Warning: I tend to use the Freelancing Mommie as a way to gather my thoughts and monitor my progress while sharing my knowledge with readers. This may be a very long post! My sincere apologies!
I have been published in print several times before but never really made it the sole focus of my writing career. When I decided to give this aspect of writing 6 months of serious hard work and dedication, I knew I would be dealing in an unknown domain, full of rejections. But I also knew it would be worth it in the end.
No, I am not giving up online writing. I still love every second of it. I just decided to give the print world a go. If you are heading in this same direction, you are probably wondering where to begin. In the beginning, I made two huge mistakes that resulted in thirty formal rejection letters in about two weeks time. Who says it takes six months or more to receive a response from magazines? My file of rejections letters begs to differ.
1- I wrote about what I wanted. I created a large amount of (40+) articles that covered either topics I was very educated in or topics that had recently caught my attention and I wanted to give my view on. Then, I did several searches online to find magazines that focused on these topics, located their addresses and I sent in my articles. Big mistake. I figured sending out random articles in large amounts was swaying the odds in my favor that at least a few of them would be published. Wrong!
2- I spent the few weeks wallowing in self-pity, doubting my skill and knowledge and almost giving up. I make decent money as an online writer and almost convinced myself during my pity party that I would leave the print world to the real writers. Big Mistake Number Two. I had suffered rejections before- maybe not thirty in two weeks times with NO acceptances- but why did these specific rejections hurt so much?
After my pity party concluded and I located my confidence again, I decided to start completely over with a new method. I made a detailed plan of attack for the printing publication world.Writing this plan led me to see that I skipped a crucial part: planning and researching.
Actually, let me backtrack and say I started with the 'Write What You Know' mentality. Instead of focusing on new topics, I decided to stick with topics I could write from my own knowledge and that required little to no research at all. Then, I made a list of about 10-12 well-known magazines that I felt confident that my topics would fit nicely with. Then, I began my research.
I printed off the submission guidelines for each magazine on my list. It never crossed my mind that each different publication would have a specific set of guidelines for freelance submissions. When I realized this, I had a huge DUH moment. Some magazines want query letters only. Some what email submissions. Some want standard mail submissions. Some don't accept freelance submissions without an agent. Some require a query letter, a short synopsis and a resume. Every single print publication on my list was different. After learning this, I realized a large portion of my rejections probably stemmed from not following these guidelines.
After learning what each magazine required for submissions, I researched each magazine's content. I made note on the various topics each magazine covered, the tone of each magazine, a list of regular featured topics/columns, the average amount of words per article, etc. At the week end, I felt I had a much better grasp on about every single one of these magazines and what they wanted/expected from freelance writers. My notes and print offs resulted in a fairly large file for each magazine.
Once I had completed this research, I felt more confident to move forward with my plan. I have rambled on enough today so I'll save step two for the next post. But I will share just a little bit of the outcome with you.
Out of 14 articles submitted to various magazines, 9 are going to be published, including one for Reader's Digest, two in Parenting magazine, one in Glamour Girl and one in Baby Talk. Hey, its not the New York Times but for the topics I covered, these are fairly big magazine names and I couldn't be prouder!
