How to Be a Writer is a series that is titled exactly as it sounds. In the digital age, writers are facing new issues on top of the old. As publishing continues to shift and change, not only are writers forced to change as well, they’re establishing themselves entirely differently, making breaking into the scene even more challenging. In this series, we offer up tips, tricks, and general commentary on the journey (or slog) that is being a writer.

Can you work alone in a room for more than eight hours a day? Have some writing talent? Then writing may be the job for you! It’s just the getting work part that can be a bit troubling. All writers must face this hard truth: you need to learn how to pitch well. Your entire career can depend on you being bold enough to pitch for work.

Pitching is auditioning. Writers may not be natural “performers” but we are storytellers. Therefore, when it comes to pitching—whether it be an elevator pitch to a perfect stranger, a cold pitch email, or one to an editor you have years of a working relationship with—writers (and) freelancers must master the art of pitching.

Warm-up act

Before any self-respecting freelancer can pitch, they need to be as well-prepared as possible. The ideas must be brainstormed and picked, the research accurate and double-checked, the sources confirmed for availability, etc. The story should be firm enough to stand on its own and flexible enough for changes and edits to be made per the editor’s suggestions.

The story is set, but you still want to get paid, right? So, it’s time to shop it around to publications, but not without some research. Check which publications are looking for freelancers or the contact information for these publications.

Establish a relationship, if possible

The best way to get a pitch noticed is to create a tailor-made pitch for the publication and editor. How do you know what the editor or publication likes? See what they post on social media. Favorite these posts/tweets/blogs and mention or comment on them. Eventually if you feel like there is a correspondence between you and the editor through social media, private message them and ask what they look for in a good pitch. Do you have friends in publishing? Do they know someone? Ask for an introduction in an email. This is networking in the 21st century.

Cold pitching

There is nothing more terrifying than cold pitching. It’s kind of like walking up to someone in a bar and asking them out on a date before you ask their name, except through an email they can likely ignore. Cold pitching, no matter how scary, is the boldest way to get a foot in the door at your favorite publication where you know no one.

Cold pitching has its own set of informal (and formal) rules and protocols to follow. The most important thing to remember is that a cold pitch is all about the subject line. Make it very clear that your email is a pitch. In Danielle Elliot’s cold-pitch guide for Contently, she recommends even specifying that it is a freelance or freelancer pitch. It makes it easier for editors with hundreds of emails to find your pitch later. So the subject line should read something like:

Freelancer pitch: Proto-headline that sums up your article and invites them to click through

The content in your subject line should be treated like a headline: you want to make the editor click through just like you’d want a reader to. Consider phrasing it in a way that offers the meat of the story without offering the whole dish.

If your subject line is successful, an editor will click through, expecting two grafs of information. A graf (not the German countess), is a short paragraph used in journalism to explain the news value of the story. In essence, the first graf is where you need to sell why this story needs to be told (and sold). Detail the story as best as possible in a tight paragraph while also selling why this story needs to be told at that publication.

In journalism pitching, a graf tells the editor why this story is newsworthy and timely, and why it deserves to be told through this publication. A story about the mysterious death of honey bees is timely for food production and harvest season and relevant to environmental issues, for example.

If you’re writing more of a personal essay or blog piece, consider writing a graf that is just as tight, but more audience-focused (as it is less newsworthy or timely). For example, your confession of why you ditched law school to start a career as a freelance graphic designer should outline why this is relevant and interesting to the publication’s readers.

The second graf is where you need to sell yourself: why are you the person who needs to write, report, lament your story? This is where you can state your qualifications, link to your other work, give contact information, etc.

And after you have spell checked and read over the email a thousand times, you hit send.

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The hard part

As agonizing as a cold pitch can be, the wait after you send it can be worse. More experienced writers and freelancers know this. In fact, many keep rejected submission letters and wear them as a sign of future success: you are one step closer to getting there.

The phrase/campaign “it gets better” isn’t a lie. This pitching thing gets better. You even get better at handling rejection until that fateful day when one editor takes a chance on you and says yes. It’s up to you to make sure that yes is the best story you’ve ever written. So write, pitch, fail, write, pitch, fail again and again until you get a yes. Practice makes perfect.

Image: Antoine Schibler/Unsplash