When you’re pitching a complicated story, it’s important to provide enough background information to help an editor understand why this story needs to be told.

But too much background can bog down your pitch, or bury the story you really want to tell.

In this pitch fix, we’re looking at long-form journalism

This time, we’re going to look at a pitch where the author is clearly an expert on a complicated subject—but she needs a little help pulling the story she wants to write out of her background information.

Colleen Mondor’s aviation-industry pitch

Colleen Mondor is an author, blogger, and journalist. She’s written a nonfiction memoir, The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska, and wants to build her long-form journalism portfolio.

Mondor submitted the following pitch to Outside, Men’s Journal, and Air and Space Magazine but hasn’t been able to place her story.

What do you think is holding this pitch back?

Dear XX:

In the 90 years since aircraft first flew in Alaska, the bush pilot myth has become synonymous with Alaskan life. Tourists are drawn to stories of mercy pilots and pictures of aircraft loaded with everything from sled dogs to outboard motors are as much a part of the state’s image as the northern lights and Denali. But the harsh truth about aviation here is that while it is consistently one of the most dangerous places to fly in the world, almost all of the accidents are preventable.

Alaska averages about 100 aircraft accidents a year which, over the past decade, have resulted in 194 fatalities. In 2013 there was a particularly devastating crash in the small town of Soldotna. That accident made national news as two South Carolina families were killed after their charter aircraft stalled on takeoff. The recently released probable cause report found the longtime Alaska pilot made multiple errors prior to departure including failing to weigh the additional cargo onboard, loading it behind the aircraft’s center-of-gravity and exceeding the aircraft’s weight limits. He was also killed in the crash.

The investigators with the Alaska regional office of the NTSB are determined to reach beyond pilot actions to find aspects of company culture, flight training or lax federal oversight that might contribute to poor decision-making. They have also joined with representatives of the Alaskan Aviation Safety Foundation and Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association to target specific aspects of the state’s aviation environment and community to affect positive change in pilot attitudes and actions. These are the people who are not willing to dismiss Alaska simply as an inherently dangerous place to fly and I think their story needs to be told.

I first worked in the aviation industry in Alaska over 20 years ago, as a dispatcher for a Fairbanks-based commuter. I also studied aviation in college and graduate school, both in Alaska and Outside, and learned to fly when I was 18. I wrote about my years as a dispatcher in a 2011 memoir, The Map of My Dead Pilots. I have worked as a journalist and essayist on this subject for years including the past three for the Bush Pilot section of Alaska Dispatch News (the Anchorage daily newspaper), and recently in Narratively magazine. Alaska aviation is a topic I am deeply involved with, and I look forward to writing about the people who are trying to change the way it operates.

Pitch Fix for long-form journalism: State your story

When I read Mondor’s pitch, I kept waiting for the sentence that began “My story will be about” or “I’d like to write about.” I was impressed by the background information and detail, but I had a hard time figuring out what story Mondor was actually pitching to these magazines and how she planned to tell it.

Mondor has one sentence that alludes to what she intends to write: “These are the people who are not willing to dismiss Alaska simply as an inherently dangerous place to fly and I think their story needs to be told.”

It’s a great start, but I want to know more

Does Mondor have a specific person’s story in mind? Is she planning to conduct interviews for the bulk of her research, or is she thinking about going more in-depth, perhaps embedding herself with Alaska’s NSTB investigators to observe their work—and their challenges—in person?

If you thought “Wait, NSTB investigators? Isn’t this a piece about bush pilots?” I wouldn’t blame you. Mondor begins her pitch with “The bush pilot myth has become synonymous with Alaskan life,” leading the reader to expect that she plans to write about pilots. When you read carefully, you learn she really wants to write about the investigators who look into why pilots crash.

This information should be at the center of Mondor’s pitch, and the entire pitch should focus on the story she wants to tell and the methodology by which she will tell it. Otherwise, she runs the risk of confusing her editors and losing the opportunity to report on an important aspect of Alaskan aviation.

Here’s how I’d rewrite Mondor’s pitch:

In the 90 years since aircraft first flew in Alaska, the bush pilot myth has become synonymous with Alaskan life. However, many people aren’t aware of the other side of the myth: the numerous preventable aircraft accidents. Alaska averages about 100 aircraft accidents a year which, over the past decade, have resulted in 194 fatalities.

When these tragedies take place, the investigators with the Alaska regional office of the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) look beyond pilot actions to find aspects of company culture, flight training or lax federal oversight that might contribute to poor decision-making. They have also joined with representatives of the Alaskan Aviation Safety Foundation and Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association to target specific aspects of the state’s aviation environment and community to affect positive change in pilot attitudes and actions. These are the people who are not willing to dismiss Alaska simply as an inherently dangerous place to fly and I think their story needs to be told.

I’m developing a long-form article in which I embed myself in the Alaska regional NSTB office for one month to give readers a clearer picture of the daily challenges and struggles these investigators face. I’ll follow the investigators as they visit crash sites, document accidents, and work to understand the bigger questions: What went wrong? Was it simple pilot error, or were there larger forces at work here? Why does Alaska have so many aircraft accidents, and how can these accidents be prevented?

This article will be written in a nonfiction narrative style, viewing the investigators and the pilots through a human lens. Readers will finish the piece feeling as if they were there in the NTSB office with me, watching coworkers make jokes and talk about their families before they’re called out to investigate yet another accident. They’ll also learn how this type of work affects family and personal life, and what a career based on analyzing tragedy does to a person over time.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic or discussing how this story might fit into your publication, please let me know.

A bit about my background: I first worked in the aviation industry in Alaska over 20 years ago, as a dispatcher for a Fairbanks-based commuter. I also studied aviation in college and graduate school, both in Alaska and Outside, and learned to fly when I was 18. I wrote about my years as a dispatcher in a 2011 memoir, The Map of My Dead Pilots. I have worked as a journalist and essayist on this subject for years including the past three for the Bush Pilot section of Alaska Dispatch News (the Anchorage daily newspaper), and recently in Narratively magazine. Alaska aviation is a topic I am deeply involved with, and I look forward to writing about the people who are trying to change the way it operates.

Mondor’s response

I asked Mondor if she was planning to rework her pitch based on my fix, and here’s her response:

This is really really funny. I was reading over some pitches at Open Notebook a few days ago and I started thinking about how I buried the fact that there were very real people involved in my story—the NTSB investigators (and others) who are so committed to changing the statistics. I have been so worried about getting the facts straight and making clear that this would not be another “death-defying Alaska bush pilot” article, that I left out the significant human element. (Who are the point!)

And bam—you saw it too and more importantly, you made it work.

I’ll likely tinker with this just a bit to fit exactly what I want to write about but honestly, I won’t change much. Reading over it again, I’m realizing how much I needed a second pair of eyes on it. Sometimes, no surprise, writers just can’t see the forest for the trees.

I’ll be sending this out by the end of the week—thanks so much.

Do you agree with this month’s Pitch Fix for long-form journalism? When you’re pitching a long-form journalism story, how much background information do you include? What other advice do you have for Colleen Mondor?

Since freelancers can work from anywhere, it often means that we have the luxury of spending more holiday time with family than our traditionally-employed peers who have to be back at work on Monday morning.

Of course, we usually have to work on Monday morning too. Family members don’t always understand that just because you’re home for the holidays doesn’t mean you’re on vacation.

How do you manage these expectations and ensure that your work gets done while keeping both clients and extended family happy?

I’m coming up on my fourth year of holiday freelancing, so here’s my guide to getting it all done while also catching up with family and friends.

4 ways to manage freelance writing during the holidays

1. Start with communication

The easiest way to manage expectations is to communicate them. Tell your family members that you’re excited to see them this holiday season, and that you’re going to be spending part of your time working.

Present this as a positive: Because you’re a freelancer, you have the opportunity to earn money and maintain your client relationships while still getting to see family for the holidays. Other people in the workforce don’t have this luxury.

Once you’ve established that you’re going to work during part of your holiday visit, it’s time to communicate the boundaries of your workday. I often say, “I need to check in with clients in the morning, and I need to answer emails and turn in a few pieces. I’ll be available for holiday and family stuff after lunch.” You might also say something like “I need to spend most of Thursday working on freelance stuff, but I’ll be available to visit Grandma with you on Thursday evening, and I’ll also be available all day Friday.”

Make these boundaries known early. Let your family know as soon as possible when you plan to be focusing on work along with which periods of time you’ve reserved for them.

By communicating early, everyone can prepare for temporary schedule changes.

2. Batch your workload

If your typical freelance workday includes a lot of puttering around and chatting on social networks between writing pieces, it’s time to hunker down and focus.

Try to batch your workload into small, distinct time blocks: 8 a.m. to noon on weekdays, for example.

You need to avoid as much procrastination as possible to get your work done in a pre-defined time block. If you like to take 20-minute breaks between writing sprints, for example, you may need to cut that down to five-minute breaks. You don’t want to hear a disappointed family member say “I thought you were working!” when they catch you watching YouTube.

If you can’t get all of your work done during the time blocks you’ve set for yourself, consider working a few extra hours after everyone else has gone to bed or before they wake up. I’ve gotten a lot of work done on family trips by staying up late or setting my alarm a little early.

Pay attention to your family’s schedule to find the optimum time to work.

Is your family the kind that likes to spend an hour or two after lunch relaxing in front of the TV? That might be your ideal work time. Have a parent who likes to spend the hour before dinner cooking up an elaborate meal? Grab your laptop and answer emails from the kitchen island. It’s like you’re getting work done together!

3. When you’re not working, be present

We all know you’re not going to turn your phone off when your freelance work is done. You could, however, put it in your pocket — or at least turn off email notifications.

When you tell your family that you’ll be available for certain activities, be present. I’ll be the first to admit it’s hard. I have definitely been the person sending emails during a family hike because something came up with one of my clients. But do your best to work when you’re supposed to work, and put work away when you’re not working.

Consider it the other side of the “I thought you were working!” argument. Try to avoid the distractions of the Internet when you’re getting work done — and then avoid the distractions of the Internet when you’re with your family!

4. You don’t have to do everything

Family and clients often come with similar pressures: You have to do everything, or else you’re not part of the team.

It’s OK to say no, to both your family members and to your clients. It’s OK to tell your family that you can’t play Monopoly after dinner because you have to finish a freelance assignment, or that you’d like to get some work done while they pick out the Christmas tree—but you’ll be ready to help them decorate it!

It’s also OK to tell a client that you can’t take on a specific assignment because you’ll be visiting your family. Or, you can ask for a deadline that falls after the holidays. You are not required to be available at all times. Many freelancers forget this, including me.

Setting boundaries with yourself, your family and your clients—and then taking the time to communicate those boundaries — is the key to having a happy holiday while also getting your freelance work done.

Remember, you are an adult with a real job, and you have the right and the responsibility to manage that job effectively during the holiday season.

Then enjoy that extra piece of pie, because you’ve earned it.

How do you manage your freelance writing during the holidays? Do you have tips for setting expectations with both clients and family?

You know you want to improve your writing, but you don’t know HOW. What do you need to do to take your writing to the next level? Are there practical, actionable steps you can take to get your writing from GOOD to GREAT?

YES. Writing, like everything else, can benefit from what is called deliberate practice — a focused, disciplined attempt at identifying areas of improvement (and then, of course, improving them).

Here’s how to improve your writing skills — in three (or maybe four) easy steps.

Step 1: Evaluate your work.

Before you can start improving your writing skills, you need to evaluate your work — which means taking an honest assessment of what you’re doing well, what you could do better and which aspects of your writing have stalled at “good enough.”

(Remember, you’ll never get to GREAT if you’re satisfied with GOOD ENOUGH.) 

This is the hardest part of the process, because writers aren’t always good at self-evaluation. Sometimes we don’t know where our work can improve, but there are two good ways to find out:

1. Ask a writer/editor/teacher you trust
2. Read writing by people you admire, in the genre/beat you’re currently writing in, and do an honest comparison of your work against theirs

If you want to go the first route, there are plenty of ways to connect with other writers and make the kinds of friends who can help you make your work better.

Joining a community like the Freelance Writers Den, for example, can put you in touch with other freelancers and industry professionals — and that’s before you factor in the job boards, writer website reviews, and online bootcamps you’ll be able to access as a Den member. 

If you’re more into fiction than freelancing, you could team up with a critique partner or work with a beta reader to learn where your writing is currently working — and where it isn’t.

And don’t forget to read, read, READ. The more you read other writers’ work — especially writers who are doing the same kind of work you’d like to do — the more you’ll understand what it takes to make a piece of writing truly excellent.

Then, you can use what you’ve learned to improve your writing.

Step 2: Identify one area in which to improve your writing.

Going from good to great is an incremental process. Don’t try to change everything you’re doing at once, especially if what you’re doing is already getting you some writing success. If editors are saying yes to your freelance writing pitches, for example, keep pitching. If you just got a short story published, start writing another one.

While you’re continuing the work that’s currently helping you move forward, pick ONE AREA in which to improve your writing skills. Otherwise, your next piece is going to be just as good as your first one — and while that might qualify as “good enough,” it won’t help you take your writing from GOOD to GREAT. 

If you don’t know where to begin, go back to that first step and do an honest self-assessment of your writing — or find someone who can help you assess your work and identify one aspect of your writing that could benefit from a little skill-building.

Let’s say, for example, that you have trouble writing an opening sentence. If you want to improve your writing skills, you could set yourself the goal of understanding the difference between GOOD ENOUGH OPENING SENTENCES and GREAT OPENING SENTENCES. Then, you can use that information to get your opening sentences to GREAT.

If you want to improve your writing, this kind of incremental improvement is one of the best ways to get started — but how do you do it?

That’s where Step 3 comes in.

Step 3: Begin practicing. Deliberately.

Much has been said about the writing practice, but not enough has been said about the deliberate writing practice.

Deliberate practice is a term created by Anders Ericsson and popularized by Ericsson and Robert Pool in their book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Here’s how they define it:

Deliberate practice involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving some aspect of the target performance; it is not aimed at some vague overall improvement. […] Deliberate practice nearly always involves building or modifying previously acquired skills by focusing on particular aspects of those skills and working to improve them specifically; over time this step-by-step improvement will eventually lead to expert performance.

Using step-by-step improvement to build skills and gain expertise sounds like a worthy goal for any writer, but what does deliberate practice look like in practice?

Well — if you were a writer who wanted to focus on improving your opening sentences, you’d use part of your writing practice time to break down the differences between your opening sentences and excellent opening sentences.

What, exactly, is going on with Jane Austen’s famous opening sentence, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”? What kind of information is being communicated to the reader, and what does the reader know about what to expect from the rest of Pride and Prejudice? 

What about a classic essay like Joan Didion’s Goodbye to All That, which begins “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends”? What’s Didion specifically doing with her word choice, with her rhythms, with her parallel structure and use of the repeated “S”?

Then you’ll write opening sentences that do the same things. In your own words, of course. This isn’t about copying Didion or Austen. This is about understanding why those sentences resonate with readers, and learning how to create equally resonant sentences that serve your own purposes and your own voice.

Until you’re no longer guessing at what a good opening sentence should be, because you already know how to write an excellent one. 

Step 4: Repeat steps 1–3.

The process of writing well takes a lifetime, but the process of improving one incremental aspect of your craft can go a lot more quickly than you realize. You may only need to devote a week —  or even a few days — to opening sentences, and then you might want to move on to dialogue tags.

Or parentheses.

Or whatever it is you’re hoping to improve in your own writing.

Remember, this kind of work requires you to successfully identify not only what you aren’t currently doing well, but what you’re currently doing JUST WELL ENOUGH — so make sure you’re ready to evaluate and re-evaluate your writing as you continue to improve your writing skills. 

This is where a writing accountability team can help, both in terms of ensuring that you’re focusing on areas of improvement and that you’re actually improving your work.

You could also use a tool like ProWritingAid to get an in-depth report of what you do well and what you could do better — and then work your way down the list of suggested improvements, tackling one issue at a time.

Because that kind of deliberate, focused practice is how you take your work from GOOD to GREAT. 

Soooo… what tiny, incremental aspect of your craft do you want to address first, and how are you going to use these steps to improve your writing?

That means that, for many of us, creating a writer website is hugely intimidating. I put off creating a writer website for months simply because I didn’t know how I wanted to put it together.

Luckily, you have options. There are as many types of writer websites as there are writers, and you don’t have to make your writer website fit any kind of preconceived template or mold.

Instead, use your online portfolio to reflect what makes you unique as a writer, and what you have to share with clients, readers and fans.

Need inspiration? Check out these online portfolio examples

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that creating your online portfolio has to be a massive project. We’ve showcased lots of portfolio websites that make it easy for you.

But before you build your own, we’ve got some inspiration to get you started! We found some solid writer websites to share, each with a unique focus and design.

Here are 17 online portfolio examples.

1. Elna Cain

Elna Cain’s writer website is bold, partly because she blatantly tells you she’s the freelance writer your business or project needs. To further convince you, a row of prominent publications are listed right above her introduction — that’s where she confidently states the problem clients have and how her skills can it. Then, the page ends with glowing client remarks. 

Elna’s online portfolio shares a variety of ways to get in touch with her for business opportunities and how to keep up with her work online. To assert her expertise in the field, Elna also links her popular blog that’s filled with tips on how to make money with writing. 

2. Manjula Martin

Manjula Martin’s site is a great example of a basic, straightforward online portfolio: a brief introduction with her resume highlights front-and-center, and lots of links to connect people who want to learn more. She built it on WordPress.

Manjula’s website works because you learn everything you need to know about her credentials and writing style at a single glance. It’s easy to follow the links and read her clips, and she also gives you many ways to contact her with writing or consulting opportunities.

3. Ann Friedman

The first thing you notice on Ann Friedman’s website is how it brightly displays her logo, followed by a row of links to her completed work, newsletter and contact information. Talk about a simple and beautiful landing page! 

The rest of this writer website contains plenty of unique touches: a general FAQ plus one for her newsletter; a page of various creators, content and organizations she recommends; a thorough contact page; and creatively-titled side work that highlights even more skills beyond her stellar portfolio of work for tons of household brands. There’s no question about who Anne is, the service she provides and how to reach her — this is the goal for all writer websites. 

4. Nozlee Samadzadeh

It’s possible to create an extremely compelling writer website without a single photo, logo, or image. Nozlee Samadzadeh’s site lists her contact information, concise explanations for her professional experience, and links to her publications, all on a single page.

Nozlee’s site also includes a short statement of her “primary beats,” which is key info for anyone looking to hire her for a writing job.

5. Seanan McGuire

Seanan McGuire’s writer website instantly immerses you into her urban fantasy world. Her latest release is prominently featured, and the header image and colors help establish her genre to new visitors. The left-hand navigational column provides easy access to important information.

If you write fiction, especially genre fiction, let your writer website reflect your fictional worlds. Open the door to your fiction by giving readers the chance to see what might be hidden within the pages.

6. Francesca Nicasio

Copywriter Francesca Nicasio’s writer website aptly showcases her expertise in writing B2B content around retail, eCommerce, technology, and more. The entire website is structured around one goal: informing readers about her capabilities the very moment they get to her site. 

What’s the goal of your writer website? Are your skills and services clearly explained?  When users visit your site, do they know what to do if they want to work with you? With her email address displayed largely on the front page, Francesca makes it easy for clients to get in touch with her. Your writer website should do the same.

7. Kayla Hollatz

“Inviting” is the best way to describe Kayla Hollatz’s writer website. The big, bold words that immediately greet you are enticing enough to make you want to keep exploring her trendy online portfolio. And without needing to scroll too far, Kayla’s concise and effective introduction appears, placed evenly below a prompt to take her brand style quiz. 

Wherever you go, Kayla’s writer website accomplishes one major thing: She pulls you in by subtly emphasizing her savviness. From spelling out the details of how you’ll work together to sharing impressive client success rates, it’s evident  this writer knows her stuff — and she wants you to learn it, too, hence her quiz and email course. 

8. Brittany Berger

How often are you intrigued by an unpopular opinion? Probably almost always, because, well, you just have to find out how you could possibly be on the wrong side of the truth. That’s what’s awesome about Brittany Berger’s approach to her writer website — she offers a solution most companies think is the problem. 

Her conversational tone guides you into understanding her logic, and she offers a number of valuable resources to help you learn about being mindful about content creation, and how to be more productive as you do. 

She created her website on WordPress.

9. Sarah Turner

Sarah Turner’s writer website is one of those slick, beautifully designed sites that intimidate the rest of us. It’s the type of site that looks like it requires the assistance of a web designer, which means it’s aspirational for a lot of us, especially those of us who are just getting started as freelancers. In actuality, Sarah’s website was created with the help of WordPress and Themely. 

However, design isn’t the only aspect that makes Sarah’s writer website great. Her opening sentence clearly highlights her writing niche, how she can use her skills to improve your business in the health industry — the key goal of any resume or website — and includes a direct call to action. 

You can include a similar paragraph and call to action on your own writer website; no design firm required.

10. Kat Boogaard

Freelance writer Kat Boogaard leads with an authentic and friendly voice on her writer website — one that makes you feel like you’ll hit it off with her right away. Amid a fresh and sleek design filled with calming neutral colors, she shares brief paragraphs about who she is, what she writes for clients and how she can help freelance writers grow their businesses.

Kat’s conveniently-placed menu at the top and bottom of her website is easy to navigate, but one thing I love about her website is how you can find your way around her site without it. As you scroll through the homepage, you’ll find that she takes you from one valuable resource to the next, all without making you feel bombarded. 

11. Helen Gebre

This writer website gets one important thing down pat: You can feel how much Helen Gebre loves the art of writing. She also does this very simply, through an introduction and biography that gives you a glimpse into her personal life, her career and why she does this work. 

Helen’s website design is simple, likely because she has a diverse portfolio featuring big and bold copywriting decks that span across print and digital writing, social media, video scripts and more. Besides a contact page, she also cleverly set up her phone number as the footer on each page — that way, clients viewing her page know how to reach her immediately. 

12. Chidinma Nnamani

Clients visiting B2B writer Chidinma Nnamani’s page learn right away what her expertise is. Throughout her writer website that she designed with WordPress and Elementor, she clearly articulates her skill and experience with B2B writing for the tech, food and digital marketing industries. 

Besides a clean website design that reflects Chidinma’s design aptitude, her inclusion of a robust services page and a page that details her four-step process for working relationships provide a peek into her professionalism and organizational skills. One more thing to note from this writer website? The frequent “Ready to hire me?” prompts displayed throughout the site! 

13. Sarah Asp Olson

Before you learn about this writer, you first take a tour of her impressive writing clips, which progressively leads you to where you can learn more about and reach out to her. 

One of the best parts of designing your writer website is all the creative ways you can display your work. Each website on our list brings their own flair to their portfolio, and Sarah Asp Olson is no exception in the way her site only features the content she’s created. Like she does, you can use bright, colorful images that capture the eye to separate the industries you write for. Then, display your samples in bulleted lists, or in rows of hyperlinked thumbnails.

Remember there are no rules to how you organize your work — just ensure it’s clear, and easy to navigate.

14. Samar Owais

What should people learn about you as soon as they visit your writer website? For writer Samar Owais, potential clients find out immediately she can increase conversions and boost sales — and her speedy acknowledgement of these skills and her niche can make a difference in how quickly visitors leave her site. 

Throughout her writer website, Samar features client testimonials and a valuable email marketing quiz. Additionally, she makes her expertise clear through brief, compelling descriptions that outline how she solves conversion issues as an email conversion strategist and SaaS copywriter. And if anyone wonders why they should work with her, she makes convincing arguments for that, too. 

15. Muriel Vega

Don’t you just want to click those icons? That’s the power of color and fun design animation! Atlanta-based writer and editor Muriel Vega’s writer website has a simple design layout, but that doesn’t stop the sense of her personality from seeping through as you learn about her through projects and writing samples. 

This site is a great reminder that you don’t have to overwhelm your writer website to make an impact — consider who you want to attract, and incorporate engaging design elements that reflect your creativity.

16. Tyler Koenig

Copywriting expert Tyler Koenig has a writer website that feels extremely confident and laid-back. Within a well-designed website that tastefully centers the color orange (maybe for basketball?), Tyler provides heaps of value through his email list, webinars, courses and free tips through his blog. 

“Become your own most trusted copywriter,” he writes on the landing page of his self-paced copywriting courses, which successfully expresses his earnest desire to share his passion to help others grow. Besides that, providing free and paid resources truly highlights your expertise to prospects.

17. Nicole Dieker (yes, that’s me!)

My writer website serves two purposes: It’s a place where people can learn more about my freelance and teaching work, and it’s also a blog that focuses on the art and finances of a creative career. I include “where I got published this week” roundups every Friday and finance roundups on the first of every month, along with daily insights on work-life balance, how to earn money for your creative work, the process of writing a novel and more. I also pay writers for guest posts, so pitch me!

I set up my site through WordPress using a pre-designed template.

Do you have a writer website you’re proud of, or are you working on one now? Share your experience with us in the comments!

This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

Photo via Zofot/ Shutterstock 

Do you have trouble making time to write? Do you wish you had a community to help you work towards your writing goals, including staying on time and finishing your work?

Many writers sign up for writing challenges to help them solve these problems and write a large body of work in a short amount of time — or even to build their practice and discipline of writing consistently.

Besides completing work you can be proud of, participating in writing challenges is amazing because you get to work alongside a group of other writers who all share the same goal: finish that novel, finish that picture book, or write those short stories and poems. You support each other and hold each other accountable.

Writing challenges that will push you forward

If you’re up to the task, we’ve come up with some writing challenges to try, whether you’re a novelist, poet, picture-book writer or something in between.

Here are nine writing challenges to explore.

1. NaNoWriMo

Genre: Novel

This is the one you’ve probably heard of: NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, has been an annual November tradition since 1999. During NaNoWriMo, writers around the world challenge themselves to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.

What’s special about 50,000 words? As NaNoWriMo’s organizers explain: “Our experiences since 1999 show that 50,000 is a difficult but doable goal, even for people with full-time jobs and children. The length makes it a short novel (about the length of The Great Gatsby).”

You’ll need to write about 1,667 words every day to hit this target novel word count, but you won’t be alone; the online NaNoWriMo community helps you track and share your progress while awarding badges for hard work and providing inspiration through interviews with well-known writers and other motivational tools.

Several writers have published novels they initially drafted during NaNoWriMo, including Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants and Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. To have the best chance of following in their footsteps, have a through understanding of the rules of NaNoWriMo as well as precisely what you want to get from the experience. 

If you’re looking for a similar option, check out Camp NaNoWriMo to experience a writing adventure that offers more flexibility. Hosted annually in April and July, you can set your own writing goal and work on any writing project, novel or not.

2. NaPoWriMo

Genre: Poetry

If NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, I bet you can guess what NaPoWriMo stands for.

National Poetry Writing Month takes place every April, and challenges writers to pen 30 poems in 30 days. You’ll have access to daily prompts to help your creative juices flow, but you’re welcome to ignore ‘em, too.

Independently organized, NaPoWriMo is much smaller than NaNoWriMo, so don’t expect your local library to organize NaPoWriMo nights — unless, of course, you want to organize one on your own!

Some writers share their NaPoWriMo poems on their websites or via social media, and help spread their love of poetry while showing off their ability to complete the challenge.

3. StoryADay

Genre: Short stories

So we’ve got novel-writing in November and poetry in April. What about short stories? That’s in May and/or September (or whenever you want!), and it’s called StoryADay.

StoryADay is a little different from NaNoWriMo and NaPoWriMo in that it focuses on completing a short story every day, rather than ending the month with a certain number of stories or a specific word count. But there are rules:

1. If you miss a day or don’t finish a story, move on. You still have every other day of the month (of your life) which is a new day, on which a new story can be told.
2. Don’t go back and try to finish yesterday’s story. Leave it. Wash your hands of it. Move on.
3. As long as you keep writing, you’re not failing.

Starting — and finishing — a new short story everyday sounds like a much harder challenge than writing a 50,000-word novel in a month; but “sometimes you need a big, hairy audacious goal, to scare your Inner Critic into letting you write.”

4. 12 x 12

Genre: Picture books

If you write picture books, you might want to consider signing up for the 12 x 12 writing challenge created by Julie Hedlund, author of My Love For You Is the Sun. The challenge: write 12 picture books in 12 months!

Unlike other writing challenges, 12 x 12 comes with a membership fee. The basic package costs $177 and grants you access to writers’ forums, the member Facebook group, feedback from traditionally-published authors and much more. If you choose the higher level membership — which are only available to people who have already participated in at least one year of 12 x 12 — you get to submit your work directly to participating agents.

Do 12 x 12 writers get published? Absolutely. Check out their list of published writers to get inspired.

While 12 x 12 is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, registration is closed for 2020 and will resume in 2021.

5. ChaBooCha

Genre: Young adult

Young adult writers can use NaNoWriMo to write their books, but there’s also a writing challenge just for them: ChaBooCha, or the Chapter Book Challenge.

Hosted by writer Rebecca Fyfe, ChaBooCha runs every March and challenges you to “Write one completed first draft of an early reader, chapter book, middle-grade book or YA novel,” from the 1st to the 31st of March. 

Your results could be anywhere between 1,000 and 80,000 words, depending on whether you’re putting together an early reader or writing the next book in your YA series. Either way, ChaBooCha is there to help you get the job done, with motivational blog posts from authors, agents and publishers — as well as prizes.

ChaBooCha is open to writers under 17, too! 

6. YeahWrite

Genre: Nonfiction, fiction, poetry, microstories

After reading about all of these programs that challenge you to write 50,000 words or 31 new short stories in a month, are you ready for a writing challenge that’s designed to fit your schedule?

It’s time to check out YeahWrite, a writing site that issues one writing challenge each week for each of three genres: nonfiction, fiction/poetry and microstories.

This writing challenge differs from the others on this list because every week, community members vote on a challenge winner. You’re not only participating in a writing challenge, you’re also getting reviewed by other writers — and you might write well enough to win the week!

YeahWrite is all about community, so it’s free to join. But a paid membership helps keep the site running and gets you access to editorial consultations with YeahWrite editors. There are two membership packages that cost either $25 or $50 per year; each gives you access to editorial evaluations, discounts and more, so check them out!

7. NaNonFiWriMo

Genre: Nonfiction 

The Write Nonfiction in November Challenge (WNFIN) was created by Nina Amir, a coach who inspires writers and bloggers to create published products and careers as authors. Unlike NaNoWriMo, this informal challenge comes with only one rule: You have to commit to starting and finishing a work of nonfiction in a month.

“No one counts how many words you write during the month or even checks what you write. You can write any type of nonfiction, such as a magazine article, blog posts, a white paper, or a book.” And your WNFIN project can even be as short or as long as you like.

To help you along with the challenge, you can join the WNFIN Facebook page, and the Remote Writing Room provides you with a virtual group of writers you can chat and write twice per week. Plus, check out Nina’s blog for more inspiration and tips to improve your nonfiction writing process.

Stay tuned for 2020 WNFIN details!

8. 365 Writing Challenge

Genre: All genres are welcome

The benefits of discipline and daily practice can’t be underestimated, and that’s what the 365 Writing Challenge wants to help you develop. Created by Jessica White and her group the 10 Minute Novelists, this challenge has helped hundreds of writers over the past five years write more than 100 million words. To be able to participate, you must be a member of the 10 Minute Novelists Facebook Group.

All you have to do is set aside 10 minutes every day to write, which is about 100 words a day. You can also use that time to reflect on the writing process, set weekly writing goals, or even flesh out a setting or a character. 

Upon choosing a membership tier, you’ll be provided a Google Sheet to help you keep track of your daily word count, and at the beginning of each month, Jessica awards badges for the prior month’s achievements.

It doesn’t matter if you spend 10 minutes or 4 hours a day writing — “the key is consistency so you can grow as a writer and finish your projects.” Look out for 2021 registration details later this year.

9. The Writer’s Games

Genre: Short stories and poetry

The Writer’s Games is a free competition designed to help each individual writer improve his or her craft at an accelerated rate. ​This free six-week, multi-challenge writing competition comes with feedback for every entry, opportunities for publication throughout the competition, and the ability to use judge feedback on previous entries to improve them. 

Here’s how it works: Each week starting in May and September, a surprise Event is announced and writers have 72 hours to create a short story or poem that fits the Event requirements. Every entry received before the deadline is judged and critiqued by a team and winners are published in a charitable anthology.

And don’t worry about being eliminated — every registered writer is encouraged to try each of the six Events, even if one of their previous stories was disqualified, which is rare.

Registration opens April 1 and August 1 for two separate portions, and keep in mind that space is limited.

So, are you ready to take on one of these writing challenges?

This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

Photo via G-Stock Studio / Shutterstock 

Many authors complete several rounds of revision followed by multiple copyediting passes before they even think about sending their book to beta readers, and then complete another pass or two before querying an agent. Some writers even hire editors or look to some of the best grammar checker tools to help them work through their draft and make it as strong as possible.

Now there’s an option for writers who want to improve their drafts before sending them out into the world: AutoCrit. 

This online software is designed to help authors identify their draft’s strengths and weaknesses while offering specific suggestions for improvement. Of course, like any online service, AutoCrit has its own strengths and weaknesses — so let’s take a close look at what AutoCrit does well, where it falls short and whether authors should add AutoCrit to their toolkits.

What is AutoCrit?

AutoCrit is an online book editing program that calls itself the “fiction writer’s secret weapon.” 

Create a free AutoCrit account to access interactive editing tools and automatic suggestions to help you improve your manuscript. Upgrade to a $30/month Professional account to receive more than 30 interactive editing reports along with an AutoCrit Summary Score (we’ll get to that), or invest in the $80/month Elite account and start taking courses on the craft of revision and the art of publishing.

Here’s what the $30/month Professional account offers: 

• Fully-featured word processor and editing suite
• No word limits 
• Spelling & grammar checker
• Proven editing guidance based on extensive research into real-world publishing standards
• Secure online storage for your manuscript
• 30 interactive editing reports
• Tackle weak writing, useless filler, repetitive phrasing, shifts in tense and point of view, and even slow or uneven story pacing.
• Expert guidance by genre, including Romance, Sci-Fi, Young Adult, and more.
• Compare your word choices to the style of best-selling authors like Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, James Patterson, Danielle Steel, and many more.
• Track your progress with the unique AutoCrit Summary Score

Can AutoCrit really help you edit your novel? Do its suggestions hold up, or is writing too subjective to be evaluated by software? I got the chance to test-drive a Professional account, and here’s what I learned.

AutoCrit identified my novel’s biggest flaw

When I put the first 4,000 words of my self-published novel The Biographies of Ordinary People into AutoCrit, I received an AutoCrit Summary Score of 64.18. Essentially, a D. Not great, especially for a book that has 4.05 stars on Goodreads, received 5 stars from Foreward Clarion Reviews and is a Library Journal Self-e Selection. 

Does that mean AutoCrit doesn’t know good writing when it sees it? Or did I mistakenly believe my book was better than it actually is? I decided to test a second book — a certified literary classic — and compare the results.

The elevator pitch for The Biographies of Ordinary People is “a Millennial-era Little Women,” so I dropped in the first 4,000 words of Louisa May Alcott’s famous text. AutoCrit gave it a score of 89.47 — much better than the score my novel had received.

Then I started comparing the AutoCrit reports side-by-side. In many cases, Alcott’s text and mine hit the exact same metrics: both 4,000-word excerpts included roughly the same number of sentences (231, 217) and the same average sentence length (18 words). Both excerpts used just over 800 “uncommon words” and neither had an excess of adverbs.

The big difference? Pacing. Little Women had zero “slow-paced paragraphs;” Biographies had 19. This ties right in with the most common criticism I received about the book: although the writing was beautiful, the story itself was occasionally too quiet/slow. 

In other words, AutoCrit correctly identified the most significant problem with my novel. 

When I began digging into the interactive editing reports, I noticed that each slow-paced paragraph had been highlighted—plus, AutoCrit provided a series of visuals that helped me understand how my story’s slow paragraphs were affecting the narrative. In this graph, every slow paragraph is represented by an orange valley (and there are a lot of orange valleys).

I am currently working on a mystery novel, and when I fed the first 6,000 words of this new book into AutoCrit, the reports indicated I was doing a much better job with my pacing. I took the criticism of my first book to heart, and clearly learned from it.

That said, those 6,000 words still only received an AutoCrit Summary Score of 67.69. This time, the editing reports revealed that AutoCrit wanted me to work on “strong writing.” For example: AutoCrit thought I was using too many passive indicators, suggesting I rewrite sentences like “I already told Ed you’d be there” because of the contracted you would. 

This brings me to my biggest criticism of the AutoCrit system: that it analyzes your writing word-by-word, without understanding that “I already told Ed you’d be there” isn’t a clunky passive-voice sentence. (You can’t add “by zombies” to the end of it, after all — and if I’m going to use the passive voice, there had better be zombies involved.)

Let’s look a little more carefully at this issue.

AutoCrit doesn’t always consider context

If your AutoCrit Summary Score is lower than you were expecting, it might be because your manuscript needs a lot of improvement — or it might be because AutoCrit is reading your manuscript without context.

When I gave AutoCrit the first 6,000 words of the mystery novel I’m currently drafting, the program dinged me for using the dialogue tag “glanced” twice. However, when you look at the use in context, the word choice becomes deliberate rather than accidentally redundant:

“A rolling stone,” Harrison said. “I admire it. Sometimes I wish I’d lived in a few more places.” He glanced at Larkin again, eyes crinkling to match his smile. “I suppose there’s still time.” Then he glanced at his watch; silver, not smart. “Speaking of which—”

Likewise, AutoCrit told me I should remove the cliches “baked” and “plastered,” even though they refer to actual baked goods and actual plaster — not, as I’m assuming AutoCrit believes, marijuana and alcohol use.

The AutoCrit team is aware that its program doesn’t read for context. Here’s a more detailed description of the way AutoCrit analyzes a text for passive indicators:

Rather than performing a simple verb combination check to determine passive voice (ie. an auxiliary verb followed by a past participle verb), when running AutoCrit’s Passive Indicators report, you will instead be given highlighting to draw your attention more closely to the past-tense passages you’ve written.

The intention behind this report is to give you greater control over your editing experience, and make you think more deeply and professionally about your writing. It should not be treated as a strict passive phrase detector.

If you feel like AutoCrit is judging your writing too harshly — or spotting problems that aren’t really there — check out its support section. You’ll learn how AutoCrit evaluates writing for issues like word choice, repetition and momentum, and you might end up feeling a little better about whatever score your novel might have received. 

Still, it’s worth pointing out that even though some of AutoCrit’s individual critiques were a little off, its overall assessment that my mystery novel needs stronger writing is, once again, accurate. It’s something I’ve been taking notes on myself, as I’ve worked my way up the word count. Right now I’m focusing on getting to the end of the first draft, and then I’ll go back and figure out how to make it better.

Use AutoCrit to help you think more carefully about your writing

If you’re interested in using AutoCrit to help you edit and revise your novel, here’s my advice:

• Focus on trends over details. When you’re reading through AutoCrit’s editing reports, don’t get hung up on the details. Pay less attention to AutoCrit’s recommendation that you remove 110 “passive indicators” from your draft, and more attention to where the majority of AutoCrit’s editing recommendations are clustered. Does your novel have pacing issues? Repetition issues? Point-of-view issues? 
• Click on everything. When I clicked on AutoCrit’s “Pacing and Summary” tab and then clicked on “Paragraph Variation,” I got a bar graph showing me the number of words in each paragraph—but no information on how to contextualize that data. It was only when I clicked on “View Summary” that I was able to access the paragraph/pacing chart I shared above (the one with the peaks and valleys in it) and understand how my paragraphs were affecting my reader’s journey through the story.
• Take AutoCrit’s suggestions literally. AutoCrit’s suggestions are just that: suggestions. Some of them will be incorrect. Some of them will be so obviously correct that you’ll immediately implement them. The rest will require you to ask yourself: Can this sentence be a little better? Is there a way to improve this paragraph? Or am I happy with the draft as it currently stands?

AutoCrit isn’t designed to be a prescriptive tool. Instead, it’s designed to make you think more carefully about your own writing; to read through the scores and suggestions and learn where your writing can be improved. 

Bottom line of our AutoCrit review: Once you’ve run your draft through AutoCrit, you’ll have a good idea of where your novel’s strengths and weaknesses are and what you need to do next — whether that’s giving your book another revision pass, sending it to a critique partner, asking for feedback from a group of beta readers, querying an agent or prepping your finished book for self-publication.

This post contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase through our links, you’re supporting The Write Life — and we thank you for that!

Photo via GuadiLab / Shutterstock 

In fact, even an average article can rise to the top if it has a headline that makes people want to click and read.

Headline writing is a skill, and like any other skill, the more you know about writing headlines, the better your headlines become.

Learn from these headline examples

With that in mind, I’m going to take apart six amazing headlines and show you exactly why they work. In the process, I’ll give you new techniques you can use when you write your next headline.

Here are some examples of catchy headlines.

1. How to Start Writing a Book: Use This Trick to Find the Time

Let’s start with a recent article at The Write Life by by Anita Evensen. What makes this headline great? I’ll break it down for you:

• The “how to” element lets readers know they’ll learn something by reading this article.
• The headline uses the words “start writing a book,” not “write a book.” For a lot of people, the hardest part about writing a book is getting started. This headline acknowledges a lot of people have a great idea you know you can turn into a book — if you can just figure out how to begin.
• The phrase “use this trick” implies the article will include information most people don’t already know.
• The headline ends with a reference to finding enough time to write your book, implying the article will help you overcome the other obstacle keeping you from writing.

This headline works on people who haven’t yet started writing books, as well as those like me who are over 50,000 words into a novel but still have trouble finding the time to write new chapters.

The headline promises a unique answer to a common problem, which in turn gives us a reason to read the article.

2. Why Everything We’ve Been Told About Happiness Is Flawed

This Fast Company piece by Stephanie Vozza uses a “why construction” to let readers know that this article will explain something we’ve observed but don’t fully understand.

In this case, the article is going to explain why “everything we’ve been told about happiness” — an important phrase, because it invites readers to recall all their knowledge on the topic — is wrong.

There’s a lot going on here. If you’re doing the “right things” but still don’t feel happy, you’ll read this article to learn whether you were given bad advice. If you’ve always been skeptical of aphorisms like “money doesn’t buy happiness,” you’ll read this article to confirm what you already think you know.

This headline is not structured like a question, but it asks the reader to consider a question anyway: What have I learned about happiness, and is this knowledge correct? You won’t know unless you read the article.

3. I’m a Woman in Tech, But Even I Didn’t “Get It” Until This Week

This article by Laura Roeder hit Medium’s “Top Stories” list, and I’m guessing a lot of it had to do with the headline.

This headline works because it leaves out most of the important information. What does Roeder mean by “get it?” Why didn’t she “get it” before? What happened this week?

The piece of information Roeder does reveal — she is a woman in tech — is also important. It lets the reader know this article is probably about gender in the workplace, which is relevant to both men and women in a variety of industries.

Some readers will click this headline because they have experienced gender discrimination and want to know if Roeder had a similar experience. Others will click to see if it’s a story about harassment. People in the tech industry may look to this article to see if it offers suggestions for improvement.

There are a lot of reasons to read this piece, and a lot of questions that go unanswered until you click the link.

4. 23 Pictures That Won’t Make Sense If You’re An Only Child

The listicle construction is a common way of attracting people to an article, but here’s why Buzzfeed is one of the best in the listicle business: This piece, written by Alex Finnis, isn’t titled “23 Pictures That Make Sense to Siblings.” It’s titled “23 Pictures That Won’t Make Sense If You’re An Only Child.”

With that slight adjustment, Buzzfeed makes its piece relevant to both siblings and only children — and chances are, you fit into one of those two categories.

Siblings will read it to be reminded of their childhood. Only children will read it because they suspect their childhood wasn’t that different from their friends with siblings. You can almost hear the only children thinking “What do you mean, these images won’t make sense to me? Of course they’ll make sense, and I’ll read the article to prove it!”

Many childhood experiences are universal, whether you have a sibling or not — and this piece is set up specifically so both siblings and only children can read it and think “I remember that!”

With certain types of headlines, it helps to make sure as many people as possible think the piece is about them.

5. How Intelligent Do You Have to Be to Raise a Child?

I bet you’re already thinking about the answer to this question. You’re asking yourself whether smart people are better parents, what kind of intelligence is required to raise children, and so on.

You’re probably putting yourself into the answer, comparing your intelligence to your peers — and you’re doing this regardless of whether you are a parent.

Here’s what makes this headline brilliant: Lisa Miller’s New York Magazine article is about a young woman with mental disabilities who successfully won a custody battle for her daughter.

The headline doesn’t ask you to consider whether a woman with mental disabilities is intelligent enough to raise a child. It asks you to consider whether you are intelligent enough, which means you go into the article ready to empathize with the young woman at the center of the story.

There’s one more piece you need to know about this headline: It probably wasn’t the first headline chosen for the story. When you click through to Miller’s article, the headline is “Who Knows Best,” and there’s another variation of the headline that reads, “How Smart Do You Have to Be to Raise a Child?”

Online publishers often change a headline after a piece is written to try new ideas and test results until they find the headline that attracts the most readers.

6. Justin Bieber’s New Underwear Ads Are Designed to Make You a Little Uncomfortable

This Slate article by Heather Schwedel is not written in the form of a question, but it asks multiple questions regardless: Is this the underwear ad you saw last week, or is it something new?

If you click the link, will you see an ad that makes you uncomfortable? It won’t really make you uncomfortable, though — right? Underwear ads aren’t scandalous. Is this one more scandalous than usual? Have underwear ads finally gone too far?

Yes, you’re going to read this article because it promises a picture of Justin Bieber in his underwear. But the most important part of the headline — even more important than a shirtless Justin Bieber — is the part that suggests you’ll be “a little uncomfortable.” A lot of people are attracted to the slightly uncomfortable, from horror movies to those YouTube videos where doctors perform blackhead extractions.

You’re going to click this link to see if there’s something uncomfortable lurking behind it.

How to create your own knockout headlines

Before you start clicking on these six articles — because I know you want to — I promised you six techniques you can use on your next headline. Let’s review what you saw above:

1. Imply your piece will answer important questions
2. Promise a unique answer to a common problem
3. Leave out key information
4. Let the reader think the piece is about them
5. Invite the reader to empathize with the subject
6. Make the reader a little uncomfortable

How many of these techniques will you use the next time you write an article? As they say in the headline business: The answer may surprise you.

Do you use these techniques in your own headlines? What do you think makes a great headline?

This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

If you don’t ask for the work you want, you’ll never get it.

Let’s look at how to improve the way you ask for that work.

We’re going to focus on pitching articles, blog posts and stories. Pitching isn’t the only way freelancers get gigs — I’ve gotten jobs by submitting a resume and clips, as well as by completing a sample assignment — but it’s one of the most common.

If a job wants you to submit a resume and clips, it’ll say so in the application guidelines. For everything else, including the majority of the blogs and online publications out there, you’re going to need to get really, really good at pitching.

So how do you write a good pitch?

If you’re pitching a publication with a set of submission guidelines, start there. A lot of publications tell you exactly what they want.

Be aware that the submission guidelines are sometimes hidden under “Contact” or “FAQ,” and it never hurts to search “[PUBLICATION] submission guidelines” if you can’t find anything on the outlet’s website.

Sometimes editors write blog posts or tweets describing what they want in a pitch. If you’re interested in working with a specific editor, it doesn’t hurt to search their name plus words like “submission,” “submission guidelines” and “pitch me.”

Get clear on the story you want to tell

Once you’ve figured out what submission guidelines to follow, the next step is to get really clear on your story.

One of the most common mistakes people make is failing to state the story they want to tell.

What do I mean?

Well, writers often say they want to write about something. “I want to write about Famous Person X.” “I want to write about gender in the workplace.” That’s an idea, not a story.

By the time you pitch, you should have enough background research to be able to pull the story out of your idea, as follows:

Hit Musical Hamilton Is Great — But Is It Addictive? Just about everyone I know is obsessed with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new musical Hamilton, to the point that we’re listening to the 2-hour 22-minute cast recording nearly once a day. What makes music like this feel addictive, to the point where the first thing we want to do after finishing the album is start it at the beginning again? I’d reach out to a musicologist and a psychologist for their thoughts on the nature of addictive music.

That’s a real pitch I sent to Popular Science, which they accepted. Notice how my pitch included not only the story, but also the method by which I plan to research the story?

Writers often skip this step, but adding a sentence or two describing your methodology shows an editor that you’re serious about your idea. It also lets an editor know that you have a plan of action, and that your finished draft will be backed up with both sources and substance.

Not all stories require research, of course. Personal essays, for example, don’t necessarily need a methodology statement. But too many writers pitch stories as if they were personal essays: “My thoughts on why Hamilton is addictive,” for example.

No editor cares about my thoughts on Hamilton. They care about a music expert’s thoughts on Hamilton, crafted into an eye-catching story that promises a reader an answer to a question they’ve probably asked themselves: Why can’t I stop listening to this album?

That bit about promising the reader an answer to a question they’ve probably asked themselves? That’s the pitch’s benefit. Whenever you craft a pitch, think about how it will benefit the publication’s audience.

Will it give them the answer to a question? Will it prompt a discussion in the comments? Will it ask them to think differently about a common experience?

You don’t need to state your benefit directly in the pitch — in fact, please don’t write “this story will prompt a discussion in the comments” — but it’s important to consider the benefit as you put your pitch together.

After all, publications aren’t interested in what you want to write. They’re interested in what their readers want to read.

Lastly, my Hamilton pitch was only a paragraph long because I had already built a relationship with one of Popular Science’s editors. If you’re pitching a publication for the first time, put a short bio at the end with links to a few relevant clips that — you guessed it — establish expertise in your beat.

Here’s a sample pitch

Here’s a sample pitch to review, so you can see exactly what a solid pitch looks like.

Writing a sample pitch email is tricky because every publication has slightly different guidelines. With that in mind, here’s what a good pitch email might contain:

SUBJECT LINE: Check the publication for guidelines. I often write “PITCH: [HEADLINE]” in the subject, e.g. “PITCH: Are Dogs Better Pets Than Cats?”

SALUTATION: You can go with the formal “Dear [EDITOR]” here, although I often just start my emails with “Hi!”

INTRO PARAGRAPH WITH HEADLINE: Introduce your relationship to the publication, if relevant, and your pitch’s suggested headline. (I got the “always add a suggested headline” advice from Carol Tice.)

STORY AND METHODOLOGY PARAGRAPH: Briefly explain your story and the methodology by which you will tell it.

BIO PARAGRAPH: Share a bit about yourself and link to relevant clips.

NAME AND CONTACT INFO: Thank the editor and “sign” the email with your name and contact info.

Hi! I’m a huge fan of Dogs and Cats Daily — I comment as DogFan27 — and I wanted to pitch a story that I haven’t seen on the site but I think your readers will appreciate: Are dogs better pets than cats?

This story will look closely at three different families, each of whom have dogs and cats in the home. I’ll interview each family, asking them to share stories about their pets’ behavior and comment on which pets they enjoy interacting with most. I’ll also interview a veterinarian and a pet psychologist to learn more about animal behavior and discuss whether dogs or cats make better pets for certain personality types.

I’ve previously been published in Dogs Are Great Monthly and I Love Cats Magazine. My clips include: “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Puppies,” “Cats Are Purrfect,” and “Do Dogs or Cats Save More Lives?”

Thanks for considering my pitch!

Goldie Retriever

GoldieRetriever.com

@DogFan27

Pitching can be tricky, but it doesn’t have to be such a daunting task. Do your homework and follow this simple email pitch formula and you’ll be well on your way to getting an editor to say “yes” to your idea.

Photo via Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock 

Freelancers also need routines — and because we have multiple demands on our time besides writing, we need our routines to be a little more specific than, to quote Hemingway, “write every morning as soon after first light as possible.”

When are you going to check email? When are you going to pitch? When are you going to silence your phone and work on your next assignment? If you have multiple assignments to complete, how much time will you assign to each one?

I’ve been a full-time freelance writer for six years, and having a daily routine — one that includes time for writing, rewriting, pitching and administrative work — has been one of the secrets of my success.

In fact, I’m pretty sure my routine has helped me earn more money. Here’s how.

1. A routine structures your day

One of the hardest parts of being a freelance writer is having to create your own structure.

If you don’t make time to send out pitches, you won’t book any work. If you don’t make time to complete the work, you won’t earn any money. If you don’t take time to do all of the administrative work associated with freelancing — following up with clients, keeping track of business expenses, maintaining a website — you won’t grow your career.

Turning my day into a daily routine helped me make time for all of the work that freelancing requires — and it also helped me avoid the decision fatigue that comes with asking yourself “what am I going to do today?” over and over again. I already know: I’m going to check the news, I’m going to check my email, I’m going to check social media and then I’m going to write for an hour. Knowing what you’re going to do every day helps you get it done.

2. A routine prevents procrastination

If you start writing every day at 9:30 a.m. (or at dawn, if you’re like Hemingway), you’ll get used to spending that time writing. You’ll be less tempted to spend it doing laundry or refreshing Twitter, because your mind and body already know that it’s writing time.

Building a routine is a great procrastination-buster, because you’ll be able to schedule time for social media and afternoon snacks and anything else you usually do instead of doing your work. If you spend a lot of time reading sites like The Write Life, for example, add 30 minutes of “reading time” into your routine — and then when “writing time” comes around again, you’ll be ready.

3. A routine keeps you balanced

I start every day with 45 minutes of yoga. I also take two 30-minute walk breaks: one after lunch, and one and at the end of my workday. (Alice Munro isn’t the only writer who loves long walks.)

These breaks are non-negotiable; I don’t have to “earn” them, but I don’t get to turn them into extra writing time, either.

Building yoga and walking into my routine helps me stay balanced. It also helps me feel like I’m able to handle multiple priorities: the work I owe my clients, and the breaks I owe myself. Most of us have multiple priorities, whether we’re balancing work/life, writing/family, or freelancing/day job. (Or all of the above!) Make sure your routine includes time for all of your priorities — otherwise, you risk burning out.

4. A routine sets limits

If your day includes 30 minutes of morning email, a writing block from 9:30 to noon, an hour for lunch, an administrative hour, and then a writing block from 2 to 5, you know you can only schedule as much writing as can be completed in those two blocks. Freelancers often have trouble knowing when to say no—an extra assignment, even if it’s a bad one, can bring in a few extra dollars, right?

Once you have a routine, you’ll know exactly how many writing hours you have per week — and once you know how long it takes you to complete a typical assignment, you’ll have a good idea of how many assignments you can accept. These types of limits help keep your freelance work from taking over your entire life.

5. A routine requires you to maximize your time — and your income

So you’ve built your routine, you have your daily writing blocks, and you know roughly how much work you can complete in a week. There’s one more step in the process: Maximizing your time by working for the highest possible rates.

This might mean using your administrative time to pitch higher-paying clients. It might mean re-negotiating rates with your current clients. It might even mean firing your lowest-paying client to make space for a better one.

Whatever you choose to do, let your routine be your guide. You know how much time you have available to write, so don’t sell yourself short — literally. Set your writing blocks, stick to them, and make sure you’re earning as much as possible. Then get ready to do the whole thing again tomorrow.

Do you have a daily routine? Has it helped you avoid procrastination, balance multiple priorities and earn more money?

With that in mind, let’s do our final quarterly check-in and answer the five questions.

1. How much money did I earn this quarter?

I’m writing this post before the end of the year, so I can’t say for sure how much money I’ll have earned between October 1 and December 31. (I still have one more pitch I’m hoping will get picked up — gotta keep that hustle going!)

However, I can say that so far I’ve earned $15,143 in freelance earnings and $717 in book royalties this quarter — of which I’ve received $14,942.80.

I also recently launched a new podcast called Writing & Money, which is designed to help people earn more money from their writing. Since it’s a subscription-based podcast, I’m earning money as well; subscribers have given me $50.84 this quarter. (It’s a very new podcast.)

My total freelance income for 2017, including book royalties, looks like it’ll hit $68,000.

2. What was the best thing I did for my freelance career this quarter?

The best thing I did for my freelance career this quarter was anticipate that a client would pull back on assignments. As soon as I got the hint that one of my clients might be cutting back, I went ahead and secured more work with a different client.

There are a couple different ways you can anticipate a client loss. Sometimes an editor will let you know in advance. Other times your regular editor will become slow to respond to your emails, or won’t offer a new assignment as soon as you turn one in. You might see your client put out an ad for staff writers; that’s a good sign that they might be cutting back on freelancers.

I actually had multiple clients pull back on assignments this quarter — and Pronoun, the indie publishing service that distributed my novel, shut down. It was a tumultuous few months, to say the least, but being able to anticipate at least some of these shifts and start reaching out to other clients helped me maintain steady work and grow my income.

3. What was my biggest mistake (or, what am I going to do differently next quarter)?

My biggest mistake was not buying a pop filter until after I had published the first few episodes of my podcast. My audio got so much better afterwards.

Next quarter is going to be very different for me because I moved from Seattle, Washington to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This means I’m going to need to get a new CPA, potentially set up a new business and figure out what I’m going to need to set aside for 2018 taxes. (Unlike Washington, Iowa has state income tax.)

My freelance career is likely to stay the same, but the way I approach my finances is going to change. My Affordable Care Act health insurance plan is a HSA plan, so I’m going to start setting aside pretax money for my HSA. I want to talk to my CPA about the benefits of opening a traditional IRA along with my Roth IRA, so I can contribute pretax money to the traditional IRA as well.

If the new tax plan passes, I’ll also ask whether I should consider becoming a LLC.

4. What do I want to achieve as a freelancer next quarter?

I want to keep growing! I’ve got this new podcast, I’m doing more work for some of my clients, I’ve got a big project that might launch next quarter, and I’ve got my novel and its forthcoming sequel.

In previous quarterly check-ins, I’ve written that I want to maintain my career — and I did. Now I’m ready to push myself to the next level.

5. What steps am I taking to get there?

I launched a podcast, I am about to turn my novel in to another distributor, I booked additional client work… I just kept hustling, and I plan to continue that hustle in 2018.

What about you? What are you planning to do in the new year? Answer these check-in questions or share your thoughts in the comments.