Well, I’ve tried creating schedules for myself in the past. I’ve paid coaches good money to help me figure out what I’ll be doing during which hours and on which days; for example, most recently I decided to do wellness coaching and mentoring on Mondays and Wednesdays, and writing tasks on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (I typically take Fridays off.)

I was all psyched to get started on this new schedule — and it lasted exactly one day. Not even one day, in fact. I had to face it: If I’m not interested in writing on a Tuesday, then I’m not going to write. And if I’m suddenly struck by the urge to work on an article at 8 pm on a Wednesday, then that’s what I’m going to do.

Last week my partner for the Freelance Writers Blast Off class, Carol Tice, said something during the class that articulates exactly how I work: “I always do whatever I’m most passionate about every moment of the day.” I had never thought about it in those terms before, but that’s precisely what I do.

For example, Monday might find me writing blog posts all day. On Tuesday, I might work on an article that’s coming due for a little while and then follow up on some old LOIs and then implement some crazy e-course pricing scheme I came up with five minutes ago. Then, on Wednesday I may be in one of those moods where I just can’t get any work done…so I don’t. But as soon as our 3-year-old goes to bed, I’m inspired to finish that article I started on Monday.

This always felt just wrong, but when I thought about it, I realized it’s always worked for me. Everything gets done, and it gets done on time. So I’ve come to trust the process and let it go. I have one ADD mentoring client who is religious, who originally wanted me to help her come up with a schedule, and the saying that resonated with her was “Let go and let God.”

This tactic also works well with the typical ADD sufferer’s problem of being unable to force himself to focus on something he’s not interested in. If I’m trying to write an article when I’m not really inspired to do so, it’s torture and I click away every paragraph or two to do something more interesting, like check my e-mail. But when I am inspired to write, well, get out of my way!

Some people with ADD actually tend to hyper-focus on things they’re interested in and block out all distractions (including people trying to get their attention, police sirens, and other important events), and working on what you’re most interested in every minute is one way to take advantage of that.

Of course, if you decide to go this route you need to take a small leap of faith to test it out and make sure everything does get done. We’re all different, and some writers simply need to create and stick with a schedule.

So, all you writers who are ADD or even just easily distractible — have you ever tried to force yourself to stick to a writing schedule? Did it work, and if so, how did you do it? If it didn’t work, did you manage to come up with a better plan? [lf]

My client’s editor had supplied her with one of the resources she wanted the writer to include, so my client put that one first in the list.

The bad news was, that product didn’t really fit in with the others; it was weak, but the writer included it because the editor insisted.

I suggested my client re-order the items in the list so that she’d lead off the article on a strong note, and she asked me how I normally order my list articles. A great question! I thought about it, and realized that I do have a few rules of thumb I use to create a strong list article or query.

Judge Them

When I write a list article (or a pitch for one), typically there are a few really strong items and few weaker ones. I can tell one from the other by instinct at this point, but you may want to ask a friend to read over your article and let you know which items made her say, “Wow! I never knew that.” Those are the strong ones.

The weaker ones are the points that your reader may have heard before, that you didn’t manage to get good quotes for, or that simply don’t have that “wow” factor.

Bracket Them

I make it a point to start off and end my article or query with the stronger items. That way, the article gets off to a good start, and goes out on a high note. People tend to remember the first things and the last things they read, so you want those points to be awesome.

Mix Them Up

After deciding on strong items to start and end the list with, in between those I alternate stronger and weaker points. So the order would be strong-weak-strong-weak-strong. That way even if a reader has already heard one of your tips or is not interested in a point, the article is saved, in her eyes, in the very next paragraph. This keeps interest high.

You definitely don’t want to lead with three strong points and then end with three weak ones — what a letdown! — or have several weaker items in a row. You risk losing the editor’s — and the reader’s — interest.

Put It in Second

I got this tip from a writer friend of mine: If the editor suggests you include something in your list, put it second. If you put it first, it looks like you didn’t do your job because the editor came up with the best item in the article. If you put it last, it looks like you’re dissing your editor’s suggestion and only grudgingly including it in your article.

Picky points, to be sure, but writing a successful article is all about the details. You need to understand rhythm and flow, and use subtle tricks to get the reader interested and keep him reading until the end.

How about you — do you ever think about how to order the items in your list article or article pitch? What rules have you come up with? [lf]

I interviewed Jacquie about the similarities between pitching producers and editors, how to market from the heart instead of the mind, and how to avoid what Jacquie calls “energetic tackiness” in your pitches.

Renegade Writer: I know that you’re a producer and that as a producer you get pitches, much like a magazine editor gets pitches from a writer. What’s the top mistake you see people make when they’re pitching ideas?

Jacquie Jordan: They pitch what they think is interesting and don’t necessarily take into consideration what the outlet is looking for. When we’re working with guestperts, they’re really myopic. They know what they know, but they don’t know how to translate it to the medium that they’re speaking to.

That’s a really good point. How do you put yourself in the mindset of the producer, editor, reader — whoever you’re pitching?

You first have to watch the show. And so many people don’t. As a TV producer, people would call all the time and not have watched the show. And you would think, ‘You wouldn’t waste your breath on this call if you had even seen the show once.’

I spent a lot of time with a guestpert who said, ‘I don’t watch TV; I’m too busy to watch it.’ You can’t get into to a medium if you don’t participate in it as an audience or a viewer. Period. It’s Pitching 101: Know who your audience is.

That makes sense with magazines too. You don’t even have to buy the magazine, you can just go online. A lot of magazines have their archives online now.

Oh, totally. You want to know who you’re speaking to, and you want to have confidence that you’re actually giving them something of value to their readers and advertisers.

I see a lot of people pitch something that’s super interesting to them, but there’s not really an audience for it. For example, a lot of magazine writers come to me who want to write about grandparenting, but there are just not very many magazines out there that target grandparents. Do you get the same thing?

Yes. That’s exactly it. One of my favorite examples is that we had a woman who ran workshops in Los Angeles to teach girls who are about to have their menstrual cycles. She did it in a really lovely way, explaining to them what was going to happen to them — all with the idea that we’re out of touch as a society with that part of ourselves, and that teenagers are relying on magazines or mass media to show them what’s happening.

So our company got her a good booking on Playboy Radio — and she was so offended. ‘How could you? I am the keeper of the sacred sentiment and you’re booking me on Playboy Radio, which exploits women.’

My point to her was, first off, do you want to get your message out to many people or do you want to preach to the choir — because people who already follow you already know your story. Playboy Radio has a huge military base following, they’re heard all over the country, and so you could actually introduce a concept to them that they’ve never heard of — but you have to speak their language.

She asked ‘Well, how do I do that?’ I said, ‘Well, the subject you’re booked on is Why Your Sex Life Dries Up After Marriage.’ She said ‘That isn’t even my age group,’ and I replied, ‘This is how you speak it: You go on the show and say that people run into trouble in their marriage when their sex life dries up. But what you don’t realize, especially on the woman’s side of it, is that this already began while they were young teenagers, because they’ve learned to identify themselves and their sexuality through what they see in magazines and images of celebrities, and not to have any connection with themselves or their bodies. Then you bring it back to your topic that way.’

Many people are so passionate about what they speak about, but they miss the key element of who they are speaking to.

That’s also an interesting concept of slanting your idea to get it across to different audiences that you might not have thought of.

I am all about that. I’m like, ‘How many different ways can we slice the pie to communicate this?’ You’re going to have your friendly audiences. All those, of course, are invaluable outlets, but they expect to hear what you have to say. So how do you blow it out and reach a larger audience that has never been exposed to you in the past?

On another topic, what’s the difference between a mind sale and a heart sale?

A mind sale is very outcome-oriented. A heart sale is approached as an offering and the outcome isn’t the end result. It’s just in the act of the offering.

And it sounds like it’s win-win. ‘I’m going to get money out of this but I am also offering you a valuable service.’ Not just, ‘I need the money — I’ve got to pay my rent.’

Exactly. And it’s even more challenging in an economic time period like this. It’s very easy to offer it from a heartfelt space when the world is overflowing with dollars and there’s a lot of abundance, but it’s not as easy when we’re in a tighter climate.

How can you get into that mindset of doing a heart sale, especially if you’re a writer and you’re trying to get your articles out there?

I tell my people we’re worth more than our one idea. When we think we have one idea and that’s it, we’re in a problem place. And we can’t operate in this industry when people put their life and their money on one idea.

I don’t operate that way. I feel I am abundant with ideas. For magazine writers, it’s a balance of knowing what stimulates you and what your goal is, but also knowing that it’s beyond just one idea and keeping your flow of ideas out there.

That definitely helps because if you put too much stock in one idea, then you’re definitely going to be pitching from that space of desperation.

Yes. Exactly. And I think that a heart sale is understanding that the person who’s receiving is as important as you are in the pitch.

You want to allow that person to figure out how it works for them. If you’ve got all the answers, then there is no room for them to participate. I see this a lot in TV production: Of course you want to come to the table with the best presentation, but you also have to leave breathing room for the executives to wrap their brain around it and see how it would fit their network.

It’s another way of saying ‘Don’t be a diva.’ Because your stuff is going to get changed. Whoever is buying it from you is going to have their own ideas, and writers are notorious for getting upset when something of theirs is changed from the way they envisioned it.

I really love where you talked in your book about energetic tackiness and I was wondering if you could explain what that is and how a freelance writer can avoid it.

When I’m feeling disturbed or desperate for whatever reason, I will not engage in selling until I’m in a place where I’m really grounded and in my confidence and my radiance. It’s the same idea that someone going to a job interview who desperately needs the job, and wants it with their whole life, will never get it — versus the person who goes in, shows up, and lets go of results. Or if you buy a car, you can taste when the salesperson really needs to sell the car…that energetic tackiness makes you just want to run. It’s that feeling that you want to go take a shower after you met the person.

In my book I talk about a woman who called and was real high powered, real fast talking, and bombarded me with the names of her associates like Oprah and Barbara Walters. You feel like you just got machine-gunned down…that’s energetic tackiness.

So say you’re a new writer and you do feel a little bit desperate because you want to pay your bills. How do you get out of that energetic tackiness mindset when you really are desperate?

You have to put away the need for the money and really focus on the value of the work. If you believe it’s really good and needs to be out there, then you’re in a good place. That’s how you get around it.

I also liked where you talked about people who fear exposure. I think writers do, too. They have these great ideas and they’re afraid to pitch them, because what happens when people are reading their stuff? They open themselves up to criticism.

That is so common, and nobody talks about it. The most professional people in the world, you put them on TV and they have meltdowns after because all of a sudden, they realize they’re not in control of how they’re going to be perceived. That’s where you really have to dig in deep and trust the value of your work. [lf]

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.

You do the happy dance, thank the client, and move on. End of story. Right?

Wait! Don’t let this opportunity slip by. You can turn a compliment from a client into a marketing tool that will help you get more work.

Let me preface this by saying I’m not talking about testimonials; those you typically ask for, and you ask for them because you plan to use them in a particular way. I’m talking about the unexpected compliment from an editor or client who is happy with your work. Compliments make you smile, but they typically don’t help you get more assignments — unless you know how to make them work for you.

Here’s how:

1. Add it to your website.

Ask the client if she’ll give you her permission to post her comment on your website as a testimonial. She may agree and even let you use her name — but even if she wants to remain anonymous, that’s better than nothing. You can still mention the magazine or company the client works for.

You can compile compliments on a testimonials page, or scatter them throughout your site. Hiring a new-to-you writer is a risk — who’s to say you won’t flake out at deadline time or turn in horrible copy? — but seeing these testimonials helps prospective clients feel more at ease hiring you because you’ve gotten a stamp of approval from another client.

2. Ask for a referral.

After you thank the editor or client, ask if he’ll introduce you to other people who may be in the market for a writer. For example, you can write to an editor, “Thanks so much for the compliment! I love writing for you and am glad you like my work. I’ve actually been thinking of pitching some of the editors at other magazines in your group — would you consider introducing me to them via e-mail?”

I’ve done this with great success; for example, after I responded to a compliment asking for a referral, my editor at a custom publishing company referred me to a colleague in the marketing department — and that editor hired me to write all the articles for a mock-up magazine they were creating as part of a proposal for a prospective client.

3. Add it to your pitches and letters of introduction.

Sometimes you can add a compliment to the credentials paragraph of a query letter or to a letter of introduction (LOI) — if it’s relevant. For example, if your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is that you’re a good researcher, you can mention that an editor at X magazine recently complimented you on the research you did for a feature about homeschooling. If your USP is that you’re fast, be sure to include the fact that your client at Humongo Bank told you that you were the fastest writer she’s ever worked with.

4. Keep a list of compliments.

Whenever I get a compliment from an editor or client, I add it to a list that I send off to prospects as part of my Information Kit that includes my fee schedule and samples. I don’t use the complimenters’ names – I just write something like this:

“Thanks so much for turning around that rush article so quickly. It turned out great and the editor-in-chief was so pleased. You make my job easy.”
—Senior Editor at Noodle Manufacturers’ Fortnightly Magazine

I do this as part of my marketing for my corporate writing services, but it would probably work just as well if you included it with your e-mailed clips to a magazine or website editor.

5. File it away.

Whatever you do with the compliments you receive via e-mail, be sure to file them in a special folder you can turn to whenever you need a boost. I call mine “Nice Stuff” and it’s got close to 200 e-mails from editors, clients, students, mentees, Renegade Writer readers, and more. Love it!

How does this help you get more work? Well, think about how many more queries, letters of intro, prospecting e-mails, and cold calls you do when you’re feeling confident and on top of your game versus when you’re feeling underconfident and desperate.

What do you do when you get an unexpected compliment from an editor or client? Post your tips in the Comments below! [lf]