The Renegade Writer Blog

Last week I led a free teleclass on building relationships with writers that included a lengthy Q&A session with participants. I was amazed at how many of the writers’ questions I could answer the same way. For example:
“I want to write for a magazine but I can’t figure out if they use freelance. What should [...]

The Care and Feeding of an Editor: Building Relationships That Will Help You Succeed as a Writer is tomorrow, Tuesday, March 9 2010 at 8:30-9:30 pm ET (Note that this is East Coast time; please check for the correct time in your time zone.) This class will take place via teleconference.
To be a successful [...]

I’ve just scheduled my next free teleclass for writers!
The Care and Feeding of an Editor
Date: Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 8:30-9:30 pm ET (Note that this is East Coast time; please check for the correct time in your time zone.)
Topic: The Care and Feeding of an Editor: Building Relationships That Will Help You Succeed as [...]

Angie asks: In your e-course, you recommend that we come up with an elevator speech about our idea in case an editor picks up the phone when we call the magazine to ask for contact information. Can you tell me more about this?
I’ve had students call a magazine’s editorial department to ask for an e-mail [...]

By popular demand, I’m posting the article I wrote for Writer’s Digest in 1999 that was based on the query I posted last week. While the query was about magazine writing vs. copywriting, the editor asked me to focus on advertorials in place of copywriting.
I’m leaving in the sidebar of places that buy advertorials even [...]

My teleclass Break into Food Writing with Monica Bhide was a success! We had over 60 writers in attendance, and Monica gave some wonderful information on little-known food markets for writers (including how to create your own), the skills you need to break in, and how to use social media to boost your food writing [...]

In October 2008, I had the brilliant idea to market my writing services to universities because I had heard that education was one of the few industries that was not suffering in the down economy. I created a list of every university in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont, and many of them in Massachusetts as [...]

I recently read a great post by writer Thursday Bram called Why Writers Need CRM and Why I Use Gist. Gist is a free online contact management tool that’s in beta now. It can import your contacts from your e-mail applications, LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, and more.
What’s really neat about Gist is that it brings together [...]

This week I posted Adding Value, about how we writers need to offer not just benefits but also value. The benefits I offer an editor are that I’m fast and a good writer who works well with editors — but those benefits don’t really distinguish me from other good writers. I struggled deciding what value [...]

You know how it is — you do everything right, and still you never hear back from a beloved editor again. Or it always feels like you’re breaking in for the first time, even though you’ve written for a magazine several times.
Same here: I always say to myself, “I don’t get it. I’ve never missed [...]