Enough Already!

Magazine articles are known for their reader-friendliness and the ability to impart useful information in an easy-to-understand manner, not literary prose. Bury your thesaurus in the stacked office paperwork and quit trying to be perfect. Chances are, no matter how many times you rewrite that lead, you still won’t be 100% happy with it.

While how you write is, no doubt, very important, the core of the query letter is your idea and how you propose to execute it. Don’t spend hours and hours poring over each word making it ooze will excellent; write it to the best of your ability, proofread a couple of times, and send it out. A query that’s amazingly witty, well-written, and funny at all the right places does no one any good if it doesn’t ever get sent out.

My course of action is to write the pitch, proofread it a couple of times, and hopefully catch any glaring errors that may have skipped past me the first time. Then I send it out. The less I dwell on each query letter, the better for both my productivity and my ego.

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Keep ‘em on the Move

When a query comes back rejected, what do you do? Cry? Yeah, me too. But what do you do after that? Jot down a quick note in your submission tracker, place the e-mail in a special “Rejected” folder and hope that your luck will be better next time?

How about increasing the circulation?

No, not your dead brain cells. I mean the query. Whenever something comes back to me rejected, I copy the whole pitch to a new e-mail message, hunt out another market where that article could be placed, change the name of the editor and magazine, fill in the e-mail address, and send it off. Immediately. How much time did that take? Ten seconds? Fifteen maybe?

I’ll then take a close look at the market it came from. If it’s a market I’m particularly interested in, I’ll probably have a couple of ideas lying around for it already. If not, I’ll browse through the magazine’s website again, check out back issues, and do whatever I need to do to find another idea that would fit into that magazine. Another query is written and sent off to the assigning editor with “I’m sorry you couldn’t use that idea. Here’s another one that might better suit your needs”.

That’s two queries sent out for each rejection. Not only am I making sure that all my ideas stay in rotation, but that no market is left untapped of its potential. And I just sent two queries. That’s a day’s worth of queries I just ticked off my schedule.

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Boss Yourself Around

It’s one thing for me to keep blabbering about sending out five queries a day; it’s a whole other battle trying to do it. Most writers will kick off their week by feeling productive and sending out dozens of pitches. By the end of the week, it’s a different scenario. Their hair will be ruffled, why-am-doing-this thoughts reign high, and the mounting pile of rejections brings a whole new meaning to the word depression. Don’t worry. It happens to the best of us.

But there’s a way out: goal-setting. At the beginning of each week, set targets for yourself that you simply have to meet. If you don’t, you have to work overtime just like you did when you worked a regular job. If you’ve assigned yourself the task of getting three query letters out by six in the evening, make sure that when six in the evening arrives, you’re done with your work. Glue your butt to the seat if you have to, post a “Do NOT Disturb… unless you have cash” sign outside your office door, turn off the e-mail software, and vow to stop being lured by daytime television. You’re a professional, and you have work to do.

One way that’s worked for me is to keep a weekly tab, instead of a daily one. If I know I need to send ten query letters a week, I might start the week by sending out five on Monday and Tuesday, and then one or two till the end of the week. As long as I’ve finished my assigned number, I’m doing okay. That way, if I’m busy on another project or feeling completely deprived of energy one day, I don’t have to beat myself up about it. Just so long as I’m making up for it by the end of the week.

You might have other ways to motivate yourself or set and accomplish goals. But however you choose to do it, keep yourself accountable.

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Follow Nike’s Advice– Just Do It!

There’ll come a time when you’ve done everything you need to– organized your entire writing material, collected markets and ideas, scheduled time for writing, and even warned to throw out your boyfriend’s iPhone should he disturb you. Now the only thing left for you to do is write.

So stop the planning and get down to it. Talking about writing is good, but actually writing? Even better. There’s no point to any of this advice if you don’t actually do it. Half the part of becoming a successful and well-paid writer is to walk the walk, so to speak. Don’t wait until tomorrow for the next writing newsletter to arrive with more markets, or for a new hot idea to strike. Work with what you have. The process is never-ending. The market list will never be completely finished. You’ll hopefully continue to come up with brilliant ideas. But eventually, you’ll run out of time. Make sure you’re doing more than just the planning.

Get started this week, this hour, this very minute. In fact, close your browser window right now, and get started on today’s queries.

Good luck! May your ideas never go out of vogue!

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And with that, dear writers, we finish the lessons. I’ll post successful query letters in the coming days. In the meantime, share with me your successes, what worked for you, and what didn’t.