Hiya writer friends,
In our weekly Wordling Plus call yesterday, we decided we’re going to do a members-only version of 30 Days, 30 Queries over the next few weeks.
If you’re new to this newsletter or my work, 30 Days, 30 Queries was a challenge I set for myself in 2013. It had been a year since I’d given birth to my son, I felt like I’d lost my identity and my mojo, and I needed to get back in the game in a bigger, bolder way. I challenged myself to send a pitch a day to editors at publications that I had, until then, not been able to break into.
I shared the challenge and my progress in my newsletter, hundreds of other writers joined in, and eventually, 30 Days, 30 Queries became both a course and a community.
(It’s now a big part of my membership community for writers, Wordling Plus.)
Anyway, so yes, a bunch of us will be challenging ourselves again to do this. I rarely pitch at all these days so I’m excited to dive straight in.
And let me address this right away: of course it’s easier for me to write pitches, land assignments, and build relationships with editors—I’ve been doing this for over for twenty years!
But, you know, I once started out as a nobody from India who had no mentors, had taken no courses, knew nothing about the business, and had to figure everything out by herself. I realized I needed to share with you what I did back then that helped me land bylines and get assignments from some of the biggest publications on the planet.
And so I’m sharing five case studies that I put together a while ago, which go into (sometimes hilarious) detail about what I did to break into The New York Times and TIME, land a coveted contributing editor spot with Elle’s Indian edition, and earn $10,000 from a single story.
The stories are old, but the lessons remain evergreen.
Sign up here and I’ll send them to you for free.
Cheers,
Natasha