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Friday, Jun 16
Pop Quiz: Caroline Tiger
What would be your advice to other freelancers about establishing themselves as 'experts' within a particular field or genre? So I guess my advice for non-experts would be to get into situations that have universal appeal and haven't been written about very much, such as long-distance relationships or saying "yes" to every man who asks you out in the space of a year and hoping that leads to finding your soulmate. Okay, back to being serious: My advice to a freelancer would be to pitch magazine and newspaper articles about the topic in order to grow a body of work that lends credibility to your book proposal. If you don't have the clips to convince editors at the national mags to publish you, start smaller and work your way up. (Or make friends with a book editor who works at a publisher you love.) What do your students seem to have the hardest time mastering in your magazine writing class? The second most difficult aspect, not that you asked, is conquering clutter. Strunk & White is my bible for that. And I'll just mention one more thing that seems to whiz past beginners' heads: A gimmick is not an angle, and a topic is not a story idea. This is so tough to learn. When I look back at some of my early pitches...oy. What's been the toughest challenge you faced with your latest book? How did you come to acquire expertise in etiquette?
As far as clips, I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't updated the clips on my site since last September, and I have a huge stack of articles sitting on the couch right behind me, waiting to be scanned. But I'm actually in the middle of rethinking the arrangement of the clips to better reflect what I'm most interested in writing. I think partly because I started out as a staffer for a general-interest pub, my outlook when I left to freelance three years ago was to write about anything and everything that interests me. But it's an ongoing process. As I go along, I winnow out certain types of articles--and certain types of editors! Email This Post |
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