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You can sell your writing, if you take writing seriously. How?

1. Live Writing: View every aspect of your life, everything you see, or hear, or do, through the lens of writing. “Would this work? Or this?” Some leap out, like the woman who said her favorite place to play as a kid in Nazi Germany, “was on the unexploded bombs.” Even if an idea doesn’t seem obvious…
2. Keep A Compendium of Ideas: Write down every possible concept or idea because you never know which one, or two, or three of them, separately or together, might trigger a piece. Come up with at least one idea a day for magazines you want to work on, or in general. Ideas equal money.
3. Learn the Basics: Study magazine or website basics where you want to publish–type of article, length, type of writing–and write queries or pitches.
4. Write Every Day: You must. If you don’t, the hullaballoo of daily life will snip your writing threads and, later, your brain will need time to sew the threads back together. That’s time lost you could have used to write every day.

Produce at least 500 words a day. What’s better? 1,000! And, aim toward publishing. Write a query letter or an article. You’re a writer. You can do it. Every bit of your writing makes you better. Constant writing leads to writing easily, well, and prolifically.

5. Percolate. Always keep several projects percolating in your writing pot at all times. I started with submitting essays to Listen and Rural Electric Co-operative magazine, poetry and essays to Great River Review, and my running experiences to Runner’s World. So, when I tired, I merely moved on to another piece. I never quit during my writing time. Sometimes, I had nine or 10 pieces going at one time. That’s being prolific. You can do the same. Figure out what works for you. As you get better, go after more and bigger magazines. When you sell to a high paying magazine, keep going after them.
6. Choose a Writing Niche. I chose farm-related (or rural) magazines. I lucked out. While interviewing for Toy Farmer articles, farmers would say, “Let me show you my other toys.” Those were real tractors, farm machinery, and gas engines, all of which I could write about. Often, I wrote 3 articles on one person, for three different magazines, until I had written in Toy Farmer (319 articles), Farm Collector (258), Gas Engine (84), and others.

Other niches I’ve written about include farming, religions (I often sell the same piece to different religious magazines,) model railroads, dolls, humor, sports, retirement, and many others.

7. Learn to Interview. After finding subjects, and getting magazine permission, I interviewed the experts–farmers and collectors. Interviews (or the promise of those after assignments) are how to get saleable articles. Mine were mostly telephone interviews of 20-30 prepared questions, recorded or typed, and then I spun those into articles. Niche magazines require interviewed people in their articles and interviews sell pieces.
8. Take Photos. Photos sell articles. I take them at shows, or have the interviewee take photos, and send those to me.
9. Read Other Writers. Those better than you; those writing for magazines that you want to write for.
10. Rewrite: After finishing a piece, set it aside for several days. As Hemingway said, “There is no such thing as great writing. Only great rewriting.” Come back, and make changes. Rewriting always makes a piece better.
11. Write for Anyone Who Pays. I’ve published 4,253 articles (including this one!), essays, interviews, features, and more, mostly nonfiction, and I’m still writing.

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Bill Vossler has been a full time freelancer for 42 years, and has published 4,253 pieces during that time, following the steps indicated in this WritersWeekly piece. His number include articles, essays, features, interviews, short stories, poems, and one play, along with 19 books. And, he continues to write today!