This is a guest post by Elizabeth Whalen.

We freelancers have so much freedom—after all, it’s right there in our job title. As long as we do good work and meet our deadlines, we’re free to take a two-hour nap in the middle of the day or work late into the night and sleep in the next morning.

That freedom is one of the things we love most about our jobs, but it can—if we let it—prevent us from reaching our goals. Because we aren’t in a newsroom working closely with an editor, we may not know very much about the editors we’re pitching or about exactly what they need.

Our minds are just like nature: they abhor a vacuum, so we fill up that emptiness with all sorts of ideas about how editors are going to react to our queries and letters of introduction (LOIs). For example, we may imagine that those editors are completely swamped with amazing story ideas and have a reliable stable of fantastic writers.

But the very real possibility that those editors may need a writer just this minute—and that we would be helping them out by sending an LOI—may never have crossed our minds.

I am here to tell you that there are editors out there who would be happy, even relieved, to get your pitch.

My Story

As a writer who specializes in writing for trade publications, my main marketing tool is an LOI, and I send out several LOIs every week in what is now a completely painless process.

Sending my first LOI was not at all painless, though – because I was afraid.

I had convinced myself that I was — simply by sending editors an LOI — going to irritate them and cause them to add my name to a Blacklist of Annoying People that they circulated among every other editor. Believing this totally untrue idea was my choice, and that choice helped me avoid a lot of fear, but it also 100% guaranteed I would never get an assignment.

As a result of all that fear, it took me far longer than I’d like to admit to send my first LOI, but I finally did send it. You know what the editor’s response was? Here it is, copied and pasted directly from his e-mail, which arrived 26 minutes after I sent the LOI:

Elizabeth:

I’ll pass your email to the chief editor. He handles all paid freelance assignments. We don’t use a great deal, due to budget constraints, but he would like to see this for possibilities.

Thanks for thinking of us.

He had actually read the LOI and he’d found it at least valuable enough to respond with a “thanks for thinking of us.” It took me a while to figure out why he would thank me, but at the moment I received his response, I was just thrilled to realize that my name wasn’t going on that Blacklist of Annoying People after all!

Then I got to thinking about why he thanked me. I realized that sending an editor an LOI can actually help him out.

Why Editors Don’t Hate Getting Your Pitches

Reading an LOI doesn’t take much time, and I make the process even easier for the editors I contact. In the subject line of my LOI e-mail, I write, “Freelance writer introducing herself.” If I have specific expertise or work experience in the industry the editor’s publication covers, I write, “Freelance writer with X experience introducing herself.”

Then, the editors who don’t use freelancers have spent all of four seconds reading that subject line and deleting my e-mail. I’m sure there are people out there who think that my taking four seconds of their time immediately gets my name on that Blacklist of Annoying People, but I’m also sure that those people are few in number and that they wouldn’t make very good clients anyway. (By the way, there is no such list.)

I mean it about the four seconds, too. I timed myself with a stopwatch reading the subject line of my LOI. To be conservative, I read slowly, and I rounded up slightly from what the stopwatch said, and it still came out to only four seconds.

The editors who do use freelancers are probably going to open the e-mail and read it, which—yep, I timed it—will take fifty-one seconds.

From there, they may respond with a request for clips, respond and ask me to call about a possible assignment, or respond with an assignment.

Some editors don’t respond at all. Maybe they’ll come back to the LOI later when they have more time. Maybe they’ll completely forget about it. Maybe they don’t need any new writers at the moment, or maybe they prefer to use writers with a different background or more experience or whatever. Who knows.

So far, though, I’ve still only taken up about two minutes of their time, max, and that assumes they did write back to me and request clips.

So the annoyance factor for the editors is extremely low, and the payoff for them can be worth far more than the minute (or two) of time I’ve taken up.

Or: Maybe the editor has just come back from maternity leave and needs someone to take an assignment she hasn’t found anyone else to do. My LOI has come at the perfect time. She can give me the assignment, which of course is a victory for me, and her stress level has just dropped, which of course is a victory for her, too.

Maybe the editor’s regular freelancer is moving to Germany, and he is therefore in search of a new one. My LOI has helped him out: I’ve shown up in his inbox, and he doesn’t have to go looking for anyone.

Instead of taking up these editors’ time, I’ve actually saved them a great deal of time, and as long as I do a great job on the assignments, I’ve saved them the stress of finding a qualified, competent writer to add to their pool of freelancers.

Lest you think I’m making up these situations, consider this: I have gotten assignments from editors who were dealing with exactly these circumstances.

Sometimes editors respond with, “Thank you, but we already have enough writers. I’ll keep you in mind for future assignments.” I’m free to make up all sorts of ideas about what these editors are really going to do. Or, I can choose to be grateful that at least they took the time to read my LOI (and possibly my clips, if they asked for them).

At some point in the future, those editors may need a writer and may come to me with an assignment. Again, I’ve saved them the time of trying to find somebody else.

In the end, the most I’ve asked of the editors I contact is to spend less than one minute reading my LOI, which, when you think about it, isn’t really much time at all. If the editors need someone to take on an assignment, I’ve saved them time, and I get an assignment. The editors win, and so do I. Not bad for a one-minute investment.

Elizabeth Whalen is a freelance writer and editor based in Berkeley, CA who serves clients all over the country. In addition to writing and editing, she loves skiing, ice skating, practicing yoga, watching movies, and enjoying everything the sometimes strange but mostly wonderful Bay Area has to offer.

If you liked that post, you might also like:

• Clips 101: What They Are (and Aren’t), How to Get Them, and How to Make The Most of Your Clips
• You Ask, We Answer: How Can I Maximize a One-on-One Pitch Session?
• The Most Persistent Writer Ever: An Interview with Julie Knudson
• Reach Out and Touch an Editor Today (No, Not Like That!)
• The Best Way to Get a Freelance Writing Assignment