Hey everyone,
I put up this post up on Facebook last month: Under my old name, I wrote 1,000+ stories for more than 300 publications. I have to admit, having a new byline has felt like starting over and fucked with my ego a bit. Anyway, story #5 for publication #3. Not that I’m counting.
And then I posted a link to my latest work, a story for Sierra.
Today, I have a story going out in the Christian Science Monitor, my second for them since I started writing under a new byline.
One of my goals this year was to start getting more clips under my new name, especially since I’d been missing journalism and I know that it will help when it comes time for a publishing deal. I set a target of 20 published stories for the year, and I’m pleased to say that it’s looking likely.
I’ve done something differently this time around that I hadn’t done for the 15 years that I was freelancing full-time. I’ve spent more time than ever before doing work upfront on my story ideas.
I’m a big believer in numbers, especially if freelancing is the only thing you do. You can’t afford to obsess about stories that aren’t going anywhere, it’s important that you don’t get attached to every single story, and it’s vital—for the success of your business as well as your own sanity—that you not spend hours and days working on an idea that hasn’t yet been assigned and may possibly go nowhere.
Since freelancing isn’t the only thing I’m doing, however, I knew that I only wanted to write the stories that interested me, I wanted to experiment a lot more, and I could spend extra time if I wanted to on really honing a story idea first so that I wasn’t writing the same old tired stories that made me burn out in the first place. I wanted to have fun with this and I wanted to see what I could add to the conversation.
It’s the way Sam, my husband, who has been an editor and a bureau chief for over two decades, works. When it comes to finding angles and slants for story ideas, Sam is one of the most brilliant writers I know, and I routinely invite him on to Finishers calls where we know we’ll be talking about idea generation. Sam has always spent more time upfront developing and really thinking about story ideas, even when it costs him in terms of how much pitching he can do. Which is also why Sam’s ideas have not only been published in newspapers and magazines and been part of nightly news broadcasts, but become subjects of National Geographic and Channel 4 documentaries. In fact, he produced many of them.
I took a page from his book this year and started doing the same, but what I hadn’t counted on—something I teach, but had completely forgotten—is that like pitching, idea generation too, is a muscle. A muscle that can be developed. And like with any other part of the writing process, the more you do it, the better you become. The faster you become.
When I teach pitching, I talk about how there are two things that make a good pitch: The Idea and the Execution.
Most writers focus mostly on the execution and I have always preached that if you put 90% of effort on the story idea, then the execution almost takes care of itself. When you have clarity around the story you want to tell and you’ve taken the time to find out why it’s new, different, and interesting, the pitch becomes as easy as just telling the editor exactly those things.
It is, in fact, one of the things I encounter most when I run my Pitch Critiques program. Nine times out of 10, if a pitch isn’t working, it’s because the writer is unclear on what the story actually is and why anyone would want to read it. And if you’re unclear on what you’re trying to say, is it any surprise that you’re having trouble saying it?
Writing a pitch, while important, is always the second part of the process. Getting the story idea—not just the subject, but the angle and the slant—right, is the first. It is the foundation on which good pitches rest.
Get the foundation right and the pitching becomes simple, easy, and effective, too.
Cheers,
Natasha