Give me a P
Give me an I
Give me a T C H!
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| How not to land an assignment: the pitch letter |
Take any magazine
writing class, and you’ll be drilled on how to write the perfect pitch letter. You’ll
be told how the perfect pitch is crucial to scoring an assignment. And you’ll
get all pumped up about pitching and how it’s going to change your writing life.
Writer Abroad would
love to go to bat for pitching. But the reality is, she is a strike out.
Her big pitching effort
began in 2008, three years after she began her newspaper and magazine writing career. She took a $400 travel
writing course with Mediabistro hoping it would help her take her writing to
the next level, publication-wise. She spent hours of time (not to mention
money—buying English-language pubs when living abroad is expensive, think $15
for one copy of NG’s Traveler) researching publications, perfecting her
pitches, and tracking down emails of appropriate editors. Then she proofread her
pitches at least 100 times, sent out the suckers like fly balls, and waited for
her home run.
But she heard nothing.
Nothing.
Silence. Maybe a
rejection here and there, three months after sending the pitch.
Fair enough. Rejection
is a part of the writing process. Writer Abroad was not naïve. And she was not
going to give up easily. So she pitched other publications...reworking the same
idea two or three times. And...
Nothing.
Well, once, a bite. An
assignment. And then, a month later, an un-assignment...
So, let’s see here. After
100+ hours with a batting score of .001, Writer Abroad learned something maybe
some of you already know: pitching is a gigantic waste of time and money
(especially considering the rates magazines pay these days).
So now, Writer Abroad
has a new approach to landing assignments.
She does (insert drum
roll here)…
Nothing.
And she’s much more
successful.
How is this possible?
Ok, well, maybe she doesn't exactly do nothing. But she sure does a heck of lot less work that she was doing before.
Instead of
spending 10 hours a week perfecting magazine and newspaper pitches, Writer Abroad spends one or two hours a week
blogging and about twice a year she updates her personal writing website.
As it turns out, this
is the 21st century. So editors have something they didn’t have before: an easy way to find writers living abroad.
Here’s the thing. As a
writer abroad, your location sets you apart. In fact, editors are probably
searching right now for a writer in your very location. Make sure they can find
you. Fast.
How? Have a blog. Have
a website. Have a tweet worth a re-tweet. Have something smart Writer Abroad
hasn’t even thought of yet. Then pretend you’re an editor searching Google for
a writer. Do you show up in the search results?
If not, take a course
on SEO. But heaven forbid, do not take a course on how to pitch.
Unless…we can find
writers out there who can prove Writer Abroad wrong.
So let’s hear it.
Are there still
writers out there with respectable batting averages? If you pitch, do you score
magazine and newspaper assignments? (Excluding personal essays—Writer Abroad
still is able to place personal essays through pitching completed pieces). Or
do you think pitching is pointless?
Admittedly, Writer Abroad’s first reaction to the news of her story being sold in Wal-Mart was like, hey, cool! Millions of people will read it!
