Readers!
Last week, I was really stressed out about something in my personal life, so I did what any normal person would do: sat down at my computer and wrote an article pitch to an editor I knew but had never worked for.
Writing it was a cinch. I wrote a little hey how are you, a bit of a personal lead into where the idea came from, and then what I envisioned for the article. I hit send, and expect to never hear anything back.
That’s because, as the click bait-y subject line/headline of this piece suggests, pitching is easy — at least it is for me after 20+ years of doing this. Once I got a couple of pitch formulas down, and then over the hump of “why would anyone ever want to work with me,” pitching became like building something with LEGO. The pieces just snap together.
The difficult part is selling the idea, because there are so many things beyond my control, including but not limited to:
- You need to know the name and contact information of the right editor. You can’t just send it to a general inbox and expect the right person to get it, especially at multi-national publications. Could it happen? Sure. Will it? Probably not. It’s much more likely that the editor will realize your pitch is better suited to someone else and send it to them, but the chances of that are slim too if you’re an unknown to them, and they’re slammed with emails. Speaking of…
- The editor needs to see your pitch. Because of spam filters, and being inundated with emails (including from AI scammers) it may never cross their virtual desks.
- The editor needs to read your pitch. Same as above.
- The editor needs to like your idea. I’ve worked with some editors for years and have pitched them what I thought were easy sells that they just didn’t like. It happens! They could also ask you follow up questions and realize it’s not the right fit. It sucks but it again — it happens!
- The idea needs to be something they don’t already have in production. My first New York Times running article started as a pitch that Runner’s World passed on, because they’d already assigned something about the same topic. There was nothing wrong with the pitch, but my timing was off for reasons I couldn’t have known (and when that Runner’s World editor saw the New York Times story, she said she wished she could have bought it, and assigned me my first piece for them).
- The publication needs to have space for your idea.
- The publication needs to have a budget to pay you fairly for your idea. And no “just do it for free for exposure” is never an option, don’t make me bring out Denzel.
- The editor might have a different vision for your pitch that doesn’t line up with what you want to write. I was having a hell of a time selling an essay I wrote about learning to surf at 40, with many editors passing for the reasons listed above. One editor said he’d buy it but only if I completely changed the focus by doing a bunch of reporting to make it less about me so it wasn’t so boring. Uh, no thanks. I then sold it to Oprah.
- The editor is a jerk in responding to your pitch. You don’t have to work with assholes. I had a running pitch passed onto an editor at a sports magazine who said it sounded great, but had I “ever actually reported anything?” I’m sorry…what? I didn’t do some long winded explanation about my ACTUAL REPORTING EXPERIENCE because I wasn’t going to prostate myself to this guy — I just pointed him to the links that were already in the pitch. Didn’t matter anyway because the magazine folded soon after. I forgot his name and I can’t be bothered to look it up because fuck that guy (but not in the fun way, of course).
All of this is why, once I reached a certain stage in my career, I de-centered pitching and instead worked on building relationships with editors and publications that would choose me for their ideas instead of the other way around. It’s also why, when I work with new or returning freelancers, I tell them to tap their professional networks first. I know a lot of freelance advice givers focus on pitching, because teaching those steps on how to pitch are easy. And I’m not knocking them. “How did this get made” features are reguarily part of this newsletter. But if you want to build a stable freelance writing career, pitching can’t be the only tool in your toolbox. Because sometimes even someone like me, with the right connections and who one national editor said has a real talent for presenting my ideas in a clear and compelling way, can completely strike out.
Also: who writes article pitches when they’re stressed out? What’s wrong with me? Maybe it’s because it helps my brain do something logical when I’m being pressed through an illogical situation. I do like to put things in order. I also want to see that Big Boy train. Hmmmmmm! Something to think about!
Recent Bylines
“Nearly 10% of surgeons are leaving the profession within eight years,” American College of Surgeons Research News
“What CIOs should know about AI-driven SaaS pricing changes,” CIO Dive
What I’m Reading
- The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story by Peter Lefcourt. Whenever someone asks on social media about what book you read when you were too young to read it, most of my contemporaries say something by V.C. Andrews or Stephen King. My answer has always been this book, which I read when I was 12 or 13 years old. But then I doubted myself, because was a novel about a short stop and second basement falling in love really too mature for me? Or did I just not know anything about queerness at the time other than that AIDS existed and that the f-word was a slur? Turns out it’s the former. A satire of anti-antisemitism during the French Revolution went completely over my head, even though I was reading well above of my grade level (growing up, I was allowed to read any book in the house and I assume that’s how I got a hold of it). It’s an R-rated farce, but it’s optimistic about what would happen if two professional baseball players were caught kissing in a Neiman Marcus changing room, especially given the bullshittery we’re seeing now with bigots not wanting to participate in baseball pride events. A quote: “You know what gets me…there are guy doing drugs, drinking, beating up on their wives. Nobody’s going after them…” Same as it ever was.
- Travels with George: In Search of Washington and his Legacy by Nathaniel Philbrick, read by the author. My oopsing about the southern state history of the American Revolution lead me to this book, written by one of the historians featured in the Ken Burns American Revolution docuseries. In it, Philbrick traces the route Washington took to his inauguration and then around the recently stitched together country trying to get it to hold. I thought would be dry, but can a road trip story that also involves a dog named Dora be that bad? I liked it, and I’m glad he included the sometimes bizarre things that can happen when you’re roaming around places you don’t know with a pet who doesn’t always like to be contained. I know Philbrick has written a lot of books, but this is the first of his I read, and I suspect I’ll read more. We’re seeing so many desperate attempts, especially leading up to America 250, to cover over the fact that many of the country’s founding fathers were enslavers, but he hits it head on. What Washington did to Ona Judge was awful, and he knows that confronting it is the only way this country can finally move forward and right the wrongs of now the centuries long fallout from some people thinking it was fine to own others. One note: I usually don’t like it when authors read their own books, but he is a wonderful narrator. I suspect i”ll be taking him on a road trip with me in the future.
What I’m Watching
- Loot (season 3). Was this season of billionaire divorcee pledges to give away her fortune perfect? No. But we got Henry Winkler playing the founder of a nudist commune, and D’Arcy Carden as a scammer from Delaware doing a regional accent that rivals that of Kate Winslet’s in Mare of Easttown — plus a pretty great cameo in the last episode.
- Death in Paradise (season 15). And we’re back to Murder Island! In this season, our beleaguered London inspector plopped onto a Caribbean island (though again not a pasty white guy hooray!) is confronted with the existence of a half brother who is more likely to run into the law than be in line with it, and the usual mysterious deaths with the killers unveiled at the end of each episode with all the suspects in one place. It’s also fun to see which English actors want to come work on a tropical island for a while. Jokes aside, sometimes I just want to watch something formulaic, and this always hits just right.
- Monsters University. Can you tell my niece and nephew were here this weekend? I can’t believe I’ve never seen it! It was deeper than I expect for a prequel animated movie, with themes of friendship and bullying and honesty. Just don’t think too hard about someone with Billy Crystal’s voice being that of an 18-year-old college student.
Nail Polish of the Week
Free to Roam by Essie. This pale pink such a standard of mine, especially for pedicures, that I had to buy another bottle. It’s a winner!
Until next time!
Jen A. Miller (she/her)
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SAME AS IT EVER WAS.
*sigh*