Over this weekend, Chicago freelancer Anne Ford will be blogging from the 12th Chicago Writers & Editors / One-on-One conference (which is co-chaired by MBToolBox guest-blogger Annie Logue.) Here's her first Saturday installment:

At the reception Friday night, there was some talk
about Saturday's one-on-ones with the magazine
editors. For some of us (namely, me), national
consumer magazine editors have until now been more
theoretical entities than physical realities, sort of
like protons--you know they technically exist, you're
just not used to looking at them.

As the repeat attendees have assured the rest of us,
it's not as if the editors are going to make us recite
their mastheads from memory. Obviously it pays to
prepare, but the chance that you will make a pitch so
brilliant that the editor will hand you a letter of
assignment on the spot is pretty slim. It's just a
10-minute chance to introduce yourself, ask (informed)
questions, and float a story idea or two, so you can
follow up after the conference with the real query.
Plus, there are so many of us that short of actually
following editors into the bathroom and pushing your
clips at them under the stall (there's an idea!),
there's not much you can do in 10 minutes to make them
hate you forever.

Meanwhile, a little tip I picked up today from a
long-time freelancer re the importance of perseverance
in this business: "When they say 'be persistent,' they
really mean it." (However: Bathroom. Still a bad
idea.)