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After nearly a decade of writing for children, I’ve learned that children’s magazines are a great way to gain money and exposure for your work. Parents and librarians still buy plenty of fodder for their hungry young readers. Perhaps this is why children’s magazines tend to pay quite well (by fiction standards) and have a large circulation. Children’s magazines come in all shapes and sizes, targeting all ages—from babies and toddlers to middle graders. Some are literary, focusing on fiction and poetry; others are educational, centered around a broad topic like science or history. Many are all-purpose, accepting fiction, nonfiction, poetry, puzzles, games—anything that might appeal to a young audience. A few worth exploring are Highlights, Cricket Media, The School Magazine , Aquila, and Fun for Kidz. These are some of the most well-paying markets I’ve found, and the most established, but new markets pop up every day. The Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market is a good resource for finding new publications. It also contains many niche magazines. A quick glance at my sales reveal topics from high school theater to horse care to Baha’i religious principles. These markets tend to get fewer submissions as well, so they’re always on More

You spend hours researching your topic. Then you spend time writing a query letter and finding potential magazines to pitch. How can you write successful travel stories that will have a better sell factor to magazine editors? Use this screening technique to examine story feasibility and turn ideas into successful travel stories that get published. I use “Nine Questions Test” all the time, which helps explain why I sell 90% of all stories I pitch. 1.  Is Your Story Angle Unique? Say you want to pitch a travel story about Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. If you do an internet search of “travel articles Universal Studios Adventure Island” you’ll find hundreds of articles on this topic. It’s been beaten to death. Likewise trying to sell stories about standard cruises on popular cruise lines unless it has a huge celebrity factor, an unusual theme, or interesting port of call. Uncover fascinating and unique aspects about your destinations you don’t find in a typical online search. 2.  Does Your Story Idea Pass “The Wikipedia Test”? Ask yourself, “Does my proposed story have information that Wikipedia does not have?”  If your answer is “yes,” then you probably have a saleable travel story idea. More

I witnessed a pouty meltdown by an author the other day on Facebook. Someone bashed her book. And instead of walking away, being quiet, or ignoring the remark, she took the challenge and replied to the person, then she went to her peeps on FB and replayed the situation, ripe with vitriol and frustration. “People don’t care about my sweat and blood,” she said. “Oh, geez,” was about all I could think as I watched her slit her own throat in front of hundreds of friends. Readers do not care about the sweat and blood….and they shouldn’t. Think about the purchases in your life. Do you stop and wonder how many hours, days, week, or months it took to design and make it? I doubt it. You just want the end result, and even then, want it to matter in your world. How it came to be doesn’t matter. How it makes your life better does. Same goes for books, and the stories they contain. The reader wants a good experience and hopes to find a new favorite author. That’s all they want. Sometimes they don’t like the story and other times they do. You rolled the dice by putting More

Hollywood is structured much like a kingdom. Celebrities are treated like royalty while agents and managers serve as their courtiers. Top-level producers, directors and writers make up the rest of the nobility, with varying strata of professionals below them, all the way down to the film student serfs struggling to survive on an internship. The kingdom is well guarded by those at the top, with metaphorical moats and walls built to keep out the many interlopers trying to get in. However, this kingdom is not without its secret accessways – backdoor channels that give outsiders an audience with those on the inside, even the nobility. Here are six such accessways designed specifically for screenwriters. The Black List https://blcklst.com/ The website was created in 2005 to “shine a light on extraordinary screenwriting… which may have been overlooked more broadly.” It spun off from a secret list top Hollywood assistants would share with each other of their favorite unproduced screenplays. Following in that tradition, TBL releases its annual list of top-rated scripts every December as ranked by working film executives. Non-WGA writers can make at least one film script available for execs to read at a cost of $30 per month and More

Cause Example: A writer doesn’t accept a speaking engagement because it’s too far away. Cause Example: A writer doesn’t accept a signing gig because they are too nervous. Cause Example: A writer doesn’t submit to a contest because they don’t believe in entry fees. Cause Example: A writer doesn’t go to a conference for fear of looking too novice. Cause Example: A writer doesn’t submit a manuscript to agents for fear of not being ready. Cause Example: A writer doesn’t give out free review copies because of the cost. Cause and effect means something happens as the result of something else happening. If there is no cause, there is no effect. In the above examples, one could argue that there isn’t enough effect to warrant the cause for those writers. Social media abounds with excuses on why we do not do things, with a sideways hint that we are right and others are wrong in their decision-making. Frankly, I believe in live and let live, where we make our own decision and do not seek validation for it . . . and we do not justify or condemn others’ decisions, that last part deserving of another editorial for another day. Hope’s suggestion… make a decision, learn More

Forty years ago, while taking a college course in children’s literature, I set out to write a children’s book. But my career as an elementary school teacher interfered, and my publishing dreams evaporated. When I became a mother of a child with a disability, the next twenty years blurred the boundaries between order and chaos. By the time I took another creative writing class, my children were teenagers, and I was in my late forties. The teacher wielded his pen like a sword, a grizzled old guy who yelled at students when they couldn’t explain where to place a comma in a sentence. Still, he walked around the room cajoling us with, ‘write what you know.’ I wrote about my chaotic life. The idea for my book jelled with a theme that revolved around raising a child with disabilities. I joined writing groups to help develop my skills. I learned about first, second, and third persons, first, second and third drafts, how to identify weak verbs, how to self-edit, how to revise, and the differences between passive and active voice. Fast forward another two years. I attended my first writing conference, ready to query my manuscript. I met an editor More

“Keep it (pitches) short and sweet and to the point. Editors get hundreds of pitches every single day and if you can help them get to a “yes” fast, do it.” ~Six-figure freelance writer Mandy Ellis, https://www.mandyellis.com/ Yes, the key is to write such a pitch as to make the editor sigh with relief at a writer finally “getting it.” They have to read your pitch and be so happy at a writer who writes well, has a voice, gets the publication, and has a halfway decent topic. So many writers shoot themselves in the foot by not trying hard with the pitch, when they ought to struggle writing it as much or more than the article itself. Suggestions on how to break into freelance assignments (magazines, blogposts, newsletters): 1) Read a dozen articles from that publication until you have down pat the style, tone, and ideas they prefer. 2) Identify which sections allow freelancers (some sections, even with newsletters like FundsforWriters, have sections written in-house). 3) Study headlines hard. Yes, people start there in deciding whether to read further. 4) Do not use AI if they say do not use AI. You won’t be just rejected, but may be More

Contract bridge is a four-player, dual-team card game. When I first wrote about bridge, most people didn’t get it yet – but this year, seeing a Family Guy skit about bridge, the references certainly appear to be more mainstream. Makes me smile, because writing in this niche for over seven years has held strong for me during some of the hardest times for the publishing industry. Here’s how to apply to your own writing niche, whether it’s bridge, cooking, strength training, or horror film reviews. Niche Through Necessity Writers don’t find their niche at random: it takes time, persistence, and diligence to find those types of markets, but to find writing markets for something you already have a passion for, can make your days so much finer. Look for your niche, and pitch for it. Continue doing so, even when it doesn’t work for a while. Keep hunting. Keep pitching. After all, you love this niche, right? ’What’s in a Deck?’ was the first card feature I sold in 2016. Facing hard times, we had just been evicted by guys with firearms instead of a court order. Selling this story was the difference between going forward and going broke. I More

Creating art is heart-pounding and daring when you put it on display. Whether art, dance, or writing, to take what you’ve practiced long and hard to accomplish, takes intense courage to present it and make it subject to criticism and praise. “To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.” – Georgia O’Keeffe Some writers have more natural talent than others. A lot of that is a vivid imagination while a lot of that is hidden practice the public never sees. Writers who have published have lived these stories for years in most cases. To go from talent to publication take guts, diligence, and endurance. “Talent is only the starting point.” – Irving Berlin You do not want to be like anyone else. You want to have your own voice, your own style, your own name. To be like someone else is to cheat or fall short of being the best you. Dare to be unique. “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.” – Martha Graham There is no such thing as More

Pitching is an incredibly important part of freelance writing—as important perhaps as the writing itself. That being said, have you ever given thought to the timing of your query, article, or essay? Timing your query, article, or essay for a holiday, especially the big holidays such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, is a no-brainer. You submit in plenty of time—say July—when many editors begin planning for their November and December issues. Here’s a little tip: During a current holiday—Christmas, Thanksgiving, Independence Day, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, New Year’s Day, and even lesser holidays—I am always alert for stories or articles and jot down highlights of that particular holiday I feel will make interesting articles or stories for the following year’s holiday. For example, one year I scribbled a few notes about a tractor/hay ride on a family farm, taken on Christmas Eve. I later wrote “Yuletide Tractor Ride” which was purchased by Northern Ohio Live. On the same note, a road trip taken through Georgia one year at Christmas (jotting down notes) to visit a military son was published in Country recently, and “Aunt Gracie’s Valentine,” a story about discovering a vintage valentine card my deceased aunt had hidden away from someone More