Editorial Needs

“Thank you for submitting your article for our consideration. Unfortunately, your article does not meet our editorial needs.”

I hate that rejection letter more than any. It does not tell me how to be a better writer. It makes me believe that the editor glanced at the title and assumed it didn’t meet the need. It seems like it’s the easy way out, the form rejection letter.

Furthermore, it begs the question, “Aren’t my needs more important than some editor’s?”

Indeed.

I read writer’s guidelines, I submit stuff they ask for, in my opinion. So what happens? Many of the magazines I have submitted articles to I read so I know what they publish and that’s why I sent in my idea.

Here’s what may be happening:

1. I don’t read the magazine enough to really know their editorial needs.
2. I need a more concise and informative title.
3. Opening paragraphs determine many acceptance/rejection decisions. Openers could always be tightened up, use them to show it meets an editorial need.
4. Query letters or cover letters could be more precise, demonstrating you know the magazine, include articles it is similar to and yet how it differs as well.
5. Often my needs do color my opinion of editorial needs. Just because I need money doesn’t mean the editor needs to give it to me!

What rejection letters do you hate the most?

I’ve Just Been Nailed

I have ideas coming out my ears. What I don’t have, in my ears or anywhere else, is the ability to see any of them though to the end.

How Not To Write has a post that pretty much nails me to the wall.

One of the hallmarks of fear is tendency to surround ourselves with more projects, more responsibilities, more stuff. Taken together, this bricolage forms a buffer to the real work that needs doing.

Ouch.

21 Ways to be Interesting

Copyblogger is tired of people telling writers that the secret to success is, “Be interesting.” Duh, no kidding. How does one do that? Here are 21 ways that Copyblogger says you can make your writing interesting.

1) Be wrong
2) Be right
3) Communicate what others can’t
4) Do something
5) Surprise people
6) Make people laugh
7) Offer them an aspirin
8) Show a (half) naked woman
9) Tell them who they are
10) Predict the future
11) Unleash your inner dork
12) Be courageous
13) Be startlingly honest
14) Be irreverent
15) Tell a good story
16) Break an important piece of news
17) Disprove the proven
18) Pick the perfect picture
19) Master the metaphor
20) Create a work of art
21) Put your readers first

Complacency or whatever

Joel Falconer has made it as a freelance writer. Looking back at his progression, he sees two things that motivated him.

First, he points to desperation: you have to feed the family.

“The best thing you can do is cultivate the motivation that is derived from this desperation and make it part of who you are. You don’t want to keep the desperation that comes with it, of course. That just leads to stress. But self-motivation is one of those key aspects of being a great freelancer.”

Second, he points to fighting off complacency:

“Don’t become complacent. Not now, not ever. Don’t get comfortable, and don’t get stagnant. Continue to challenge yourself, grow and explore new places and directions.”

Disappointments with Being Published

“Being published” is the holy grail for people who think they can write. It’s the goal set before us to let us know we’ve arrived.

I was published pretty early on. That was mostly because I knew people through my family. I have been published in over 100 articles at this point.

This isn’t much considering this has been over 16 years of “writing.” Add in the fact that about 15 of those articles were published by places I had no connection to.

All that being said, I have been published and it’s not as fulfilling as one would think. Here are my top disappointments with being published.

* It never pays nearly what I think it should.
* Most of the time your rights to your material are gone.
* There are times when editors pretty much rewrite the whole thing, making your used to be masculine sounding article read like a third-grade girl’s book report.
* It is very rare that you ever hear feedback from your readers.
* It takes a long time before your list of past publishing credits add up to anything that does not inspire a tinge of embarrassment.
* Once you get published, you just have to start the whole process all over again.

Writing Good Content

In the 1950’s, college English professor Paul McHenry Roberts, wrote an article entitled “HOW TO SAY NOTHING IN FIVE HUNDRED WORDS.” After reading hundreds of college essays, he just can’t take it anymore. I don’t recall being in his class in college, but it sure sounds like I might have been.

He blasts the typical college essay writing style and gives 9 ways to bring great content to your writing. Here they are in brief form.

1) Avoid the obvious content–Begin by putting down the arguments that come to your mind. Now when you write your paper, make sure that you don’ t use any of the material on this list.

2) Take the less usual side–Always take the side that looks to you hardest, least defensible. It will almost always turn out to be easier to write interestingly on that side.

3) Slip out of abstraction–For most the soundest advice is to be seeking always for the picture, to be always turning general remarks into seeable examples.

4) Get rid of obvious padding–Instead of taking a couple of obvious points off the surface of the topic and then circling warily around them for six paragraphs, you work in and explore, figure out the details. You illustrate.

5) Call a fool a fool–Decide what you want to say and say it as vigorously as possible, without apology and in plain words.

6) Beware of Pat Expressions–Other things being equal, avoid phrases like “other things being equal.”

7) Colorful Words–By this we mean that they are calculated to produce a picture or induce an emotion. They are dressy instead of plain, specific instead of general, loud instead of soft.

8) Colored Words–When we hear a word, we hear with it an echo of all the situations in which we have heard it before.

9) Colorless Words–Colorless words are those of such general meaning that in a particular sentence they mean nothing.

HT: Doshdosh

The Big Goal–48 to go!

On July 1st I made it public that I was going to send in 50 articles before the end of the year. Today I sent in my first two article submissions.

I can’t tell you what they are because then you’d steal my idea and get it in first with a better spin and then I’ll blame you when I get rejected. Hey, it’s a dog-eat-dog market. No carry-outs here.

How Not to Use the Comma

As I’ve stated before, I don’t like giving advice on things I’m not good at. I have no idea how to use commas. My wife, who is my English Major editor, ridicules me for my comma usage.

I can’t tell you how to use commas, I’m no good at that. What I am good at is putting them in the wrong places. Here are my tips to guarantee you will misplace your commas.

1) If you haven’t used one in a bit, you’re due.
2) Put one in wherever you would breath.
3) Put them around clauses, and since I don’t know what clauses are either, just throw them in when it sounds like there might have been a clause.
4) Since I don’t know how to use semicolons or colons either, commas work fine there too.
5) You can use commas for parenthetical statements, but usually there I use parentheses marks (so you can remove a parenthesis and stick a comma in there too).
6) Stick commas before and after quotes and inside and outside of the quotation marks. One or two are bound to be right.

If you found this list to be highly annoying, relax, that’s why they invented editors. If you want to really learn about comma usage, try this place, over here, at this site.

Jonathan Coe on Writing

I have never read anything by Jonathan Coe and know nothing about him, but this is a very entertaining quthor interview. Here are a few examples.

What makes you want to write now?
Force of habit, financial necessity and lack of talent in other areas.

How do you survive being alone in your work so much of the time?
I love it. How do I survive being surrounded by other people the rest of the time? That’s the more difficult question.

Is there a secret to writing?
Yes.

Apostrophes and how they Annoy Smart People

The Oxford Etymologist chimes in on the annoying ways people use apostrophes and what, pray tell, can be done about it.