Writers: How to Pitch Your Stories to an Editor

A Freelance Magazine Writer Gleans Lessons from the Long and Winding Road to Publication

"Help a young writer," read the subject line of an e-mail I received from a newspaper copy editor friend. He'd landed a gig moonlighting as a journalism professor, and one of his female students was itching to break into the glossies.

So I showed her three of my pitches, along with their laminated published counterparts in my portfolio. But equally as beneficial to the newbie writer (and upon reflection, to me) were the stories not on the pages - the real deals behind what it took to get each byline, and the education gained with each clip:

Pitch lesson #1: Get in where you fit in.
Simultaneous submission freak that I am, I pitched an article titled "Ten Ways to Beat the Stay-at-Home Blues" to several parenting publications, but no one bit. Then one night many months later I saw the article's headline printed in a magazine's index in my dream. Moving on divine impulse, I dug up my old query, rewrote the boring thing into a lively and punchy pitch, and shot it off to ePregnancy.

A senior editor at the magazine named Julia Rosien was interested, but said her editorial calendar was chock full of features. She gave me three choices: to wait it out and try to squeeze in the following year, cut it down and sell it to them as a filler, or pitch it somewhere else.

Letting go of my center-spread fantasy, I cut out huge chunks of tips and so did Julia, leaving a scant 350 words and $50 fee. Why did I choose this drastic route? With its current readership of 1.6 million, ePregnancy was a clip worth "slaying all my darlings" to get - ASAP.

Pitch lesson #2: Give editors tons of space and grace...
Soon after I sent the pitch that became "Dutch Twins: How to Manage Two Kids Under age Two" to MetroBaby magazine, I received a handwritten note from an editor saying she'd look at it on spec. I completed the manuscript, shipped it off with excitement, then heard nothing but silence. I slumped into my writer funk, assuming she hated it.