Live Idea-to-Pitch Collection

Description

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382 minutes of video
382 minutes of audio
72 slides
110 pages of transcript

Live Idea-to-Pitch Walkthrough #1: Turning Trip Notes into a Pitchable Idea List

In this new series, we offer a window on how pitching takes place for an established writer in the most minimal time with the least possible fuss as we walk from initial trip notes all the way to polished pitches leaving my inbox right before your eyes. To make sure you can see and ask questions about my decision-making at every phase, I walk through each step of the process completely live with no prep work outside of our calls (or cheating, as I would call it!) to pretty things up or do more digging into an idea.

To kick off the series, we begin with the notes from my travels in the Czech Republic over the summer, transforming my ideas from that time, which are no longer fresh in my mind, into potential article ideas and article types. You’ll learn how to develop a sense for what is and is not a pitchable idea from the types of information you’re deluged with on a trip, and I’ll also note what types of articles could develop from each idea as we go along.

We will cover:
– The premisses + ground rules of this experiment
– How to follow along at home
– Refresher of the types of magazine articles we’ll be scanning for

Live Idea-to-Pitch Walkthrough #2: Matching Raw Ideas to Real Magazine Sections

Continuing in our landmark series walking, entirely live, through every stage in the process of putting together a number of pitches in just a few hours, we dive into the dreaded matching phase. I know that for many of you, this part of the process—finding a good “home” for your article ideas—can be the most trying part of the question, often lasting for weeks and sometimes months. In this webinar, you’ll see me take my entire list of pitch ideas from the previous week and make as many good matches as I can in an hour.

We will cover:
– What we are doing and how to follow along at home
– How do I know where to start looking for matches
– Recapping ALL the ideas to make the best use of our time
– Sprint searching ALL of the magazines that might work

Live Idea-to-Pitch Walkthrough #3: Identifying Glove-Fit Ideas

In the last webinar in this series, which shows live every stage in the process of putting together a number of pitches in just a few hours, I compiled a list of article ideas matched to specific magazines and sections within those magazines. As we went through, I included things that were pretty sure-fire fits along with ones that I needed to check on further to make sure that the idea would really fly for the given section (which we will verify in this webinar by looking at past examples of articles in that section) and the magazine in general (which we will check against the demographics and general voice of the publication).

In this webinar, the hour goes from wide (where we’ve been in the past several hours of this series) to narrow as we slim from the ideas that we like to the ideas that actually have a shot with the magazines in question.

We will cover:
– What we’re doing and how to follow along at home
– What a glove-fit looks like
– Where we are with our ideas now
– Attacking the matches

Live Idea-to-Pitch Walkthrough #4: Ruthlessly Auditing Idea Fit

In this webinar, we narrow the ideas we’ve been working on even further so that we’re only moving forward with the ones that absolutely, as far as we can tell not being inside the magazine, have a chance of success as we finesse both the fit and the quality of the idea, focusing on looking for that “why” that really makes the idea pop when the editor reads our pitch.

We will cover:
– What we’re doing and how to follow along at home
– Where we are with our ideas now
– What fit checks we’ve done and what’s left
– Attacking the matches

Live Idea-to-Pitch Walkthrough #5: Creating the Bones of the Pitch

In this webinar, the real writing begins! But staring at a blank page is a way to shock any creative mind into panic, so we begin instead by putting together the easier building blocks of the pitch in an almost placeholder-like style with minimal stress and research just to get our quick thoughts on the page. Learning this trick to getting the basis of a pitch out quickly alone, can easily save you an hour per pitch.

We will cover:
– The purpose of this series starts to come into shape
– What are the bones of the pitch?
– Why we start with the easier bits: P2s and 3s
– What ideas are we going to work up pitches for?
– Attacking the pitches

Live Idea-to-Pitch Walkthrough #6: Filling in the Blanks & Hitting Send

Even though it seems like we’re at the end of the line, this is actually the hardest part of the pitching process and where I see many of you getting completely stuck. It’s too easy to be fully flush with the facts and fit of an idea, step away from it for a bit, then come back and have doubts because you’re not up-to-date on all of the details of the situation, and then decide that you really shouldn’t send the pitch after all.

In this webinar, we walk through live examples so you can see when enough is enough, when to cut and run, and how, exactly, to get pitches out of your inbox and into the playing field quickly and with minimal fuss.

We will cover:
– Quick recap: What are the bones of the pitch?
– Where did we leave off?
– Attacking the pitches!