Being enthusiastic and having a notebook full of wonderful ideas is one thing. Irritating the crap out of an editor by sending her a laundry list of thirty is quite another. While you may think that you’re giving the editor a good choice of articles that she can file away for later use, she’s probably thinking that you have no clue which ideas will fit into her publication. While you may be happily assuming that she’s going to think that you’re capable of coming up with not just one, but many, many good ideas, she’s probably wondering, “Why is this writer wasting my time?”

Not good.

In fact, even if an editor does like most of your ideas, chances are, she can’t assign all of them right away. She’ll probably pick her favorite, reject the rest and send them back to you. The next time you’re querying, you’ll need to come up with more ideas because you don’t know whether she rejected them because she didn’t like them or because she couldn’t afford to buy them. What a waste of effort!

I advocate sending one, maximum two ideas at a time. Exceptions to his however, would be when the editor has requested that you send her a list or if you have a regular working relationship with her. Unless you’ve worked with someone before, they have no way of knowing whether you’re really capable of writing the article, or you’ve just bought a freelance writing book and copied query formats from there. Sure, you have some good ideas, and yes, you’ve even managed to write two coherent paragraphs. But will you stick to the deadline? Will you provide references and phone numbers for the fact-checker? How much editing will your piece need? An editor might take a chance on a new writer with one assignment, but she’s unlikely to give you another one until you’ve proven beyond doubt that you’ll be an asset and not a pain.