This week I had a mentoring client who had this issue, so we went over some of her ideas to figure out ways to make them more feature-worthy. I came up with some general tips for her that I thought would be helpful to other writers as well, so I thought I’d share them here.

1. Add more info.

For example, if you’re pitching an article on tips on getting a good night’s sleep to a women’s magazine, an editor is likely to say, “Give me three tips in 300 words.” But if you add more information to your pitch, the idea may be worthy of a feature. For example, you could include:

• A lede anecdote from a woman who suffered from sleep deprivation; for example, you may find a woman who ran her car off the road because she fell asleep behind the wheel.
• Stats on how many women are sleep deprived.
• Information on the various negative effects of not getting enough sleep, from obesity to poor performance at work.
• The reasons so many women are sleep deprived.
• A few of the tips you plan to include in the article.
• The names of three or four expert sources you plan to interview.

See? Now you have a comprehensive article about sleep problems. (And FYI, I did much of this for an article on “sleep snafus” I wrote for Woman’s Day several years ago.)

This tip sounds easy, but it’s a challenge to add enough info to turn your short into a feature without verging into “fluff” territory. But I trust that you’ll recognize when you’ve entered that territory!

2. Pitch a round-up.

Many writers find interesting people, businesses, or situations and pitch them plain: “Here’s someone/something cool, can I write about it for you?” But you’re more likely to score a longer assignment if you pitch a round-up of three to four similar people/things.

For example, say you found a man who runs a gourmet hotdog stand in Chicago, with artisinal-bread rolls and toppings like caviar. (Ew!) That’s interesting, but an editor will probably expect you to write that up in a couple hundred words, unless you find a local magazine that runs profiles of interesting people in the area. But what if you found three or four people around the country who sell highbrow versions of lowbrow foods? Now you have a trend.

Keep in mind that when you offer a round-up, your sources need to be geographically and ethnically diverse. That means you can’t write about four people who live in New Hampshire for a national magazine. And editors will love you if all of your sources are not the same ethnicity.

You can often have good luck finding these ethnically- and geographically-diverse hotdog stand owners (etc.) through a service like Help a Reporter Out.

3. Go Beyond the Obvious.

So many writers find a new study that says, say, that a high-salt diet causes acne (I totally made that up), and then they pitch that exact story to an editor. And of course, the editor has not only probably already seen that study, but even if she does want it, she’ll want it — you guessed it — short.

Instead of pitching the obvious (and small) story, reach a bit; do some research and find out if you can expand your idea. For example, are there any other surprising things that can cause acne? You can pitch “5 Surprising Reasons You’re Breaking Out.” Or are there other health effects of salt that haven’t been done to death already?

As another example, say you found some research saying that when people lie, they tend to touch their noses. That in itself would be worth about 200 words in a magazine. (In fact, I wrote a short on that very topic for Details magazine years ago.) But if you do some research, you may find out that there are other surprising tells that someone is telling untruths. Or, you could pitch an article on the surprising things your body language says about you.

The key is, the facts or advice you offer need to be unique. Everyone knows that liars have shifty eyes and that too much salt is bad for your heart. Dig deep and look for facts that will surprise even a jaded editor. [lf]

I was hoping Linda would offer practical advice, encouragement and insider information during our 30-minute conversation — and wow did she deliver! Linda answered all my questions and then some, as well as helping me focus on my freelance goals and create a plan to move forward. Exactly what I needed!
—Carol Heffernan

I hope you’ll consider letting me help you gain more confidence as a freelancer, refine your ideas and queries, get organized, and make more money. Check out my phone mentoring web page for more info on how I can help you succeed.

In addition, my Write for Magazines e-course starts again on Monday, September 13; in this 8-week course, you’ll learn to generate a salable idea, find markets for your idea, find the right editors at those publications, and write and send a killer query letter. I’ve taught more than 350 students and love getting e-mails when a student breaks into a coveted market. Most recently, a student I taught a few years ago let me know that he now writes regularly for sailing magazines thanks to my tutoring. For more details on my e-course and to sign up, visit my e-course page. I limit my Premium class (the one with e-mail support) to 10 students and already have three signed on, so don’t wait!

I look forward to helping you kick some serious butt in your freelance career! [lf]

So I decided to simplify.

Due to some business reasons I won’t get into here, it was about to become much harder for me to run the Renegade Writer e-courses. In addition, updating the e-course page, promoting the classes, and collecting money add to my already full plate a bunch of administrative and marketing tasks that I had to accomplish for each instructor and each session. It was a difficult decision, but I made the choice to stop running classes other than my own. All of the instructors were very understanding (thank you!). (And don’t worry, the instructors are still teaching their classes — just not through the Renegade Writer. Go here for info on how to contact the instructors about their next sessions.)

Then, this week, I had a great session with my life coach Kristin Taliaferro. I told her that I didn’t feel like I “had it all together” lately. I was scattered and anxious, and felt pulled in a dozen directions at once. Kristin asked me what I would like to get rid of.

I had been thinking lately that I should give up Creative Professionals for Animal Welfare; I just don’t have the passion for it that I had before our son was born 19 months ago. I was doing the bare minimum to keep the service going, and wasn’t making the effort to build the volunteer list and reach out to animal welfare organizations that could use our services. It was hard on the ego, but I decided to find someone who would like to take over the reins and really make the service great. (Interested? E-mail me at lindaformichelli@gmail.com.)

Then there was the moms’ group I run. Like creativePAW, the meetup group doesn’t take a lot of time, but it’s just another thing bouncing around my brain. I have some members who are much more active than I am in terms of hosting meetups, attending meetups, coming up with ideas for new gatherings, and participating in the discussion board. I decided that I would remain a member but step down as organizer. It was worth running the group for the last year and a half — I made a lot of friends with kids Traver’s age — but I would be much happier if someone else were making the decisions. It looks like I have someone I really like interested in taking over, which I’m excited about.

So how do I feel after all that simplifying? Much lighter, though I’m still looking for someone to take over creativePAW, and then there will be all the tasks associated with the transfer. But once it’s all done, I expect that I’ll feel more together and less scattered. When you have a million tasks and they’re all of roughly equal urgency and importance, whittling down your list of to-dos makes deciding which task to tackle much easier.

Now I’m on a roll and am looking for even more tasks and projects to eliminate. It’s difficult because my ego is all tied up in certain projects! But I’m motivated to keep going.

How about you — have you taken any big steps lately to simplify your career or your life? Or does reading this post inspire you to make the leap? [lf]

My article idea was originally called “Choose Without Losing,” but as I developed the query I hit upon the “food fight” theme, which helped me craft a fun lede. [lf]

Food Fight

If a Red Delicious and a Golden Delicious apple had it out on the health front, who would reign victorious? What if a Cabernet Sauvignon slugged it out with a Pinot Noir?

Every nutritional choice you make affects your health — even if the choice is as seemingly innocuous as the ones above. And some decisions you thought were keeping you healthy, such as choosing soy fudge bars over Fudgesicles, may be doing you more harm than good.

In “Food Fight,” I’ll pit foods against one another in a fun, easy-to-read format to help readers make the best choices when it comes to their health. For example:

The Fight: Red Delicious vs. Golden Delicious apple

The Winner: Red Delicious

Sure, an apple a day might keep the doctor away — but eat the *right* kind of apple and you just might scare off the doc for even longer. According to a Canadian study, Red Delicious, Northern Spy, and Ida Red apples pack more of an antioxidant punch than other types of apples.

The Fight: Fudgesicle vs. Organic Soy Delicious Creamy Fudge Bar

The Winner: Fudgesicle

Ye good old fashioned Fudgesicle has only 90 calories and 2 grams of fat; the more healthfully-named Organic Soy Delicious Creamy Fudge Bar weighs in at 151 calories and 4.3 grams of fat.

The Fight: Pinot Noir vs. Cabernet Sauvignon

The Winner: Pinot Noir

Red wine contains phenolic substances that protect the heart — and Pinot Noir beats out all other types of wine when it comes to these protective substances, says Pamela Douglas, MD, president of the American College of Cardiology and author of Cardiovascular Health and Disease in Women.

The Fight: Dollar store vitamins vs. name brand

The Winner: Name brand

In Consumer Reports’ February 2006 report on vitamins, every dollar store brand failed the test when it came to the amounts of vitamins they contained and their potency.

The Fight: Green vs. black tea

The Winner: Green

According to a study published in the journal Nutrition and Cancer, “there is more conclusive evidence for the chemopreventive effect of green tea compared with black tea,” meaning that green tea protects against cancer better than black tea.

The Fight: White potato vs. sweet potato

The Winner: Sweet potato

White potatoes do offer more vitamin C, says Krieger — but sweet potatoes contain more vitamin A as well as more fill-you-up fiber.

When your readers are choosing food at the supermarket or in a restaurant, they want to make sure that they’re getting the best health bang for their buck. “Food Fight” won’t disappoint them. May I write this article for you?

I’ve written for on health, nutrition, and wellness for Natural Health, Oxygen, USA Weekend, Fitness, Maximum Fitness, and other magazines. Thanks for taking the time to consider my idea, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Cheers,

Linda

Here’s Shaundra’s question: “Is it worth creating a website for myself if I don’t yet have clips, and if so, what kind of information should I include until I do have publications to my name?”

I’m not a website expert, so I turned to someone who is: Reese of DesignByReese.com, who designed my Linda Formichelli website, my Write for Magazines site, and the Creative Professionals for Animal Welfare site. Reese shared info not only on what to include on your website if you have no clips, but how you can build a winning writing website and start building your reputation online. Here’s what she had to say:

We live in a time where, in order to compete and stand out, you want to be as ubiquitous as possible, even if you’re new to the writing space. Even if you don’t have clips ready yet, establishing an online presence helps:

• Secure your name online sooner than later.
• “Season” your website. Older domains do better in search engines over time.
• Give you an immediate launching pad for when you do have gigs to feature.

To begin, before you have clips to showcase, a home page with contact information can be enough. Think of it as a promotional brochure or expanded business card. You might want to include a photo, too. Create a home page with succinct information about you (your education, your experience, your goals). If you have a unique world view (e.g. you’re a mixed martial arts fanatic) put this in there, too. Special topics can often pique editors’ interest.

When you get your first clip, feature it on the home page you built. When you have three or more, build a separate “work samples” (or “clips” or “writing”) page and move them over there.

Even before you have your first clip, here’s what you can do to start building an online presence:

1. Free and easy: Make sure you’ve got your name secured in places like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google profiles, and even Youtube. Set up accounts on all. Even if you don’t want to put a ton of work into each area, get your name on there.

2. Also free and easy: Start reaching out in LinkedIn. Answer ‘questions’ in their marketplace. Be humble and confident at the same time, and let people know you’re a new writer who’s seeking gigs.

3. Website: Buy a domain, preferably your name as a .com domain if you can secure it (e.g. reesespykerman.com). If you have a common name, go by a middle name, too, or get a domain like “lindasmithwrites.com.”

Go to godaddy.com or namecheap.com (I prefer to latter) to register it. Then, if your budget is minimal, go to wordpress.com and set up a free blog/site there (it also lets you just have pages to a site, too). Link your domain to this for $9.97 a year (there are instructions right here).

Then, once you have clips, you’re already set up to link to them. When you make pages in this, make a page about you, a page to contact you, and showcase any writing you’ve done pro bono if you have it.

Go back to your Facebook, LinkedIn and Google profiles, and add a link back to your website.

4. Website (alt): If the above feels too overwhelming and you’re ready to commit to a more professional website, you can also contact me over at www.designbyreese.com to be notified of a new product next month for writers and start ups on a budget that gets you a professional site at a reasonable price.

5. Get published: Even if you’re seeking magazine gigs, be willing to stretch, and go to a place like Linda’s creativepaw.org to offer your writing services for free. You’ll help a shelter in need, and build up a portfolio of writing that you can link/point to from your site. As the saying goes, get thee to the mountain — don’t wait for it to come to you. [lf]

Here’s Mark’s question: Here’s what happened. I called an editor at an adventure magazine to follow up on a query I had sent a month ago. He read it and said that my idea took something that has been here forever and made a story out of it. “If you want to break into this magazine,” he said, “you would need to do the opposite. You would need to know someone noteworthy or know of something that has never been done before. You would need access to the person or thing… and you would need to know it three months in advance.” Really? Nothing about good writing? An original perspective or angle? Where am I — little old me — going to find the person, event, or happening that the guy is talking about? What’s an outdoors writer to do?

I have to agree with the editor: Good writing is expected. It’s a given. And without a good idea with a unique angle, sharp writing is nothing.

That said, here are a few ways you can get the scoop on news before it’s news:

Go local. Read your local newspaper with an eye to turning small ideas into national ones. Get involved in your local community. That’s how my husband Eric found out about a New England pétanque league, and he ended up selling an article about it to Yankee magazine.

Ask your friends. I’m guessing you have a lot of friends who are into the same things you’re into. Send them a mass e-mail asking if they know of anything new or exciting going on in adventuring, and ask them to pass your question on to others they know who have the same interest.

Get on press lists. Find out which companies and organizations serve adventurers and ask the press contact to be put on their press lists. You’ll probably get mostly announcements of new products — not so exciting — but you never know what you’ll turn up.

Go to Amazon. People who author books often make great sources, and there’s a way to find out about books even before they’re released: Go to Amazon, enter the search term “adventuring” (or whatever), and sort the results by date using the drop-down menu in the upper right. The top listings will usually be books that are yet to be released — some as far as a year in the future! Now you have a news scoop.

Cast a wide net. Want to reach out to a wider audience than your friends and family members? Send out a source request to Help a Reporter Out. Let them know you’re pitching adventuring magazines and are looking for up-and-coming trends and people. Be as specific as you can, because I have to say that many HARO subscribers don’t read the requests very carefully. And be prepared to sift through lots of dreck, which is natural because you’re casting a very wide net. But you may find gold!

If anyone else has ideas on how to find news before it’s news, please do comment! [lf]

I always sing the praises of diversifying on this blog and to my e-course students. And boy, do I follow my own advice. Here are some of the products and services I offer, both paid and free (which help me promote my paid services). I include links where appropriate so you can see how much goes into each one:

• magazine writing
• general copywriting
• copywriting and editing for universities
• adoption profile/”dear birthmom” letter writing (I’m starting up the website in a week or so)
• two e-courses
• Renegade Writer e-courses (taught by outside instructors)
• phone mentoring for writers
• query letter critiquing
• free query letter packet
• Review Copy Helper (a list of about 200 publishers and how to request review copies of their books)
• free teleclasses for writers
• The Renegade Writer Blog

Like I said, diversifying is a good thing, and that’s what I’m doing. But after a certain point, it gets to be too much. There are 12 items on my list, and each of them has its own to-do list with dozens of tasks. For example, for the Renegade Writer e-courses, I have to tell instructors how to build a successful course, put their course info on the website, edit their course lessons, design and password-protect their web pages, and market the courses. For the phone mentoring, I need to market the service, handle payments, send clients forms to fill out, study and think about the information they send me — and then conduct the phone call. And for the Renegade Writer blog, my tasks include brainstorming and writing posts, finding and uploading photos, and moderating and answering comments.

Some of the items on my work list require hardly any work. For example, I probably receive one update request per month for the Review Copy Helper, and the copywriting site has been pretty much dormant for a year. But they take up psychic energy: I should market the copywriting, I should be more proactive in updating the Review Copy Helper.

However, it’s great to have so many forms of income, I love what I do, and even with all this I work only two days per week. In terms of my career, magazine writing makes up a large portion of my income, and the rest of my offerings are lots of little things that each bring in a small to moderate amount of money. If I were to suddenly lose all of my magazine writing income, the rest of my services wouldn’t pick up all the slack, but they would probably keep us from starving.

But it’s gotten to the point where I feel scattered. I have ADD — and I mean that literally — and while it helps me bounce from one task to another quickly, it also makes it hard for me to focus when I have so much going on.

Still, whenever I come up with an idea for a new product or service, I run out and implement it right away, without considering how it fits into my career and life goals. I guess that’s a plus: I’m very action-oriented and usually see projects through to completion. But every small offering I add is something else that’s knocking around in my brain, even if it pretty much runs itself like the Review Copy Helper.

I’m thinking now of how I can consolidate and simplify. I don’t want to stop doing the magazine writing or e-courses/mentoring, because I love them. But some things will have to go.

Diversifying is good to a point, but you shouldn’t just add new products and services willy-nilly. Instead of having a bunch of little things that bring in a little bit of money each, try to find a few larger offerings that bring in a moderate to large income each. For every product idea you have, consider whether it will help you meet your career and life goals. Will adding teaching university courses or public speaking to your arsenal boost your income enough to be worth the time you spend training in those areas? Or will they just add to your psychic load without giving you much in terms of income or happiness? [lf]

“In one half-hour telephone session, Linda covered a lot of ground—she answered all of my questions, offered specific, detailed advice and gave me some fantastic tips and resources. As a freelancer who has experience but is ready to move to the next level, it was a huge boon to be able to speak with someone so knowledgeable and so willing to share her insights. Exactly what I needed!”
—Fiona Kirk

Here’s Jan’s excuse: My problem with NOT writing is that I’m 52 years old and JUST started writing. I know I have a lot of wisdom from my experience but I also have doubts as in I’m too old to be writing this late in life. Am I too late in starting out? Can I learn enough to still be successful? I’m not 25 and starting, or 35, or even 45.

There’s a Dear Abby (or maybe it was Ann Landers) column that I love and always remember when this excuse comes up. A woman wrote in that she wanted to go to college, but she was 70 years old. “When I graduate, I’ll be 74,” she said. “Should I do it?” Abby (or maybe it was Ann) answered, “And how old will you be in four years if you don’t go to college?”

Her point was that time was going to pass anyway, so you may as well follow your dreams no matter what your age is now and what your age will be when you succeed.

Fear of failure is an insidious thing, and sometimes it crops up wearing different masks, like “I’m too young” and “I’m too old” and “I’ll start when the kids are in school/I feel more confident/I take five thousand writing classes.” See your excuses for what they likely are — a fear of trying and failing.

You can learn the basics of freelance writing at any age. You have access to the same tools and resources as everyone else. And as you said, you have the benefit of wisdom from your life experience.

The even better news is that editors rarely care — or even know — how old you are. Heck, they don’t much care about you at all except for whether you can turn in a great piece! I wrote for Parenting before I even planned to have a kid myself. I now write for magazines aimed at women in their 20s and 30s, even though I’m 41.

The trick is that you need to know how to think like your market, and that’s a skill you’ll need as a magazine writer no matter what age you are. For example, if I were pitching AARP: The Magazine, I’d need to understand the issues that people face in their 50s and beyond. When I wrote for parenting mags, even before I had a kid, I had to get into the minds of moms with young children. And when I wrote for a magazine aimed at college-age, minority employees, I had to think about what they wanted and needed to know about the issues that affect them. (And I’m not college-age, a minority, or an employee.)

This is a skill you can pick up by reading magazines, books, websites, and online forums that target all different markets.

I hope that helps — I really want to see you get started if that’s what you dream to do! [lf]