Looking for advice from fellow writers.

[mimisays]

Hi there,

I'm new to this website and I'd love to speak with other writers.

I am a freelance journalist and copywriter, but I also dabble in poetry.

I have so far done 6 months on the news pages of a national magazine, a feature for a food magazine, a couple of articles for a local mag plus web content for an online retailer. I have also had a few copywriting jobs and I won a poetry competition.

I am happy with this, as I only really started seriously pursuing work last year - however I find it a real chore to find writing opportunities. Currently I am just contacting magazines and offering my services - I do have a website under construction though, will that lead to more work? Is there a more efficient way of finding work? Please tell me that my website will make things easier

I'd love to hear from other writers, how do you find your work?

Mimi

Hi Mimi, I'm also a freelance journalist. I've been dabbling for a while but I'm aiming to make it my fulltime career over the next year of maternity leave from my day job.

It's all about building a network of editors who know you. At the moment I just pitch editors with my ideas for features. Do you pitch specific ideas to the magazines you write to? I think this is where journalism and copywriting differ as mags really need a reason to commission you, and your great idea could be that reason. The trick is to keep thinking of ideas and keep pitching regularly. Once you get to know an editor they'll often come to you with work, but until then it's a hard slog.

I've got a target list of magazines I want to write for, and I buy them regularly and analyse them to see what kind of content they commission to freelancers before pitching.

Hope that helps! It's a tough market out there at the moment.

Hi Schmalex, thankyou for your post!

Yes at the moment I do pitch the ideas, and I have had a few commissioned. But I'm not totally convinced that my pitches are up to scratch. Is there a specific format, do you think? I tend to keep my pitch quite short, I'm wondering if I should maybe do it in a bit more detail? I haven't been doing this for very long, so I do wonder if I'm missing some sort of key factor in what I'm doing.

How many pitches do you generally make a week? I'd love an idea of what other people do!

Thanks again!

I'm doing 1 or 2 a day at the moment, although I'm 37 weeks pregnant so I am being careful not to go too crazy and get too much work!
I find you often need to pitch editors several times before they will commission you. I try to keep it reasonably short (couple of paras) and in the style of the magazine.

I know this is an old thread - but for the sake of anyone else looking for similar work - I'd recommend Elance.com
I'm a freelance writer and graphic designer and I have found it helpful to pick and choose small projects from it.

Re. the website - they can be useful if you pitch an idea and the commissioning editor hasn't heard of you and looks you up. However, if you are very inexperienced it may be off-putting.

If you are pitching ideas to big selling, national women's magazines then your website needs to be solely about your journalism. By the sound of it you don't have enough of a portfolio right now.

Can I be honest? if I looked at your website and saw only local magazine offerings and one food feature it would put me off using you.

I suggest you build your cutting and then go for the website.

.....doh. sorry, just realised this is a 4 month old thread.