The Renegade Writer Blog

Denene Brox always dreamed of being a professional writer — and now she is one. Read on to learn how she broke into the business and how she lands assignments sans query.
Can you give us a little background on your writing career?
I’ve been writing all my life and was always praised in school for my […]

Thanks for voting here and via email for your favorite “Query I’d love to send but never would” entry. It was a close contest, but Terri Conroy’s Cosmo query garnered the most votes. Terri gets a signed copy of The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters That Rock when it’s released in November. The winning query is […]

I’ve had so many people ask me for a fall course that I set a new session of my 8 Week E-Course on Getting Published in Magazines to start on Monday, September 11, 2006. The $198 course includes eight online lessons, eight assignments, and eight weeks of e-mail support. There’s also a half-price version that […]

One of the best business purchases I’ve ever made is — a postage scale. Yep, a plain, old-fashioned, mechanical postal scale.
No more sticking on extra postage “just to be sure,” no more running to the post office to make sure the clips your editor requested won’t arrive postage due. Just weigh, stamp, and send.
Staples has […]

In November, Diana and I will be giving a four-session online course in query letters for the Editorial Freelancers Association. Here’s the info from their site:
Query Letters That Rock
Online / New Course
Want to write for magazines—or boost your magazine-writing income? In this four-session course, you will learn how to write a query letter that will […]

We asked you to send in a “query letter you’d love to send — but never would.” As promised, here are our top picks. Now it’s up to you: please vote on your favorite by commenting here or e-mailing Linda at lindaformichelli@gmail.com. The winner will receive a signed copy of The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters […]

What could be more motivating than an e-mail from your past self reminding you of your writing goals and dreams? FutureMe is a free service that lets you write an e-mail to yourself that will be sent on the date you select, from 30 days to 30 years into the future. Remind yourself of where […]

One of my editors just told me about a pet peeve that many of us commit every few seconds: She hates it when writers insert two spaces after periods. The “two spaces” rule is a holdover from the days before proportionally-spaced fonts, but many of us are total squares and dutifully but misguidedly stick two […]

If you’re a writer, downloading and deleting spam can eat up precious minutes out of your day and disrupt your writing groove. If you’re a writer, you probably use e-mail to find sources and post to writers’ discussion groups — hence more spam. You see the problem.
Here’s quick and easy way to can the spam, […]

August 15 is the deadline for the world-famous, exciting “Query Letter You’d Love to Send” contest. Write the query letter you’d love to write but would never send — for example, a query for Dog Fancy about 10 ways cats rock out over dogs, or a query for Ms. magazine on how to make your […]