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I offer to bust readers’ excuses for not pitching magazines — or, if they’re pitching, for approaching only low/no-pay pubs. (By the way, if you have an excuse you’d like me to bust, you can send it to [email protected].) Have a lot of excuses — or a lot of questions? I’m offering a 10% discount off my phone mentoring through August 20. Here’s what a client I helped last week had to say:

“In one half-hour telephone session, Linda covered a lot of ground—she answered all of my questions, offered specific, detailed advice and gave me some fantastic tips and resources. As a freelancer who has experience but is ready to move to the next level, it was a huge boon to be able to speak with someone so knowledgeable and so willing to share her insights. Exactly what I needed!”
—Fiona Kirk

Here’s Jan’s excuse: My problem with NOT writing is that I’m 52 years old and JUST started writing. I know I have a lot of wisdom from my experience but I also have doubts as in I’m too old to be writing this late in life. Am I too late in starting out? Can I learn enough to still be successful? I’m not 25 and starting, or 35, or even 45.

There’s a Dear Abby (or maybe it was Ann Landers) column that I love and always remember when this excuse comes up. A woman wrote in that she wanted to go to college, but she was 70 years old. “When I graduate, I’ll be 74,” she said. “Should I do it?” Abby (or maybe it was Ann) answered, “And how old will you be in four years if you don’t go to college?”

Her point was that time was going to pass anyway, so you may as well follow your dreams no matter what your age is now and what your age will be when you succeed.

Fear of failure is an insidious thing, and sometimes it crops up wearing different masks, like “I’m too young” and “I’m too old” and “I’ll start when the kids are in school/I feel more confident/I take five thousand writing classes.” See your excuses for what they likely are — a fear of trying and failing.

You can learn the basics of freelance writing at any age. You have access to the same tools and resources as everyone else. And as you said, you have the benefit of wisdom from your life experience.

The even better news is that editors rarely care — or even know — how old you are. Heck, they don’t much care about you at all except for whether you can turn in a great piece! I wrote for Parenting before I even planned to have a kid myself. I now write for magazines aimed at women in their 20s and 30s, even though I’m 41.

The trick is that you need to know how to think like your market, and that’s a skill you’ll need as a magazine writer no matter what age you are. For example, if I were pitching AARP: The Magazine, I’d need to understand the issues that people face in their 50s and beyond. When I wrote for parenting mags, even before I had a kid, I had to get into the minds of moms with young children. And when I wrote for a magazine aimed at college-age, minority employees, I had to think about what they wanted and needed to know about the issues that affect them. (And I’m not college-age, a minority, or an employee.)

This is a skill you can pick up by reading magazines, books, websites, and online forums that target all different markets.

I hope tha

I offer to bust readers’ excuses for not pitching magazines — or, if they’re pitching, for approaching only low/no-pay pubs. If you have an excuse you’d like me to bust, you can send it to [email protected].

Here’s Diane’s excuse: I always feel that I’m not good enough. I don’t have an MFA, I haven’t been writing for 20 years, and I am not a superior writer. I have issues with passive voice and prepositional phrases. I work hard to correct them, but it gives me a feeling of inferiority. Even if I meet a writer who says she is just starting out, it always seems that her writing is impeccable. Therefore, every other writer is better and an editor is going to use my query to windex her computer monitor.

Let me start off by saying that I don’t have an MFA, a degree in journalism, or anything close to that; my MA is in Slavic Linguistics. I know many successful freelancers, and very few of them have specialized degrees.

If you have issues with grammar and style, those are easy enough to correct. The Elements of Style is available for free online. It’s fun to read and will help you learn to write in a simple, effective style that works for most magazines. The good news is that you know where you need work, so you can check out those parts of the book first and pay close attention to those issues in your writing.

If you’re not already, become a voracious reader of everything from trade magazines to literary fiction. You’ll start to recognize what makes good writing, and will absorb the different styles that work for each market.

But most important, learn by doing. Some of my first pitches were embarrassingly bad, but I still sent them and eventually they improved and I started getting regular work. When I first started getting assignments — mostly for trade magazines — I would print out the article and go over the draft with a red pen multiple times. Now, after 13 years, I can write and edit an article on the screen and never have to print it out. You’ll experience the same growth in your abilities and confidence if you just keep pitching and writing.

If you feel you need more help than you can get from a book — or if you write and write but still feel that your writing needs work — you can hire someone to go over your queries and articles before you turn them in. I know a writer who speaks English as a second language, and she uses a freelance editor to polish her work. She’s a wonderful writer, but I’m sure the editor catches small grammatical and stylistic errors and makes her articles shine. Can’t afford a freelance editor? Barter something you do well (web design? coding? administrative tasks?) with a writer or editor whose grammar and style are impeccable.

Don’t compare yourself to other writers. What they do has no effect on your success. The best thing you can do to get over the feeling that other writers are kicking your butt is to write, write, write — and pitch, pitch, pitch. Don’t give yourself a mental rejection slip; send your ideas to editors and let them be the ones to say No — or Yes! [lf]