Writing Articles About the World Around You

Writing Articles About the World Around You

Marcia Yudkin

Creative Ways

P.O. Box 305

Goshen, MA 01032

www.yudkin.com

marcia@yudkin.com

(413)582-4052

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 1998 - 2012 Marcia Yudkin. All rights reserved.

Preface to the Ebook Edition

The dynamics of coming up with saleable ideas have not changed at all during the years since this book first appeared. Despite the burgeoning of social media such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, how magazine and newspaper editors interact with and purchase work from freelance writers has likewise changed very little in the last decade.

The next time you’re in an airport or a doctor’s waiting room, you’ll see that magazines continue to need a constant supply of both timely and timeless content, issue after issue. Indeed, many magazines now purchase additional material from freelancers specifically for their web sites. Whether you’re aiming at the ego gratification of seeing your byline on published work or hoping to create a stream of full-time or supplementary income, opportunities abound.

As you’ll soon see, Writing Articles About the World Around You is based on my experiences freelancing for dozens of small and large, local and national publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Cosmopolitan and TWA Ambassador, as well as input from scores of other freelance writers and editors whom I interviewed.

For this digital edition, I have altered the formatting and organization of the chapters slightly for greater reading ease on ereading devices. In addition, I updated a few references to electronic communication.

Contents

Preface to the Ebook Edition

Introduction

The Delights of Freelance Writing

What You Need to Succeed

Myths About Getting Published

A Wealth of Opportunity

Scoping Out a Magazine or Newspaper

Ideas vs. Angles

Glossary

Part I: Generating Publishable Article Ideas

Chapter 1: Starting from Your Experiences

Nourishing Promising Idea Seeds

Harvesting Your Experiences for Articles

Some Reasons People Care

Crafting a Personal Essay

Pitfalls of I Work

Journalistic Pieces Grounded in Experience

Hybrid Pieces

Chapter 2: Your Knowledge as a Resource

Cashing In On Your Hobbies

Leveraging Your Education or Work Experience

How-to Articles

Making Hay of Your Tastes

Peddling Your Passions

Chapter 3: The Power of the People You Know

What Makes a Person Interesting?

The Challenges of Profile Articles

Mastering the Q&A Format

Other Kinds of People Articles

Going Beyond Personalities

Extra Mileage from the People You Meet

Chapter 4: Writing About Your Home Turf

An Impromptu Tour of Travel Writing Possibilities

Home, Strange Home

Mastering the Destination Piece

In a More Literary Vein

What About Photos?

Taking and Submitting Saleable Shots

Venturing Beyond Home

Chapter 5: The Wide-ranging Potential of Local News

The Invisibility of the Familiar

Sniffing Out Trends

Repackaging Local News

Covering Local News as a Stringer

Part II: Turning Ideas into Assignments and Published Articles

Chapter 6: Query Letters, Assignments and Completed Articles

The Lowdown on Queries

Sample Query #1

Sample Query #2

All About Clips

Additional Tips for Query Writing

When the Editor Calls

Exceptions to the Query Strategy

Chapter 7: Research and Interviewing

First, Know What You’re Looking For

The Basics of Fact-Hunting

Identifying and Finding Sources

Preparing for an Interview

The Interview Itself

Problem Interviews

Electronic-Age Alternatives

Chapter 8: Structuring Your Article

Article Structure

Inviting Leads

The Nut Graph

Organizing the Body of the Article

Sample Mindmap for Lighthouse Article

Wrapping It Up at the End

Writing to Length

Salesworthy Sidebars

Other Structures

Chapter 9: Writing for the Reader

Wanted: Vivid, Conversational Writing

Wise Word Choice

Lucid Sentences

Well-crafted Paragraphing

Tone, Voice, Atmosphere

Chapter 10: Rewriting and Dealing With Editors

Writing and Rewriting

The Little Stuff

Getting Paid

When You Think Your Idea Has Been Stolen

Other Tussles With Editors

Chapter 11: Building Your Freelance Career

The Bottom-Up Strategy

The Top-Down Route

From Rejections to Relationships

Part-Time or Full-Time?

Should You Specialize?

Launching a Column

Moving On to Books

Other Business-Building Tips

Learn More

Introduction

Perhaps as I once did, you believe that real writers write novels. Or perhaps you treasure journalism and fantasize about breaking into print with a Watergate-style exposé or an astonishing interview with Madonna. Or you dream of a fan club of millions for your humor or political column. Or being flown all expenses paid to exotic corners of the earth, to report back on penguin-dotted glaciers or a never-before-explored rain forest.

Ambitions are wonderful, but when it comes to getting from being unpublished or barely published to the pinnacles of the profession, you need realistic ways of getting started in freelance writing and amassing a track record. Most ultimately successful writers launched their careers by translating what they already knew to a format that met the needs of some specific newspaper or magazine.

And that’s the mission of this book – teaching you in concrete detail how you can publish articles in local, regional and national publications without venturing beyond the boundaries of your home town. You don’t need to scheme your way behind locked gates in Hollywood or uncover the smoking gun for our next national scandal in order to attract the attention of editors who have the power to publish you. On the contrary, chances are that your best opportunities lie in topics so near to you that you don’t yet recognize their potential.

How can I be so sure of this? I lived only on my writing income for more than a decade, after I broke into print by selling my first article to the New York Times’ first educational supplement. (You’ll learn the story behind that sale in Chapter 11.) I’ve discussed article ideas person-to-person with dozens of editors, traded stories with hundreds of fellow freelancers and taken questions from thousands of aspiring writers at conferences and workshops or in online forums. And I’ve coached scores of writers to publication over the course of two decades.

The Delights of Freelance Writing

In my late twenties, I worked as a college professor. After the first year, I became bored, and dismayed by the prospect of teaching the same subjects year after year. I can’t ever remember being bored afterwards, as I sold my work to hundreds upon hundreds of magazines and newspapers, tackling topics ranging from nanny training to capital punishment. Each new assignment offered a fresh challenge and an opportunity to get paid for a real-world education. I found writing for publication incredibly fun. In fact, though, there are as many possible satisfactions of freelance writing as there are freelance writers.

When Kelly Boyer Sagert of Lorain, Ohio, took maternity leave from her job as a loan officer, she looked around for another career that wouldn’t require the long hours she had to put in at the bank. She made her first sale to Cats Magazine that year with a piece about a stray cat that had moved into her father’s funeral home and endeared itself to mourners. The magazine paid her just $35, but fiver years later, Sagert had two book contracts lined up, about 50 magazine and 250 newspaper articles behind her, a weekly What’s Happening column and public relations experience for the County Visitors Bureau. I like being able to work at home, being my own boss and meeting interesting people that I’m writing about. For example, I’m doing a book on boomerangs, and the people who compete on the national circuit are crazy, enthusiastic folks who it’s a joy to be around, Sagert says.

Veterinarian Brad Swift of Flat Rock, NC, freelanced part time for animal and pet-related magazines for about ten years before he took the leap of quitting his medical career. People ask me if I miss being a vet, and I always look closely at my situation before replying. So far the answer has always been the same: ‘Are you kidding? No!’ Swift reflects. I love the opportunity freelance writing gives to express my creativity – taking the spark of an idea and fanning it into the flames of a finished article. I also feel like I’m contributing to others by thinking carefully about the message I’m about to deliver and then doing that to the best of my ability. And I love the freedom to write about things I’m excited, passionate or curious about.

Not all successful freelancers abandon their previous career. Erik Sherman of Marshfield, Massachusetts, makes most of his livelihood as a marketing and public relations consultant, but writes regularly for MacWeek, the business section of the Boston Globe and elsewhere. Why? Covering a wide variety of topics, including technology, business, food and theater, suits my nature. Call it unfocused if you will, but it fits with freelancing. I also like the fact that I’m not under allegiance to any particular corporation. If I don’t like the way they work, I can just pick up my computer and take its output elsewhere. Sherman has established relationships with some high-paying magazines that add considerably to his income. There are few other tasks that allow me to make $1,500 in under a day, he notes.

Tom Przybylski of St. Louis, Missouri, cites two different rewards of writing articles for magazines in addition to his regular work as a direct marketing consultant. "Nothing creates authority better than being an author, and the exposure is invaluable. Marketing Tools magazine, where I published two articles, is read both inside and outside of the direct marketing community. Having these couple of articles available to show prospective clients lends credence to what I’m saying and gives me a competitive edge."

Even employed journalists find enjoyment in moonlighting for magazines other than the one that signs their paycheck. Freelancing allows me to write about subjects I don’t ordinarily cover in my day job, reporting on the IRS and Congress for Tax Notes magazine, says Ryan Donmoyer of Alexandria, Virginia. Through freelancing, I can write about the Internet, personal finance, entertainment – anything besides taxes or politics. It keeps me sane.

Anne Stuart, a former reporter for the Associated Press later employed as a writer/editor for Webmaster, CIO and Inc. magazines, agrees about the appeal of variety. I like to keep my hand in on topics other than business, and when I write for a general audience, my friends and relatives get the chance to read my work. The extra money is always welcome too.

What You Need to Succeed

Using my understanding of the writing business and examples and testimony from other writers, I’ll explain how to come up with promising article ideas, place a spin on them so that they’ll appeal to a category of publications likely to take an interest in them, secure an editor’s commitment to at least look at your work, research, write and polish the article, and end up with bylines to be proud of.

You in turn need only three qualifications to be in a position to benefit from the comprehensive instructions in this book:

1. Curiosity. Freelance writers who succeed ardently want to know about the subjects they communicate about, and enjoy passing on their discoveries and insights to others. If you have any topic you’ve ever investigated only because you wanted to know more, you pass this test.

2. Respect for the English language. As melodies and rhythm make up the very substance of music, words are the medium for writing. You don’t need a huge vocabulary or all the rules of grammar at your command, but when someone points out that you wrote lightening instead of lightning for the phenomenon accompanying thunder, you need to feel something akin to Oh! Imagine that! rather than Big deal.

3. Flexibility. If you believe you already know what people want to read, or how something must be written, then your mind may be too rigid to slip around, over or under the hurdles that stand between you and publication. Successful writers adjust their approach to a topic, their style and their execution of an idea according to input they receive from the publishing world. So long as you’re open to learning better ways of communicating ideas, you fit my third and final prerequisite for becoming a successful freelance writer.

Myths About Getting Published

Did you notice that I didn’t mention degrees or education in my list of qualifications? Here are a few misconceptions about what it takes to get published that appear to be widespread.

To publish articles, you need a college education or a journalism degree. You don’t need any educational credentials at all to get published. In fact, submitting a resume to an editor is a dead giveaway that you don’t understand the freelance business. Skill in written communication, which some undereducated people have and many highly educated folks lack, gives you entree to the publishing world. Your sole relevant proof of that is the way you submit your ideas.

You need personal connections with editors. Wrong again! If you can write a terrific query letter, as described in Chapter 6, you can get a go-ahead from an editor who doesn’t know your name, your face or your personal charm or lack of it.

You can’t get published without a literary agent. For the world of magazines and newspapers, this claim is a generation or more out of date. Most literary agents no longer handle periodical submissions, even for favored clients, because their commissions from article payments would barely cover postage and telephone expenses.

You must take precautions to prevent people from stealing your ideas. This one comes up at almost every workshop I teach. Contrary to beginners’ suspicions, however, ideas are just about never snatched from the mail and given to staff or regular contributors to pursue. If you haven’t worked in an editorial office, you have no notion how common it is for people to propose independently virtually the same article. I return to this theme in Chapter 10. Instead of worrying about unlikely rip-offs, spend your energy coming up with original ideas interestingly presented.

No one wants to publish beginners. Logically, this myth couldn’t be true. Every now-successful writer once made a first sale. If you’ve never been published before, you just have to be all the more bewitching and relevant in your article proposals. Follow the guidelines in this book, be persistent, and you will get your chance.

The odds stand overwhelmingly against you when you try to submit your work. True, the most visible magazines on the newsstand receive bagloads of mail from aspiring writers each week. But editors at such magazines have told me that only a small percentage of the ideas they receive are on target, timely and appetizingly presented. Once you master the process of proposing in a well-written letter an article that matches a certain magazine, your chances rise to a reasonable level.

You need fancy computer equipment before you can submit your work. Michael Brennan, a writer formerly from the Boston area, broke into print when he was homeless by using a computer at a local university. In many cities and towns, you can rent enough time at copy centers like Kinko’s to type and print a letter for only a few dollars.

A Wealth of Opportunity

Before we get into coming up with publishable ideas, it’s important that you increase your awareness of the enormous quantity and range of existing magazines. Each year when I buy the latest edition of Writer’s Market, the best market guide for writers, I’m amazed all over again at the thousands of magazines profiled there that I’ve never heard of. Have you ever run across a copy of National Dragster? How about Norway at Your Service? Texas Gardener or Southern Lumberman? Or Chile Pepper: The Magazine of Spicy Foods, Twins, Episcopal Life or Tropical Fish Hobbyist? Each has a circulation of 12,000 or more and buys from 10 to 150 articles a year from freelancers.

According to Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory, at least 79,000 magazines publish regularly in the United States alone. In addition to Writer’s Market, several other listings of magazines, such as the Standard Rate & Data Service guides or Bacon’s, as well as many online magazine directories and plain old Google searches, can lead you to unfamiliar periodicals. Once you get serious about writing for magazines, you may also turn up useful discoveries when you visit friends’ bathrooms, explore the seat pockets of airlines and haunt a variety of newsstands.

Don’t forget to start hunting for different newspapers as well. If you’ve read nothing but the Hometown News and USA Today for the past several years, you may be overlooking other local opportunities. Peruse the racks at convenience stores and laundromats, look at what arrives free in your mailbox or on your doorstep and check out the holdings in your public library. In the Boston area, besides the ubiquitous Globe and Herald, you can find the Boston Business Journal for sale and The Tab, The Improper Bostonian and Editorial Humor for free in street boxes. At some health clubs in the suburbs you’ll see stacks of 128 News, and in certain neighborhoods, the South End News, the Brookline Citizen, the Jewish Advocate, Sojourner (for women) and Gay Community News. Even in the papers you regularly read, look beyond the sections you normally focus on to get a sense of the full range of topics covered.

Beyond magazines and newspapers lie a panoply of newsletters. Practically every organization sends something to its members every month or quarter that includes short articles. As I explain further in Chapter 11, when you start from the bottom and work your way up, your first step is to get your work published somewhere, anywhere. Newsletters generally won’t pay you for submissions, but depending on how sophisticated their pages look, they can provide you with an easy route to your all-important first clips – copies of your published work, which in turn open doors for assignments for pay.

Except for the most visible and popular magazines, which receive an overabundance of mail from people like you, you’ll find that editors have a large, constant appetite for fresh, well-targeted freelance material.

Trade magazines, edited for specialists working in an industry or profession, almost never appear on newsstands and are particularly receptive to approaches from knowledgeable writers. Amy Sitze, editor of the 27,000-circulation trade tabloid, The Inside Line, told me that she hardly ever receives any query letters, and only once or twice in three years heard from a writer who had good clips as well as knowledge of the electronics industry. That person would be my dream, she says.

Scoping Out a Magazine or Newspaper

Although you may have read thousands of magazines in your lifetime, you need to learn a new way of looking at these familiar entities if you are to interest them regularly in your written work. The first thing to understand is that every magazine has a readership and a focus. Although an editorial statement contained in the magazine or in a market guide for writers provides important clues to the essence of that publication, you can get a much more specific take on its target audience by studying the advertisements.

For instance, the Saab car ad on the back cover of the premiere issue of Self-Employed Professional tells us that its readers are worldly and well-heeled. In American Woman, a series of ads for home-study courses on bookkeeping, real-estate appraising and paralegal studies indicates that many of its readers are high-school graduates in need of specific job skills. For a freelance writer, the ads serve as pointers toward the magazine audience’s age, geographical distribution, job level, income, family status, technological and cultural sophistication, tastes, and so on.

Refine your hypotheses from examining the ads by assessing the range of content you find in a sample issue or two. Often surprises turn up that you would never have predicted from a magazine’s title. For instance, if you’d wanted to write an article on Los Angeles a few years back, probably the last magazine that would have come to mind would be New York Woman. Yet you’d have learned from looking at it that that now-defunct magazine included a regular department called The Other Coast. Similarly, if you wanted to write about investment strategies and managing personal finances, you’d think of a magazine like Your Money, not RDH: The National Magazine for Dental Hygienist Professionals. Yet the latter stated in its Writer’s Market listing that it wanted to see queries on all types of personal growth and lifestyle topics – including finances.

Editors are constantly on the lookout for writers capable of matching their publication’s characteristic tone – the attitude and flavor of the writing. You can understand significant differences here by comparing randomly chosen paragraphs from publications that might appear to be similar.

Are the articles full of the pronoun I, do they speak directly to the reader as you or are they more impersonal? Do you find slang and informal diction, like one day this bozo I knew in high school called me, or a lot of technical terms like flow-through percentage and precise numbers like 38.9 percent? Are the sentences long and convoluted or crisp and snappy? Do snobbish judgments come through in the writing or a you-can-do-it spirit?

When it’s time