Wednesday Fun Contest: How Renegade Are You (Not)?
Renegade writers know that some rules are made to be broken — but not all. One page query rule: Break it. Don’t send queries written in crayon on bar napkins: Keep it.
What writing/freelancing rule have you discovered it’s better not to break? Did you try breaking a rule and it backfired on you, or was it a rule you instinctually knew to keep?
Post your experiences in the Comments section below. The best response will win a free copy of TextExpander, a Mac program that lets you use customized abbreviations for your frequently-used text strings and images. I’ve saved hours and hours of typing thanks to this neat tool.
Comments must be posted by 5 pm ET on Friday, October 3 to be eligible for the contest. [lf]
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Oct 1, 2008 Contests
This is a writing thing that some will debate. I’ve promised myself to never start a sentence with “And” or “But” even though it’s now considered acceptable. I just can’t do it when sometimes, I even want to.
Interesting question.
I was told a long time ago not to bother people with freelance offers if they were advertising to fill a full-time position. I’ve broken this ‘rule’ many times because I learned that sometimes the employers would be happy to use a freelancer until they fill the position or they need freelancers in addition to the position they are advertising for.
I’ve only once, very recently, received a nasty reply from the advertising person. I figure that if they don’t want it, they’ll just toss it. It’s gotten me a few short-term gigs.
Marijke
http://www.helpmyhurt.com
http://www.wombwithin.com
Drat-wish I had known the crayon thing sooner! I break one rule pretty often–I send breezy
queries with a few teasers–not some big long outline, list of intended sources, etc. I used to do the latter, but when these were shot down, I had lost a lot of time. Some editors like this, some (cough, Edutopia, cough) don’t. But if they like one of say, three, I respond in hours with more detail–keep the ball rolling.
Guys, don’t forget that the contest is on rules you would NOT break!
(Why is it so much easier for us to think of rules we WOULD break? I guess we’re all renegades at heart.)
OK, one rule I would not break: missing a deadline *without sufficient notice.* (I don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking for an extension, as long as you ask far enough in advance that the editor can say “no.”)
I also try desperately to avoid using my personal life as an excuse for screwing up. I was late with revisions on a story last year because I was awaiting results of a biopsy and my brain was frozen with panic. I STILL regret mentioning that (I just said “medical issue”) to my editor. My feeling is that everybody has their stuff but if you make a promise, you should honor it. That’s the essence of being a pro, IMO.
Cathleen
oops, I may write well, I don’t always read well!!!
Ok, one rule I’d never break is “research your target.” I always put something in my LOI that indicates that I know what the company does so they don’t think I just pulled the name out of hat. It’s more than putting the person’s name, it’s identifying something the company has done or does, stuff like that.
Do. Not. Miss. Deadline.
Ever. Ever ever.
Do not query a national magazine when you do not have clips.
Know your market: it’s fine to send an article on chicken keeping to ‘earth mother, eco families magazine’ but not to ‘eco-political, enviro-hyper-conciousness magazine’…sometimes the differences between the two are subtle, but they are very important.
Read many, many back issues. I usually do, or at least put in keywords to see if they’ve covered it in their archives. But once I pitched an article and they were currently running the same idea. It was on the stands and the editor called me out on it and sent me a not very friendly note about it.
Send the invoice with the article. If they got one, they got the other and you don’t have to remember to send it later.
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