An award-winning journalist on the lessons she learned from sending a pitch every day for a month. Today, I’m opening up a new session of my course 30 Days, 30 Queries. It’s designed to help you send effective query letters and win top-paying assignments. My students over the years have sold work to publications such […]
Freelancing and Journalism
How To Write And Send 25 Queries A Week
Here’s my emergency system for sending 25 queries a week when work has dried up, freelancing has lost its sparkle, and I need assignments NOW. A couple of years ago, I told my newsletter readers how I’d sent 25 queries in a week and received half a dozen assignments as a result of that. This […]
5 Reasons Your Pitches Bring Home Rejections
Rejections hurt, but as a freelancer they’re impossible to avoid. However, there are plenty of things you can do to give your pitches a better hit rate. You know you’re not supposed to start your letters with “Dear Editor,” should follow proper formatting protocol, and always send your pitches to the correct person, right? You’ve […]
Why Sending Pitches Is Important And How Not To Give Up
Every time I’ve had a row of bad months, they’ve followed a busy period in which I’ve neglected my marketing. Let’s talk about why pitching matters and how to not give up, even when things get rough, in this excerpt from 30 Days, 30 Queries. Why Not Giving Up Matters 1. Pitching is a numbers […]
The Nuts And Bolts Of Turning A Story Idea Into A Pitch
How to turn a topic of interest into a story idea that sells. To this day, the hardest part of querying for me is still the slicing and dicing required to make a generic story idea specific, interesting, and meaningful. When there’s news or a straightforward trend, the pitch all but writes itself, but what […]