up their skills and portfolio enough to get noticed.

A Time article I read a while ago about ways to pay journalists if nothing “saves journalism” got me thinking about all the creative ways journalists—and artists—support their work. The article mentions creative writers often teaching in MFA programs to support themselves. It also references William Carlos Williams, the American poet who primarily worked as a pediatrician, Wallace Stevens, who was a lawyer as well as a poet, and a handful of others who are experts in a particular field and have secondary careers as journalists, like Sanjay Gupta and Jeffrey Toobin.

I am 23 years old, currently working retail (sigh) and teaching surf lessons to get by as I intern for Spot.us and try my hand at freelancing. Plenty of others my age waitress, bartend or do any thing they can get their hands on while they go to school, intern or just practice their art on the side. Of course the problem with this is not being able to focus exclusively on your interest. Investigative journalism, for instance, takes a lot of time and energy to nurture and the quality is threatened when a person doesn’t have time to do the required research. I think this is a valid fear that comes with the changing media landscape, but I’m of the belief that good, community-service journalism will still be supported. It may be that it’s harder to make it, but those who have talent and work hard, I’m confident will eventually get paid for their work.

I think the most important thing for us young journalists to focus on now is defining our interests and developing our craft. Too many people who have found paying media jobs wish they were doing something else–something deeper, more creative, more important. Here is my current strategy for effective working:

• Obviously the best option would be finding a paying job or internship that allows you to focus exclusively on your interests and build relevant skills. The free job boards I most often peruse are journalismjobs.com, Mediabistro, Poynter Institute, The California Newspapers Association site for newspaper jobs in California and the Berkeley Journalism School’s job bank for jobs and internships across the country. Of course there’s also Craigslist, where I’ve recently seen some good paying blogging gigs, but always take these listings with a grain of salt.
• Plan B would be a journalism-based unpaid internship and a part time job or freelance work to support it.
• If all else fails, do what you have to do to live, but try to freelance and blog as much as possible in your free time to keep strengthening your skills, even if you’re not getting paid. Did I mention that unpaid work often leads to other revenue sources? I just found out that a friend of mine may get a book deal at age 20 based on a blog she writes.
• If you have a good idea that just needs help producing, there are also grants and scholarships. I’m starting to think about travel grants myself, which would allow me to live in an exotic places and produce the pieces I’ve been dreaming about…

The bottom line is working just enough to pay the rent but not too much to lose sight of what you really want to do. Maybe that means working a pretty well paying part time job and writing on the side, or working full time for a while to save money for an upcoming hiatus. If you're young like me, keep in mind that we still need to explore the world and ourselves before truly knowing what we really want. Whatever the case, produce, produce, produce and have faith in yourself that your passion will eventually pay off some day, some how.