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.
No comments:
Post a Comment