The Renegade Writer Blog

Kevin asks: In The Renegade Writer, chapter one, where it explains that editors may frown on the use of content site material as clips (I agree with this) does the same go for the articles I have had published on online magazines such as Destination Elsewhere, Trips and Journeys, Garden and Hearth, I Parenting and others? Also, would these articles be worthy to serve as clips now that I want to make the jump to print magazines?

The reason editors don’t look kindly upon content site articles as clips is that there’s practically no barrier to entry. If you’ve ever read some of the articles on those sites, you’ll see what I mean: It looks like the sites accept just about anyone who has the necessary thumbage to bang out an article. That’s not to say there aren’t good articles on content sites, but they’re sadly overshadowed by the bad ones.

Part of the reason for clips is to show not only that you can write, but that you’ve successfully worked with an editor, and that another editor has found your ideas and writing worth printing. Putting an article up on a content site, in this sense, is no different from posting an unpublished article on your own website: It shows your writing (which is of course important), but not much else. I know that there are writers out there who have landed assignments by sending samples of unpublished work, but the majority of editors would rather see published clips.

This brings up another dilemma: With a published clip, how does an editor know whether your writing was good, or whether the editor of the published clip worked over your badly-spelled drivel with a red pen until it was printable? I don’t know, but I do know that I have on occasion sent an editor the original text of a published clip (that is, the text as I wrote it and not as it was published). I do this when I don’t happen to have a copy of the published clip, but I tell the editor that I’m sending her the original text so she can see my actual writing without editing.

So: Online clips. There’s a big difference between the typical content site and an online magazine, and that’s that with a magazine there’s a barrier to entry: An editor must accept your idea and your writing. As for whether an article in an online magazine would make a good clip, as yourself these questions:

• Is the magazine well-known and well-respected? If you’re talking about something like iParenting, Wired News, or Salon, you can stop right here. Your clip is fine.
• Does the magazine have a barrier to entry? If they accept anything a writer throws at them without question, the clip is iffy. Ask yourself the other questions in this list.
• Does the magazine pay writers? If so, good. If not, iffy again. Not that an editor will know if you’ve been paid for an article, but the ones that don’t pay are often not as nice as the ones that do.
• Does the website look professional? Well-done illustrations and attractive layout: good. Cheesy animations, hard-to-read layout, pixilated clip art: not so good.
• How is the rest of the writing on the site? Your writing may shine, but if the other articles on the site were clearly written by people with a poor grasp of English, an editor may not take your clip seriously.

Now, if you have no clips at all other than an online clip from a less-than-respected magazine, you have to work with what you’ve got. You can create a PDF of just your article instead of sending the editor a link, or send the editor the text of your article and tell her it was “published in X magazine” (no link).

Readers, what do you consider a good clip? What do you do if you want to send a clip but you feel the magazine isn’t the most respected? Please post in the Comments section! [lf]

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