Easy Steps Toward Better Writing & Getting Published More Often! By Janel C. Atlas

There are a few steps you can take which will turn your great idea into a fantastic query letter, and, hopefully, a well-written, attention-grabbing article.

There are a few steps you can take which will turn your great idea into a fantastic query letter, and, hopefully, a well-written, attention-grabbing article.

I have written for a national publication and was told by the senior editor that the pay per article was $50. I received that amount for my first article for them. I have two more deadlines to write for this magazine –two articles that I pitched.
This magazine had a listing on another website and I contacted that person, who is the deputy editor, to inquire on what they were looking for and what they paid. She emailed me back saying they pay a flat rate of $350 for the same amount of words I am supposed to write for the next two articles.
On the WritersWeekly.com Freelance Job Listings, I found a link to the CBC Radio Freelancer Forum. As a print writer, radio was a BIG stretch, but a little desperate for paying markets, I registered for the CBC forum and newsletter. In one of the newsletters was a request for “consumer” pitches requiring freelancers to test several products and tell which gave consumers the best bang for their buck. The finished pieces were only 3 or 4 minutes long and I knew that this was something I could do.

Before I had kids, I was a public school English teacher for about a decade. I spent my days teaching grammar, spelling, composition, and literature to students in grades ranging from middle school to high school. There were times that the decade felt more like a millennium, but it was who I was and what I did. When my first child was born, I hung up my pointer and whip, and became a full-time parent, only occasionally wondering about the outside world filled with other people’s children.
The phone rang this morning and I realized for perhaps the first time that I Am A Writer. It was my friend, Jen. We used to work at the same TV station.

DAY TWO – Your Master List What should writers do? With so many ideas floating around in their minds, it’s impossible to keep them all organized, right? Maybe not. Today we’ll take a major organizing leap, and create a cheat sheet of the types of information you use. The Master List, your organizing bible, drives […]

When I quit my day job two years ago to jump into the perilous pool of freelance writing, my co-workers gave me retirement cards. Little did they know how many 50- and 60-hour weeks I would spend at the keyboard, searching for markets and taking on-spec assignments. I had no idea, either, which explains why I was so excited at the prospect of making a living as a writer.