Whenever you are submitting material in order to get a bit of freelance work, it is important that you tailor your submissions to the fit the job at hand. If you are trying to secure some work for a relatively high brow outfit, then it is no good submitting commercial writing or casual pieces of [...]
There is an art to writing greeting cards. If you go into your local card shop, you’ll probably come to the conclusion that it is a lost art. Birthday and Christmas cards see some of the worst writing committed to print by professional writers. Saccharine sentiments and corny rhymes are the order of the day. [...]
You may think that your career in journalism is the key to free speech. Finally, you have the platform to be able to report on and talk about whatever you like. Right? Wrong. Because increasingly, journalists have to pander to the requirements of the sales and advertising departments and whether you like it or not, [...]
One of the keys to magazine writing is being able to target to different readers. As any good journalist knows, you must always keep your target reader in mind whenever you are writing a piece for a magazine as this will help to produce a piece that the readers will find interesting. This is why [...]
A good way of knowing whether you are a talented writer is thinking about whether it comes naturally to you. If you can sit down and write something within a reasonable amount of time and without struggling and the resultant piece of work is of a good standard, then it’s safe to say that you [...]
A lot of people seem to think that magazine writing is an easy profession. But in order to write features that engage the reader and encourage them to read the entire piece, you need talent, skill and knowledge of this type of writing. The main thing is to know the angle of your feature before [...]
Writing is one of those professions that people seem to leap on. If someone asks what you do for a living and you reply by saying you’re a writer, you will find that the majority of the time, they will say something along the lines of: ‘oh right, yeah, I’m thinking of going into writing.’ [...]
Most full time authors (think J K Rowling, Margaret Atwood, Bernard Cornwell etc) will tell you that they have to treat writing as you might any other occupation: you need to have work time, and home time. Obviously if your writing doesn’t pay the bills (and, given you’re reading this, I presume that means it [...]
One of the most important parts of working as a freelance writer is building relationships with editors. This process starts when you first pitch an idea and continues as long as you work for that publication. With this in mind, it pays not to burn any bridges. You might be displeased with what you are [...]
Here’s a question for you: where did I write all my best articles? If you think the answer is ‘at the computer’, you’d be wrong. You probably didn’t say that though because the title of this post rather gives the game away. Maybe you think I wrote them on my phone or on a laptop [...]
