A Guest Post by Wayne E. Pollard, Creator of Bo’s Café Life

I believe that persistence is the most important trait you should have if you want to get published. To get my first piece published in The New York Times, I pitched it to at least five different editors until I found one who was interested in the piece.

Before pitching that piece to The New York Times, I had pitched it to an editor at The Village Voice, who rejected it. If I hadn’t pitched it to The New York Times, the piece would still be sitting in a file on my computer, unpublished.

To get published, you must query constantly. Send out queries every day if you can and be persistent because persistence pays. Yes, persistence pays – but not enough to cover the rent. In addition to being persistent, to get published, you must know how to effectively query.

I’m going to tell you how to increase your chances of getting an article published. These are the steps that I followed to get articles (mine and my client’) in publications ranging from American Banker to Wine Enthusiast. Here are my seven steps to querying success:

1. Position Yourself as an Authority.

Just as an author should have a platform, a writer should also have a platform. What makes you qualified to write the article? Write a brief, two to three sentence bio sketch that establishes your credibility and then put this in the first paragraph of your query letter.

2. Have a Strategy.

To get bylines in better publications, you must stick and move; hit one publication and then move on to another one. Your aim is to build momentum. What do I mean? Start with smaller publications and then work your way up. Submit a few pieces to your community paper or magazine. Then use those clips to get into a regional publication.

After that, use those clips to get into a statewide publication. My bylines in a county-wide newspaper enabled me to write for the #2 paper in my state. This enabled me to get a piece published in The Village Voice, which then enabled me to get a byline in The New York Times. Get the idea?

3. Be Choosy.

You must strategically choose where you submit your work. The truth is that some bylines are more prestigious than others. I occasionally blog for The New York Times The Local. Another writer who wanted to blog asked me if she should submit pieces to The Local or to another blog in my community. I told her that if she’s trying to get build her career as a writer, then she should submit pieces to The Local because having a byline in The New York Times will give her more credibility as a writer.

I know that some writers don’t feel comfortable hearing this, but it’s the truth; there are some publications that editors-in-chief and managing editors will respect more than others. And if you are trying to build your career as a writer, you can’t waste too much time writing for publications that won’t help you achieve your writing goals. Do you understand?

4. Research. Research. Research.

The key to successfully getting published is to do your research. Once you have your article or an idea for an article and you know which publication you want to target, study what’s been published in that publication in the past two years. If you find nothing similar to your article, great! Mention this in your query letter. If you come across an article that covers your topic, tell how yours will be different.

5. Give the Benefits.

In your query, tell why the publication’s readers will find your piece informative or interesting. This is crucial. My very first piece that was published in a national magazine was, “Confessions of a Software Salesman.” It was published in CIO (Chief Information Officer), a difficult magazine to get published in.

When I pitched the article to the managing editor, I told her that I was a former software insider and that I could give her readers tips that would help them save hundreds of thousands of dollars. She bought my article. You, too, in your query, must tell how readers will benefit from your article.

6. Pick up the Phone.

Unless the submission guidelines say, “absolutely no phone calls,” you should consider calling the editor. I loved doing telesales and I’m extremely effective over the phone. If you, too, know how to effectively pitch over the phone, then by all means get on the phone and call that editor!

Create a brief pitch that gets the editor’s attention. Here’s mine: “My name is Wayne Pollard and my work’s been published in The New York Times, The Village Voice, and Writer’s Digest. I’m calling you because I’d like to submit an article on… I’ve researched your archive and you haven’t published anything like it in the past two years.î

In the few seconds that it takes to say this, I establish that I’m an experienced writer who should be listened to. I also establish that I’ve done my research. Go back to your bio and create a five second pitch that will get an editor’s attention. The key thing is, when you deliver this over the phone, DO NOT PAUSE. Once you’ve gotten the pitch out, wait for the editor’s response. And if the person says that now’s not a good time, just apologize and say that you’ll send an email. Then get off the phone!

7. Let Them Know that You’re a Pro.

Finally, in your query letter, let the editor know that you’re a pro. In my queries, I say, “I can meet any word count and any deadline. I’m also willing to make any edits.” You’re probably thinking, edit my piece?! Yes – if you want to get published, you must be willing to edit your piece. Do you want to get published or do you want to hold on to your precious piece?

Bo’s Café Life is my look at the writing life through the eyes of Bo, an aspiring novelist who spends his time in a café writing and talking to other writers who are also on the quest to get a book deal. It is an honest look at the writing life.

Writers find the strip funny, however, Bo’s Café Life is primarily about determination; Bo is determined to get a book deal. That’s what the strip is really about, pushing on with a dream despite the rejection and the tremendous odds you face.

Have you heard of writers who knew from the time that they first held a #2 pencil that they wanted to be writers? I’m not one of them. I didn’t even major in journalism. I only decided to start writing about ten years ago. Before that, I was in public relations and sales, which is how I learned to be persistent and how to effectively query.

By using my seven steps to querying success and by being persistent, you will get more of your articles published. And don’t forget to have fun and enjoy the process. This is another key message in Bo’s Café Life. See the lighter side of trying to get published and enjoy the ride.

Wayne E. Pollard is the creator of  Bo’s Café Life, a comic strip about an aspiring novelist who spends his time writing in a café and talking to other writers.

A Guest Post by David Turnbull of Adventures of a Barefoot Geek

I feel writing should be effortless. To some that may sound ridiculous, and a few months ago I may have agreed with you, because syphoning thoughts from your brain into a coherent structure is mighty difficult, but alas, I love writing too much for me to be content with its inherent difficulty.

This desire for effortless writing encourage me sit down one day, a green tea by my side and write everything down that I felt could make the process itself effortless. 2 hours later, with only a short 5-10 minute break because my fingers were tired, I’d written about 4000 words containing the most flowing, yet actionable set of ideas in a single piece of writing I’d ever written. There was no strain, or stress, or over thinking about how a particular sentence should be structured. It was writing bliss.

Of course, with any creative pursuit you can’t bottle up all the relevant advice in a single article, or without continual thought, so these are some of the ideas I wanted to expand upon and hadn’t isolated previously to make writing an effortless process.

1. Ease the pressure. One common tactic recommended by many veteran writers is to get up in the morning, sit at the computer at 9 o’clock and then not move until the clock strikes 5. The idea is that forcing yourself in to that situation will somehow release your creativity and let your words flow. And then there’s the twist on that exercise in conforming to a high word count, such as 1000-2000 words per day, no matter what.

But while these exercises may encourage you to write a high quantity of words, you’ll be sacrificing the fulfilment that can be released from your words, and the state of effortlessness which I feel is worthy of cultivation.

Therefore, instead of trying to attain high quotas each day, do the opposite. Lower your quotas to ease the pressure. Tell yourself before your fingers strike the keys:

After 10 minutes of solid writing I will be satisfied.

…or…

When I’ve written 200 words I will be satisfied.

This completely shifts your mood, from one of dread and uncertainty, to one of possibility and control. But what I feel the main draw of this practice is the way in which it helps you focus on the present moment, on what you’re writing now.

Looking ahead at large quotas and burdens distracts you from the current task at hand – the writing itself – and thus makes the process more difficult. When there’s less of a hurdle to jump over, your mind focus less on the chance of impending difficulty, and more on completing the point it’s currently tackling.

2. Write only what matters. One of the constant struggles I, and I expect many other writers face is the constant desire to make each paragraph better than the last, to be a beacon of continuous improvement and to say only what matters. In many ways this desire is a burden – in any craft there will always be plateaus that are reached – but in other, more important ways, this mindset is a gift, because when you feel your writing actually matters, that it will potentially make a difference in someone’s life, the words will flow effortlessly.

In the words of the Stoic philosopher Seneca:

“…do not go to listen to people who are more concerned about the quantity than the quality of what they say…”

And in that same way, do not be one of those people who are more concerned about quantity rather than quality. Writing less is a positive trait, embrace it, and don’t give into the allure of writing for the sake of writing.

Before writing anything, ask yourself, “Does this matter?” You can never truly be sure before a piece of writing is complete, but if there’s a slight pang of uncertainty then don’t attempt to work with that feeling. Take the time to polish the concept of what you plan to write, and then write.

3. Negate the need for will power. The act of writing often requires a considerable amount of will power. There are distractions on the internet, the sudden urge to procrastinate in the “real world” and a thousand and one other reasons why the timing isn’t write to put pen to paper or finger to keys. But while developing a high level of self discipline is certainly a noble cause, there’s little need of it if you take the time to shape your circumstances which, in turn, shapes your results.

Block distractions on the internet by using the fantastic LeechBlock extension for Firefox. If you’re not a Firefox user then it’s worth making the switch simply to use this extension (that’s exactly what I did). For the stubborn folk out there an app such as SelfControl will do fine, although it’s not automated and as feature rich. And if you have money to burn, or want access to fancy metrics, then check out the premium version of RescueTime.

Procrastination in general can be overcome with a few simple steps:

• Outline what you plan to write the day before you plan to write it, and don’t overwhelm this list with irrelevance. Never list more than 3 tasks, and stick with just 1 important task if possible. This appears to be an act of will power, to conform to your to do list, but you’ll be surprised about how psychologically powerful a simple plan is over your actions, especially if it’s carefully planned hours in advance.
• Write at a time conducive to being free from distractions. There’s no “right” time to write, but there are better times to write, and those specific times depend on the person. One increasingly popular method is to write late at night, often after midnight. This is something I’ve experimented with and it’s surprisingly powerful, yet I still shy away from it because I worry about the affects of being on the computer so close to sleep.
• Separate your writing environment from leisure. This is a change I made in the past few weeks and has resulted in an enormous change in the way I can either turn on or shut off the part of me that is focused on writing. With this, the times when you’re in your writing environment are heightened, undiluted by the activities of the day, allowing you to truly lose yourself in a flow of effortlessness.

Writing doesn’t need to be difficult. Or tedious. Or stressful. It can be effortless. And while I obviously haven’t covered every aspect of finding flow when writing, my intention with this article wasn’t to provide you with a definitive guide, but open you up to the possibility of what writing can be.

It’s easy to fall into the mindset that inducing insanity is simply an aspect of being a writer you need to deal with. Don’t let yourself believe that fallacy any longer though. Imagine what the state of perfect effortless writing would feel like, and then strive for that using both these suggestions and your own creativity.

David Turnbull is some kid who just likes to write about stuff at Adventures of a Barefoot Geek, a blog about life, technology and simplicity. Subscribe to the blog now and follow him on Twitter.

A heads-up for WTD readers
Leo and Mary will run the next A-list Blogging Bootcamp, How to Create a Blog that Rocks from 13-17 February. Everyone had a blast last time! We’ll be emailing some great articles on blogging. Get yourself on the mailing list by clicking on Leo’s report in the sidebar.

The news has been democratized.

By Leo Babauta

It’s not news that the news industry is changing rapidly, and the traditional newspaper and magazine industry is in a whole mess of trouble.

Newspapers are losing readers at an alarming rate to online reading — and readers are reading not only newspapers, but blogs and many other types of sites.

Newspapers are trying to find a model for making money online, but they’re not learning fast enough, not adapting fast enough. Online ads can’t support them, because now the monopoly for publishing news and commentary has been broken, and advertising has been spread out among thousands and thousands of sites.

How can the newspaper industry adapt? Well, they’ll either have to figure that out quickly, or they’ll die.

As a former journalist and editor at a Gannett-owned newspaper, I have some thoughts — things I’ve learned from my career as a blogger at Zen Habits.

1. Smaller is better. Newspapers can’t survive on online ads not because it’s an impossible model for publishing — I do it at Zen Habits and many other blogs and smaller news sites do it. They can’t survive on online ads because they’re too huge. Not only do they have a newsroom of journalists and editors, but they have copy editors, layout editors, graphic artists, photographers, managing editors and more. And that’s just the newsroom — one small part of a newspaper company. There’s also advertising, production (the presses and so on), circulation (the delivery of newspapers), accounting, the IT department, human resources, and overall management (the publisher, president, vice president, staff, etc.).

There is no way an organization that huge can survive on online ads, especially now that the news monopoly has been broken. The solution isn’t to charge more, but to become smaller. If a newspaper transitions to an only online edition, it can get rid of its printing presses and printing sections. Smaller can mean they get rid of large parts of accounting and HR and management and so on. Basically, everyone should be involved in actually producing content, with perhaps a small amount of ad sales staff. Smaller is better — with a small news team, you can produce great content and live on much less. More on this below.

2. If you charge, people won’t come. Readers are used to reading things for free. Sure, they’ll pay a couple dollars for an entire issue of a newspaper, but who reads the entire newspaper online every day? Now we just read a couple articles that are interesting, and move on to other sites. If the other sites are free, why should we keep coming back if you start to charge us? Not only that, but the biggest sources of traffic and growth come not from regular readers but from links from other blogs and news sites, social media, email, and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook … and if you erect a pay wall, no one will be able to link to you! You’ll die a slow but inevitable death.

3. If you charge, others will offer it for free. The Wall Street Journal and a couple of other business news sites are getting away with charging because the business crowd doesn’t mind paying for access to up-to-the-minute business information. It’s just a regular expense, a part of doing business. However … that won’t work forever. Eventually other sites will come up that offer information that’s just as good, but free. These sites will be smaller, and at first won’t have as much credibility. But as people migrate to them — because they’re free, and the information is the same — they’ll start to build up some credibility, and then WSJ will be in real trouble. The same will be true for others who charge for access to information — people will eventually get it somewhere else, because that’s an opportunity for someone to create a business based on giving the information away for free. They’ll be ad supported, sure, but if they’re smaller they’ll be able to live on that.

4. You’ve got competition now. This is just an extension of No. 3 above, but expanded: in the old days, you only competed against other major news media. That’s no longer the case. Now, lots of people are publishing news — including everyday people who post news to Twitter, right when news is happening, as eye-witnesses. Now lots of people write commentary (granted: sometimes too many). Now there’s competition everywhere for people’s interest and attention. So you’re going to need to step it up — you can’t do things the old way. Figure out what your competitive advantages are (more on this below), and use them to your advantage. We still need you to be a government watchdog, we still need your in-depth reporting, but perhaps some of the things you’re doing that have been replaced by new competitors (such as Craigslist or weather services and the like) can be dropped.

5. Your main asset is credibility, not money or size. The difference between you and a blog isn’t the writing, or how fast you get the news, or how big you are, or even how deep your pockets are … but how much people trust you. This trust is huge, actually, because it means when others might break the news before you, people will still want you to confirm that it’s true. Whatever you do, don’t lose that trust. Use it to your advantage. Blogs are building that trust as we speak, and if you break the trust in any way, you’ll lose everything.

6. You’ve got the skills — but you need to adapt. One of my advantages when I started blogging was that I was a journalist by training, which isn’t required for blogging by any means — most of the best bloggers were never journalists and many journalists aren’t good bloggers. But I had some skills that translate well in the online world — writing fairly clear and concise articles, for example, and using bullet points and other devices to make it easier for readers to find the essential information, and headline writing, and research. You’ve got those skills and more — but they don’t translate exactly to blogging. You need to learn blogging, and the online world, and really participate in it and understand it, so that your skills can be adapted to the new demands of readers. Part of that is that you need to connect with them (see next item), and you also need to learn community and new forms of writing that are foreign to journalism. You’ll also need to forget division of labor — everyone needs to produce content, and everyone needs to be able to handle tech and business.

7. Connect with readers and bloggers, don’t snub them. Blogs have succeeded in part because we are a community, and a large discussion. Readers can connect with bloggers in ways they never connected with journalists — the best journalists have always been (and mostly still are) in ivory towers, looking down on the reading public and barely accessible but through letters to the editor (and more recently, email). But readers can instantly communicate with bloggers, and the best bloggers talk back, are part of the discussion. And bloggers connect with each other — we have giant conversations through our blogs and Twitter, link to each other, not just to our own articles. You need to become social, in the new sense of the word — not just in going to community functions and press conferences.

8. Become lean and distributed. Having a huge building full of employees and equipment is unsupportable these days. The best bloggers work from home, or from coffee shops. We have no huge building, because we couldn’t afford it. Let your reporters work from home or from the road, with a laptop, and you remove the need for an office. Learn to collaborate online, to do business online. Let readers become news gatherers, and give them a voice and a channel for putting out the news. Let the community be your sources, in a new and exciting way, and you’ll need fewer employees.

What does all this mean for the employees of newspapers? It means you’ll need to learn new ways of working, and that some of your will be laid off, inevitably — either because the newspaper purposely leans down, or because it will go out of business. For the sake of our society, I hope the best newspapers don’t go out of business, that they learn to be leaner. But many employees will be out of work — and that’s OK. You’ll start your own blogs and websites and go into competition with your former employer, as I have. And you’ll love every minute of it.

—
If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, Twitter or StumbleUpon. I’d appreciate it. :)

A guest post by David Masters

“I don’t think you can write – at least not well – if you don’t love stories.”
~ Nora Roberts

“To hell with facts! We need stories!”
~ Ken Kesey

An Ancient Greek Parable on How to Captivate Your Audience

Demades, the Ancient Greek orator, is about to address an assembly in Athens on a matter of vital importance. Though widely recognised as one of the greatest speakers of his time, he can’t get his audience to listen. They’re joking and laughing among themselves, ignoring Demades as he stands alone on the podium, babbling, struggling in vain to attract attention.

He pauses briefly before starting to speak again. At the words he now speaks, the audience falls into an enchanted silence, focusing on every syllable coming from Demades lips.

Demades’ words were these: “Ceres set off on her journey with a swallow and an eel as her companions.”

Demades’ opening words – after his pause – contained a simple magic: the magic of storytelling.

The Magic and Power of Story

As a writer, it is not words, but stories, that are your elemental tool.  Stories are an enchanting magic that grip the reader to the page.

Here is the power of storytelling: People make sense of the world through stories.

Stories are fundamental to being human.  Without stories, life would appear as a meaningless jumble of facts and ideas.  Stories make facts, and great ideas, meaningful.  They connect with the everyday life and experience of their listeners or readers.

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
~ Muriel Rukeyser

A Short History Lesson for Writers

Take history, for example.  As a collection of dates – seemingly random numbers to a neutral observer – history has no meaning.  428, 1,564, 1,757, 1,812, 1,899, 1,947. These become meaningful, firstly, when you realise they’re smaller than 2,009 – so they could tie in with the story of Christianity and western history.  They become more meaningful when letters are attached to them: 428BC, 1947AD. They’re more meaningful still when words are added: 428AD, Plato born; 1564AD, Shakespeare christened; 1947AD, Stephen King born.  These letters and words add meaning to the numbers only because you know – or know of – the stories contained within them, hidden behind them: the lives and works of philosophers, playwrights and poets.

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”
~ Rudyard Kipling

Invoking Your Readers’ Imagination

Stories hold truth more deeply than facts or statements.  As a mixture of images and ideas, stories cross the boundary between two types of truth. Storyteller Robert Bela Wilhelm calls these two truth types ‘day-time talk’ and ‘night-time talk’.  Day-time talk uses sentences to clearly explain ideas.  Night-time talk – the talk of dreams – gives your imagination free reign to use images and fantasy in whichever way it likes.  Story provides a way of writing that bridges these two types of truth – allowing the rational conscious mind to be co-present with the creative unconscious mind.  Stories satisfy the order required by left-brain thinking while provoking the imagination of right brain thinking.

All well written stories are fairy stories.  A well written story enchants the reader – casting on him or her a spell that will leave them transformed in a way that simple, blunt facts never could.

“People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.”
Chinua Achebe

Stories inspire lasting change for two reasons.  First, they are memorable.  A well told story is never forgotten; it lodges itself deep in the reader’s subconscious mind. Second, the reader has to find out the purpose of the story for themselves.  The reader is responsible for working out the truth of the story.  Instead of being told what to do, how to act, where to look, how to think, they must discover this by thinking the story through.  And in finding the meaning of the story for themselves, the change will stay with them.  New ways of life learnt through stories are never merely an idea that seemed nice to read, but a new truth that has become a deep and lasting part of the reader’s inner world.

To conclude, a story.

Leave Your Readers Craving for More

King Shahryar of Persia loves his newlywed wife more than all the world.  It is his greatest happiness to meet her every wish, and to treat her with the finest jewels – diamonds, rubies, and sapphires – and beautiful silk dresses.

Shahryar’s Queen, however, is in love with another man.  For many years, the Queen and her lover have a secret affair.

When King Shahryar finally discovers his Queen’s infidelity, he is furious.  Breaking down and losing his mind, he has the Queen executed.  As revenge on his former wife, he decrees that all women are unfaithful.

He soon marries a new bride, but has her executed the next morning, before she has a chance to cheat on him.  He marries again, and again executes his new wife the next day.  He repeats this pattern until his chief advisor can find no more women for him to marry. The only single woman left in the whole kingdom is the advisor’s daughter, Scheherazade.  Reluctantly, the chief advisor agrees to let her marry the king.

On their wedding night, Scheherazade tells the king a story.  At the climax of the story, she stops her storytelling, and refuses to continue.  The king is determined to discover the ending to the story.  He begs her to finish, but she will not tell the ending.

The next day, the executioner knocks on the king’s door, as has become custom the day after each wedding. The king sends the executioner away.  Scheherazade’s execution can wait until tomorrow; he must first hear the end of her story.

That night, Scheherazade finishes her story.  The king is satisfied, and will have her executed the following morning.  However, while he is plotting  Scheherazade’s demise, she begins another story.  Again, she stops telling the story at its climax, and refuses to continue.  Again, the king holds off her execution so he can hear the ending to her story.  And again, that evening, when she finishes the previous story, she starts another.

For 1,001 nights Scheherazade captivates the king is this way, holding his curiosity each night with a new story.

During these years of sharing stories, the King has fallen in love with Scheherazade.  He can no longer imagine having her executed.   Scheherazade, too, has fallen in love with the King.  Together, they live happily ever after, with a reign of justice and truth, always listening carefully to the stories of their subjects.

Stories are like fairy gold, the more you give away, the more you have.
~ Anon.

David Masters is a writer, storyteller, blogger, and amateur photographer. Follow fragments of his life on Twitter.

Photo by smcgee>

By Mary Jaksch

Every writer is an expert on writing, write? I mean, right?
You don’t feel like an expert? Join the club! Neither do I. But imagine this scenario:

You’re at home. It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon and you’re sitting at your computer.
The phone rings.
“Hi,” the caller says. “My name is Jordana and I hear that you write.”
“I do, but…”
“Well, I want to become a writer. Could I please ask you something?”
“I don’t know whether I…”
“Look, just let me know your three most important tips for a new writer. What are they?”

What would you say to Jordana?

Please share your response in the comments! (You can find my three little secret tips there too)

Mary Jaksch is Chief Editor of Write to Done. You can read more articles on her blog Goodlife ZEN Grab her free Ebook “Overcome Anything” here or join her next Virtual Zen Retreat.

Photo by ninjaneil902