Section Category: Assignments

I just want to take a minute to thank you deeply for taking the time to read these lessons and work on your pitches this month with the rest of the group.

I believe very firmly that the only way to dramatically change your lot, as they say, as a travel writer is through regular, high-quality pitching, and I’m so delighted to see you taking concerted steps to work to improve that process and thus your travel writing career

Folks from the past Pitchapalooza events have reported some great successes, like cover stories in USA TODAY and pieces in magazines like Eating Well, $1/word airline magazines and Paste Magazine, and I can’t wait to hear what yours will be.

The online forums will remain live, and I encourage you to share your acceptances with the rest of the group as you receive them. Also, if you do not have database access independently of the month included with the Pitchapalooza program, don’t forget that your access is ending this weekend.

I’ve long found that seeing your fellow writers break into great magazines is one of the best motivations to send out a couple more pitches, or to pitch that outlet you’ve always wanted to write for and just not pitched.

Whenever you need to, you’re welcome to pick up the exercises up again and run through them on your own or with others in the forums, which will remain a great place to air your ideas for fit. The best way practice knowing what a good fit looks like in your own pieces is to critique others; this is part of why MFA programs rely so heavily on group critique sessions.

While it is enormously useful for the writer being critiqued to learn to accept criticism and learn what to incorporate to improve her own piece, the process also works to sharpen the editing skills of the entire group to tune their eyes when writing and reading their own pieces.

I hope that this program has:

• changed some of your perceptions about how pitching magazines works
• made you strive to find perfect fits for your pitch ideas and understand why and how to go about it
• showed how to tighten up your pitches on your own and the kind of road blocks you personally struggle with in your pitches–along with some techniques to get past them

When I get an assignment, the absolute first thing I do is set up interviews. Your ability to get these done can be the single biggest point of stress when not done in a timely, but, *having* them done will make the process of writing your article go so, so much faster.

Don’t think your article needs interviews? Think again. The information you get in interviews is what elevates a round-up from a blog post to a magazine article and the front-of-book piece you write from something a harried editor or editorial assistant would bang out. In short, it’s what they’re paying you for.

If you’re not accustomed to doing these, they can be a bit scary, so you’ll drag your feet about setting them up, and then you’ll suffer “writer’s block” when you go to outline your piece.

So it’s helpful to reframe the concept of the “interview” and think of it as a more efficient way to do better research than the internet.

Rather than digging around a company’s website, a tourism board’s press releases, or a museum’s catalog, you get an expert to guide you through the information directly to what you need, tell you anecdotes (stories!) that you can use to give your story motion, and clue you into things that are opening or being added in the future.

If you went to a museum, spent a few hours taking a tour and wandering around on your own, went home and typed up your scrawling notes, I estimate you’d spend four hours gathering more research than you need…which you’ll spend another two hours (minimum) sifting through or writing up before you narrow down to what you actually need to know. Interviews cut all of that down to 15 minutes.

When you’re new at this, it’s easy to feel like visiting every place you’ll include in a round-up (I’m talking ones that pay $150-300 here, not $2,000 departments in major magazines) is what you’re supposed to do. It’s your due diligence.

But editors know what they are paying you for and expect you to research accordingly.

So for a kind of round-up article that I write often and get paid around $400 for, my time breaks down something like this:

• 20 mins: Identify the places I’ll cover (call this the pitch, but I’m working from a rough assignment from my editor in these cases)
• 15-20 mins: Find contacts for the five places featured in the round-up and email to set up interviews
• 20 mins: More emails to coordinate interviews and secure photos
• ~1.5 hours: Five interviews at 15-to-20-minutes each
• 50 mins to 1.5 hours: Drafting the piece from memory (without looking at my notes) by copying the magazine’s typical format for each round-up section (three paragraphs with an interesting lead, evocative paragraph on what the reader will find during her visit, and paragraph of service information on how to visit and any special events)
• 20-30 mins: Filling in quotes and facts I didn’t have while drafting.
• 10 mins: Final proofreading

Now, since I’ve been doing this for a while, you might be thinking that you couldn’t and shouldn’t write a 1,500-word article in 50 minutes, but you certainly can.

Even though I discovered this way of writing on my own, I often hear this piece of advice from well-known travel writers: write your first draft of the piece quickly without looking at your notes. It’s how you get good flow, both in the piece and in your mental writing processes.

Last, but, most certainly not least, double check both the pitch you wrote and the assignment from the editor.

• Have you included everything you promised? If not either add it, or let the editor know your good reason why it’s not there in your email when you file the assignment
• Have you addressed any changes or additions the editor asked for in accepting your pitch?
• Have you followed the magazine’s style and formatting guide?

And once the piece is accepted, follow up right away with the next pitch. 🙂

Your Task for Today
As we wrap up this round of pitches, it’s time to start looking at the next.

Grab 10 magazines from your original hit list that you haven’t pitched yet and share them, along with some short descriptions of trips you have coming up in the forum.

If you’re already seeing article ideas and other synergies, that’s great! Share those as well.