Practical help wanted!

[SenoraPostrophe]

Right. I'm going to give this writing thing a go! I spend all my time nowadays writing corporate rubbish for websites and I need streching!

I'm going to follow the advice and find a magazine (or two) and send in a proposal. I should start with what I know I guess, so I thought I'd start with an article about doing a self-build in Spain (we haven't done one, but I can interview people who have, or who are in the process of doing so and I have a friend who is an architecht here who could give me some dos and don'ts or something).

But not being in the UK I can't research the publication. So can anyone suggest a good magazine to pitch to, and could you be an absolute angel and send me a copy? I can send Spanish things/do some proof-reading/give website advice in return. Or do you think I should try a UK ex-pat publication here (their circulation is a bit low though - I can't decide if that would be aiming too low).

Aloha (if she sees this) will have good advice for you. But here's my (less experienced) advice. . .I'm a proponent of "aiming low" at first. You'll be asked to show clips eventually, and in a way it doesn't matter where the clip comes from, as long as it looks semi-professional. Do start with an expat publicationthat's a good idea IME. It's quite possible the circulation of an expat publication will be low enough that you can actually get the story reprinted somewhere bigger. If not, you'll at least have had some good practiceand an example of your writing to show future editors.

When you do start to write query letters, you might have better luck (as I have) contacting editors by e-mail rather than post. Be specific about what you'd like to write for them, and make sure the writing in your query letter makes a good impression.

I think your expat experiences in Spain could be very interesting to many UK editors. I don't know enough about publishing in the UK to give you advice about specific mags. . .but how about travel mags? I gather that travel writing is not as hard as other genres to break into. You could do a piece on your favorite restaurants in the area you live in, for example, and probably sell that to a travel section or magazine somewhere, even maybe an airline magazine?? From there you can more easily move on to bigger things.

Great idea, Senora: good luck!

thanks expatkat.

I've been thinking about the expat papers: the other problem is that 1 is a direct translation of the Spanish version (my Spanish isn't good enough for that yet, and apparently the Spanish press use few freelancers), and the other one I know of is not widely available so I still can't get hold of it (I've seen it before though: can't remember how many stories they have - it's free so it's mostly ads).

Maybe travel though. I can look them up on the net I think.