I often develop my daily blog post from a writer’s question or a conversation I’ve had with a student or client. Well, this morning, I offered advice to a student in my article-writing course and I wanted to share that with you.
She, like many writers starting out, is stuck on wanting to write within her comfort zone. Unfortunately, our comfort zone is usually quite narrowly focused. She likes to write personal opinion and personal experience pieces. And why not? These are easy. They require no research and no interviews. You do not have to go anywhere to validate or verify anything. You just write from the head or the heart. Nice work if you can get it.
The problem is, there’s not much of a market for this type of writing, unless, perhaps, it is a spicy op-ed piece on a controversial subject.
So what did I suggest to her? Here’s the gist of my response:
I have to say that the piece you wrote from the heart is cute, but you aren’t going to get very far earning money with personal stories. If I were you, I’d move away from that for now (come back to it after you have established yourself within the world of magazines). Use some of the techniques we’ve discussed in the course to locate article ideas that are timely, things that are on people’s minds now, unique ideas that others are interested in and that haven’t been overused. For example,
“What to do if you get a tsunami warning” (for magazines related to coastal living).
“How dogs are helping with the rescue and recovery effort in Japan.”
“How to teach your children to be givers—to develop an altruistic attitude/behavior” (for any number of parenting/religious magazines).
“Profiles of teens who are helping others in major ways.”
Read newspapers and magazines and watch the news for story ideas.
Find magazines that have editorial calendars and study them to discover article ideas. Wooden Horse Publications publishes a lot of magazine editorial calendars along with their expansive database of magazines. http://www.woodenhorsepub.com or use Google to find magazines with editorial calendars.
I would advise that you stay away from the personal piece for now. As you proceed within the world of article writing, you will become more and more familiar with magazines and you will get to know editors. Then you will have a better chance of getting some of your more fun things—things that are close to your heart—published.
When I started my article-writing career, I wanted to write about parenting (from a parent’s point of view), and I loved writing personal experience pieces. But I knew these pieces were harder to place. (Besides, I was not a celebrity or a parenting authority.) So I chose to write about something I knew well and that I knew wasn’t being covered adequately at the time—things related to horsemanship and amateur horse showing for horse magazines. I think you’ve heard me say that I sold the first article I wrote and quite a few subsequent pieces to horse-related magazines.
Around that time, I got a job with a local newspaper writing a business column. This meant I had to go out and interview people. I found interesting stories throughout my community and I submitted some of them to magazines. I wrote about a woman who made exquisite batik dolls and a man who built guitars from scratch. I wrote a how-to piece on drying flowers (based on the instructions of a local florist), and one on how to cook using flowers—which flowers are edible, etc. I featured a fabric store owner who packages her quilting fabric pieces to look like food—salad, milkshake, sushi, etc.
I suggest that you check into your regional magazines for ideas and for possible opportunities.
I hope this gives you some ideas and some encouragement to step further outside your comfort zone, which, in my opinion, is going to be necessary if you truly want to establish and build a lucrative article-writing career.
For more about article-writing, visit my websites and look at some of my articles.
http://www.matilijapress.com
http://www.patriciafry.com
If you want more help with your article-writing career, sign up for my article-writing course:
http://www.matilijapress.com/course_magarticles.htm
Every bit of advice helps us newcomers in writing, even if some of us are ancient. Thanks for this advice.