A Tip or Two

On the surface, it would seem that the more you write, the more productive you are. And the more time you waste on seemingly frivolous activities like watching football or reading fiction, the less you’re actually getting done. Sometimes though, the opposite holds true. There are no rules, but it’s quite possible that even after writing three hours daily for a week, you’ve only got two pages that don’t deserve to be trashed, yet after a week of no-writing-no-guilt, you come back inspired and fill in ten pages almost without effort.

It does help to have some sort of system in place though, even if you choose to deviate from it occasionally (and you will). Here then, are some of my current methods for keeping my writing and my writing life in shape.

1. Daily Journal. This is not an original idea, and several thousands of writers swear by it. I’m one of them. Every morning, I write at least 500 words in my journal. But I don’t give in to the temptation of saying, “This sucks” three hundred times. Instead, I write about the previous day, my work, my personal life, my expectations, my anxieties, what I’m hoping will happen today. Anything goes. Except “this sucks.” After I’m done writing these 500 words, the pressure to “write every day” is gone. I’ve already written today, so it doesn’t matter if I write or not. And without that pressure, I find I’m actually more eager to write.

2. 5 Things To Do Today: On my desktop is an electronic post-it note, the contents of which are visible to me every time I sit in front of my computer. It’s my “5 Things To Do Today” list, and I make it each night before going to bed as goals for the next day. They’re more than goals though– they’re job responsibilities. Usually, I try to do them by importance, but sometimes, I might just feel like reducing the numbers. Or I might choose convenience over importance. As long as I’m completing five tasks by the end of the day, it’s good. They don’t all have to be writing-related. Just five things that I need to get done. For instance, here’s my list for tomorrow:

- Write/publish blog entry
- Buy new keyboard
- Find a contact at UN/CRPF. Call the existing contact
- Respond to all urgent e-mails
- Finish research + transcribing interviews

3. One Folder Per Story: If you’re like me, you’ve got your research, interviews and drafts on a single project scattered all over the computer. On the Desktop, in My Documents, in folders that you specifically created, in e-mails. If you’re like me, you’re wasting way too much time looking for things. So here’s an idea: create folders for each story, and then make sub-folders for other random stuff such as research, interviews, e-mails and drafts. I know, I know, I’m one to talk. But seriously, I’m doing this now. Okay, I’m trying. And whenever I manage to succeed, it really saves a lot of my time.

4. Learn By Example: It’s great to be subscribed to three dozen writing newsletters, but wherever you can, learn by example. Next time you’re looking to write a brilliant lead, don’t head over to your favorite writing site to find an article on how to do it. Instead, open up magazines, hunt down a few Pulitzer winners, or look through articles and essays that you’ve enjoyed in the past and see how they did it. Learning by instruction is important too, of course, and you don’t need to invest in expensive classes, whether online or offline, to do so. In fact, I’ve never taken a single class in my life. What I have done though, is gobbled up the Poynter.org website and read and re-read the articles on there. All the information and books in the world on one side and Poynter on the other, and I’d pick Poynter without a thought.

5. Store Ideas by Importance: There are ideas that you think you want to do someday. There are others that you can’t wait to send to your favorite editors. And then there are those that are practically begging to be written right this instant. Those are the ideas you want to store a little separately from the rest. I have a neat travel diary that a friend gave to me, and it’s red with a map drawn on top, and it’s so pretty that for the first two months of its existence, I didn’t dare to write a word in it. Now I store all my best ideas in it. The ones that I was so excited about that I wrote bits and pieces of them without any kind of assignment or guarantee.

Making It Personal

In my first year of freelancing, my querying habits went a little like this: send a query, finish the assignment, query another magazine, finish the assignment, and so on. When the assignment for the first magazine would be done, I’d neatly wrap it up, complete with thank you notes and meticulous records, and then concentrate on the next assignments I had in line. Next time an idea struck for the same magazine, I’d query them again.

But in my first year of freelancing, I also lost out on getting personal with my editors and in turn, commanding more assignments. Once you finish an assignment for an editor, you stand a much higher chance of landing another one immediately. Since I’d keep waiting for another hot idea to strike, I was beginning each new assignment on a fresh note. Too much time would have gone by and I would then have to rebuild each relationship, recreate the trust and re-negotiate each contract. I was getting frustrated.

Had I chucked that “the editor’s the boss” advice right down the drain where it belonged, I’d be getting more assignments with less effort. Now, I finish each assignment with an informal note, “Great working with you! Is there anything else you might need for upcoming issues?” or I’ll just send another query. Or when I get my contributor’s copies, I’ll write to the editor to thank her for sending them and let her know what I thought of how the article turned out.

That way, my name is constantly in front of the editor, and the next time I send a query letter, I won’t have to remind her that I’m the writer who wrote the cover story last year. She’ll already know.

Off the Market

As of tomorrow night, my e-book “Knock Their Socks Off: A Freelance Writer’s Guide to Query Letters That Sell” will no longer be sold.

When I wrote the book, I was a 22-year old Indian writer who had found success in the international magazine market. Success at that point meant being able to earn good money, being able to pay off loans, being able to reject work without worrying about how it would alter my bottom line. It meant being popular, being known among the writing community, being interviewed twice a week. It meant getting ready-made assignments from editors, getting fan mail and getting daily offers to review the latest books and products on the market. At 22, success was all about what other people thought of me.

The e-book was written for people looking for similar kind of success. And at the beginning of our careers, that kind of success is exactly what we need. We need that first published clip, that first big assignment, that first big check. But soon, we have enough big assignments and enough big checks, and we need to move on. I’ve moved on.

I’m no longer 22. And my definition of success has changed. Today success means being able to get assignments that mean something to me, being able to work two months on a project that I believe in without worrying about whether it will ever see the light of day, being able to reach out to readers and touch them. It means being known for doing good work. It means being able to follow my heart, and being proud of each word that I’ve written. It means being able to know that what I do matters. Today, success is all about what I think of me.

I’m taking the book off the market for two reasons: one, it’s two years old and there’s so much more that I have learned and need to share. Two, I no longer feel it needs to follow the paid or the book model. Instead, I’m going to take it bit by bit, update it and put it up on this blog.

I’m also taking off the free e-course that is associated with the book. Since I’ll be putting up parts of the book up here in their entirety, the e-course no longer serves any purpose.

I Take Photos Too

Comment, so that I can feel validated: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mridu/

Simultaneous Submissions = Simultaneous Frustration?

The first time I heard a successful writer say that simultaneous queries weren’t going to come back to haunt you, I was relieved. The next time, I felt like heading across the oceans and strangling her.

My worst fears came true when after sending out a query to a national magazine and not receiving a response, I decided to try my luck with a smaller market. I was lucky alright. The idea sold immediately, I quickly wrote up the piece, filled it with humorous anecdotes and clever zingers and sent it off to the assigning editor, who loved it. The piece was to be published three months later.

Then I heard from the national magazine. They wanted it, too.

I cursed the writer who’d said that simultaneous submissions rarely got accepted at both places, decided I must be an outstanding one-of-a-kind writer and then freaked out. Big time. There was just no way I was going back to that editor telling her I wasn’t going to come through and killing any future chances with that magazine. I told her I’d do it, and with bated breath waited for the contract to arrive. In the meantime, I pictured the two magazines coming out in the same month, the editors of each red with fury, and me lying by the roadside mourning the death of yet another career choice.

Thankfully for me, the contract came bearing good news. The editors at both magazines wanted completely different things and the article I wrote for the national magazine wound up being half the size of the first, focusing more on expert quotes than my own experiences. It also ran almost a year later. Woo-hoo!

However, you may not always be this lucky. If you’ve been following advice from successful writers so far, you’ve been very specific with your queries. You’ve given names of experts, offered photos, maybe even described a couple of points that you’ll make in the final piece. How can you suddenly decide to change the focus of the article if the editor has liked what you’ve shown her? Nope. Doesn’t work.

So should you stop sending simultaneous submissions? Absolutely not! Just get a little creative with them, so that if two magazines come back with acceptances, you don’t have to think twice before screaming, “Yes!”

This is what you need to keep in mind:

-> Don’t offer the same idea to competing magazines. If both of them like it (which is unlikely, but possible), you’ll be in a very unenviable position. Instead, re-slant your ideas. Sending a cancer-fighting foods query to Woman’s Day while you propose libido-enhancing foods idea to Redbook works for everyone.

-> If you’ve worked with an editor before, it’s only decent that you give her the first right of refusal. So if you’ve written for The Writer, let the editor reject your query before you start asking Writer’s Digest to give it a look. It’s just a matter of building good relationships. Plus, if you’re sending the same idea to both, your editor at The Writer will not be impressed if it has already been picked up by Writer’s Digest before he/she had the time to respond.

-> Send simultaneous submissions to non-competing magazines. For instance, I once sent a “Fun with Digital Pictures” idea to a parenting magazine (“Fun Photo Gifts for Christmas”), a women’s magazine (“Snap it up for Romance”), a technology magazine (“What’s the Fate of your Digital Pictures?”), and a teen magazine (“Picture Perfect for Friendship Day”). Not only is the research the same, the ideas in all the above articles will be very similar too. If I can teach parents how to make a cartoon strip featuring their kids, I can certainly teach a teenager to do it for her best friend, too. Of course, I’ll present the same idea to all editors as perfect for their audience, but if you think about it, such gifts are great for just about anybody!

Interviewed!

Aneeta Sundararaj, the author of How to Tell a Great Story interviewed me recently for her column, “Blow Your Own Trumpet.” Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Aneeta: How did you get into writing and in particular, freelance writing and why?

Mridu: I’d always been interested in writing, but had never really considered it as a career option. The closest I came to getting formally educated in journalism was when I applied for a degree in mass media before I went to college. As it turns out, the results of the qualifying exam for engineering came out a day before I was to give the qualifying exam for journalism. Since I had my top choice of university for Information Technology, I said, heck, why not do that?

And then I failed my first year in engineering.

I started writing while I prepared for my semester exams, and was earning a full-time living with it by the time I finished college. I guess I was always meant to end up in journalism. Just took a few detours on the way.

Read full interview here: http://www.howtotellagreatstory.com/byot/byot41.html