This is the season when I plan for the coming year…I think about how I did, career-wise, in the past 12 months and what I want to change in the next 12. I’m also busy planning the next free teleclass for writers, which is tentatively scheduled for January 6…stay tuned for more details.
If you’re like most freelancers, your 2011 business plan probably includes selling more articles, becoming a more confident writer, generating more salable ideas, making more money freelancing, or ditching the 9-5 to become a full-time freelancer. That’s why this is a great time to sign up for my January Write for Magazines class or schedule a phone mentoring session for the New Year.
My next Write for Magazines e-course starts on Monday, January 10 — perfect timing for those of you who have made resolutions to improve your writing career in 2011. In eight weeks, this course walks you through everything you need to know to create and send a knock-your-socks-off query letter to your dream markets. Students of this course have landed assignments in Woman’s Day, SELF, Graduating Engineer, Rhode Island Home, Wines & Vines, Writer’s Digest, E: The Environmental Magazine, Spirituality & Health, and more. I limit the number of students I take in the Premium class (with full e-mail support) because I give such thorough feedback on assignments that I can handle only so many! If you want to break into magazine writing — or, if you’re already freelancing, to break into your dream market — get more details and sign up today here.
Want even more personalized help? I offer half-hour and full-hour phone mentoring sessions, and my clients have been extremely happy with the results. One of them broke into higher-paying markets within 10 days, another sold an idea I helped her develop that very day, and my most recent client got a positive response from an editor within two days. You can get more info on my mentoring here.
I hope to help you become even more successful in 2011!
Did you ever think it’s not the economy, of the toughness of the industry, or just plain bad luck that’s keeping you from flourishing as a freelance writer — but your own limiting beliefs? Many aspiring freelancers are wonderful writers with salable ideas, but they can’t break out of the writing-for-cheap (or worse, writing-for-free) stage and make a full-time living doing what they love. And even while they complain about their lack of success, they have plenty of seemingly-reasonable explanations for why they aren’t even trying.
Here are some of the excuses I’ve heard from my mentoring and e-course clients — and how you can bust those limiting beliefs.
Excuse #1: “I have to pay my dues.”
Many writers believe they can’t write for magazines that pay a decent fee until they “pay their dues” by writing for markets that pay peanuts. But who decides what constitutes paying your dues, how long you need to do it for, and even that you have to do it at all? The term “paying your dues” is meaningless, because no one has defined exactly what it is and when it ends.
When I hear someone say they have to pay their dues before pitching the magazines they really want to write for, I know it’s a stalling tactic. I never hear a writer say, “Well, now I’ve paid my dues and it’s time for me to get cracking on my dream markets.” Because there’s no defined limit to paying your dues, writers just keep toiling away at sure-thing markets instead of risking rejection by the big guys. It’s the perfect excuse for not making the leap to better markets.
I’ve never heard an editor, when approached by a writer with a brilliant query and stellar writing, say, “I can’t possibly accept this — this writer hasn’t paid her dues.” In fact, consider this:
* I have a friend whose very first clip was for Cosmopolitan. She went on to have a successful freelance writing career and even write books on freelancing.
* Last year one of my students landed an assignment to write a short for SELF magazine. She had not a single clip before that. Now, she’s working on an assignment for Parenting that’s worth $1,300. She’s had only two assignments and she’s never worked for less than $1.50 per word.
* I recently had a mentoring client who kept “paying her dues” by writing for exposure and wondering why she wasn’t making more money. I convinced her to stop writing for free and cheap, and within ten days she had an assignment that was worth twenty assignments from one of her el-cheapo clients.
* My very first assignment, based on my very first query back in 1996, paid $500. I never paid a dime of dues.
Look: Paying your dues is just an excuse. No one is tracking what you do and judging whether you have written for enough peanuts-paying clients to start pitching your dream markets. If you have a great idea and you present it well, no one will care whether you slogged your way up from the bottom or just burst onto the scene.
Excuse #2: “I need to learn more.”
I hate to say this since I teach e-courses of my own, but some writers take every writing course they can find yet never feel like they know enough to actually get started pitching markets. “I can’t get started because I don’t know every single thing there is to know about query writing.” “Well, now I know how to write a query, but what happens when I get an assignment? I
This is the season when I plan for the coming year…I think about how I did, career-wise, in the past 12 months and what I want to change in the next 12. I’m also busy planning the next free teleclass for writers, which is tentatively scheduled for January 6…stay tuned for more details.