Highlights from the 2006 WIW Freelance Success Seminar (Part 1 of 4)

www.inkthinkerblog.com — As per the norm, I took about a bajillion pages of notes at the November 11 Washington Independent Writers/Johns Hopkins University Build Your Freelance Success, One Publication at a Time seminar. Okay, it was actually only 16 pages in a steno pad, but that’s still a lot of notes. Here are some of the highlights.

PART ONE
Moving up the Magazine Totem Pole, with moderator Ellen Ryan (Washingtonian) and panelists Meg Guroff (AARP The Magazine), Holly Smith (Maryland Life), and Cathy Alter (freelance writer).

Cathy Alter said…

• Writers benefit from becoming masters of the short article (ie, 300-400 words), ones that you can pitch and turn around quickly. Those little pieces position you to write features later.
• It’s critical to get your articles in on time (which she acknowledged is kind of a DUH, but still worth mentioning), to use Spell Check and other resources, and to provide as much info to the publication’s fact checker as possible.
• Know your market so you don’t look dumb when you pitch (eg, if you pitch a topic that’s on the current issue’s cover, you look dumb)
• Be able to spin common topics so you can approach them with a new angle, even if the mag may have covered that topic from another angle in the past.
• Don’t burn bridges, do work your connections, and do develop relationships.
• Don’t be afraid to approach start-ups and new magazines when the folks running them are good. (She worked with Dave Eggers back before he was the Dave Eggers, so she knows what she’s talking about.)
• Pay attention, be easy to work with, and don’t be a spoiled brat [specifically about edits to your work].

Holly Smith said…

• Regional magazines have standards equally high as those held by national magazines, so just because they have more time to work with beginning writers doesn’t mean they’re not of high quality.
• Regionals are a good place to build up your clip file.
• You can parlay regional assignments into national ones.
• To break into regionals, show them you mean business by taking it seriously.
• Send clips that are representative of the article(s) you’re pitching.

Meg Guroff said…

• To her, e-mail queries automatically mean more. They mean that someone took the time (and has the brainpower) to figure out her e-mail address and contact her directly. And further, e-queries are much easier to deal with because she can read them and fire off a response quickly.
• She looks for reasons to throw queries away. This sounds harsh, but Meg led the attendees through a brilliant exercise in which we evaluated approximately eight actual (anonymized) query letters she’s received and put them in order of worst to best, discussing each letter’s merits (or lack thereof in several cases) through audience-led comments. The point is this: Don’t give her reasons to throw your query away.
• Query letters are marketing, not writing. They’re an advertisement for you and your skills. Keep it to a single page, grab the reader, and remember above all that it’s a marketing document.
• Be careful not to come across as amateurish in your query, as someone more interested in being a writer than in helping your editor get out a magazine. “It’s not about you. There is a product that needs to be generated, or I get fired. I spend my days generating the product and looking for people to help me.”
• If you have an idea for a specific section of a publication, direct your query to that section’s editor.
• Misspelling and editor’s name is completely unacceptable.
• A lot of writers worry about editors’ stealing their ideas, not realizing that a lot of other people probably had the same idea. The goal is to create a situation where you’re the very best writer for the story, and you do that through your query.
• Don’t write an article first and then submit it, because the editor who gives you an assignment will want to work with you to shape the article. (Sending completed, unsolicited manuscripts, btw, is called sending them “over the transom,” and you really don’t want to do that, trust me.) The only exception is personal essays.
• Editors are looking for new writers all the time. “If you’re good, you will get your shot, and you need to be ready. You want to prove to the editor that you’re persistent, because that’s what good reporters are.”

Ellen Ryan said…

• Think of your query as a first date. On the sixth date, you’ll throw on some jeans and head out the door, but on the first date, you get dressed up. Your query is your first date with the editor, in which you’re getting to know one another and establishing the relationship. Behave accordingly.
• A good way to get your foot in the door is to pitch something small, something that will be of low risk to the editor. (Examples she gave are the Washingtonian sections First Person and Capital Comment.)
• Keep in mind ways to package and re-purpose your work. For example, you could turn columns about the same subject into a book.

Be sure to check out the other three parts of this four-part highlights series! Part two is available now, and parts three and four will be up next week.

PART TWO

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