The Briefing

This is where you really start to get into high gear and move towards the hard sell. Present the details of your article, exactly what you plan to cover (”7 Stressful Situations and How to Handle Them”), whether it’ll be descriptive or have lists, and any information that will help the editor decide whether or not it’s the right fit. Remember, by the time you’re finished with this paragraph, there should be no confusion in the editor’s mind about what you’re offering.

One way to present all the facts to the editor is to make a list of bulleted points that the article will cover. That makes it so much easier on the editor’s eyes and puts all the information right there to view, at a glance.

***

What Do You Have on Offer?

Now you swoop in and show the editor just how darn amazing you are. Tell her how you’re going to make her job easier by naming the experts you’ll interview, provide her with a terrific working title, list the sidebars, and mention the department it would fit in.

If you’re a new writer, you need to make extra effort in this paragraph so that when the editor moves beyond it and finds that you have absolutely no experience, she’ll still think you’re capable enough to handle it. (If you’re new, getting all this information arranged in your head will also help you think that you’re capable enough to handle it.)

I’m going to stress again the importance of having studied the magazine. If you’ve already visualized what your article will look like in this magazine’s pages, you’ll be able to clearly convey that to the editor as well.

***

Why You’re So Darn Fabulous

Like most writers, I started my career by dreading this part of the query letter. Now I’ve learned to make it the most powerful weapon in my writing arsenal.

What’s worse than sending a sloppy pitch filled with errors and completely unsuitable for the publication? Sending a terrific and decorating it with your newbie status. Because while your first query sucked, the second one will likely bring the same response: No.

I’ve personally seen many pitches of the sort. They’re perfect, right until the end, when the writer kind of loses it and becomes desperate.

Please let me write this article for you and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. (I should be pleasantly surprised that a professional writer will send me a good article?)

I’ve never been published before but will you take a chance on me? (Uh, why exactly?)

I have no clips, but I have hope. (Good for you. But no.)

All from real queries. All rejected.

All of us were newbies once. Being new doesn’t justify being unprofessional, especially in a line of work where a lot depends on the way you communicate. Editors don’t want to work with people who don’t know what they’re doing. The editor needs to know that you do. So even if you have no experience, act professional, project confidence, and get the job done without resorting to begging or pleas of sympathy.

So what do you do if you have no qualifications? You make the best of your life experience. Are you a parent? Tell that parenting magazine that in your ten years of full-time experience with kids, there isn’t a single problem you haven’t seen first-hand. Graduated with a technology degree? Tell that gadget magazine editor. If you want to write for a college magazine, mentioning that you’re still in college and have personal and extensive knowledge of what problems a student faces is a neat idea.

Editors want to know why you’re the best person for the job. While writing credentials play a role, they’re not the sole factor. Your idea is what will eventually determine whether or not you get an assignment. But credentials are nice, and if you have them, tout them. Some other credentials that you can mention include:

Professional experience: In an interview with WritersCrossing.com, Kelly James-Enger said that her first published article, in Cosmopolitan, was based on her own personal experience. Having just quit her job as a full-time lawyer, James-Enger wrote about surviving the last two weeks on the job. By putting her own experience into play, she landed a great assignment in a national magazine, even though she had no prior credits.

Academic Qualifications: If you have a degree in computing, you can be sure that technology magazine editors will consider you an expert. Not just degrees though. You might have taken a short course on entrepreneurship and that would make you a business expert, a history minor in college would give you a certain expertise, and vocational courses count as qualifications as well.

Personal experience: The most common of all. Don’t hesitate to tell the editor when you’ve faced similar situations to those you’re proposing to write about. Many of my earlier articles were born out of personal experience, and I always made a note in my query, even if the experience was something I wasn’t particularly proud of. I failed my first year in college, and when pitching an article on the topic, I told my editor that I knew what students went through. When I graduated, two of my editors at college magazines were among the first few people I told. (We e-celebrated.)

One thing to remember is that you must modify your bio according to the article you’re proposing. When I was proposing an article to Writer’s Digest on writing for technology publications, I didn’t highlight the publications for writers I’d written for, or that I ran one such publication myself. Instead, I mentioned how I frequently wrote for technology publications and mentioned the names of the nationally-known ones.

A few more things to consider:

Leave out the wishes: I’m looking for publishers for my first novel. I’m a part-time writer hoping to go full-time in a couple of months. Leave it out. All of it. Just state the facts. What you’ve done, what you’re in the process of doing, what you’ve sold. If you’ve sold your book and have a release date, perfect! If not, save it for when you do.

Networking: Listing every online writing group or club that you’re a part of is a very bad idea. Who cares? On the other hand, if you have professional memberships of relevance to that publication, let the editor know.

Don’t be humble: Now’s not the time for it. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard how hard it is for writers to tout their own credentials. Do it anyway. No one else is going to do it for you. So go ahead, name every big magazine that’s published you, even if they’ve done it while violating your copyright, and making you beg for that paycheck. You’ve earned it.