This is all excellent advice. I especially love that the OP uses a spreadsheet to systematically track his pitches and their status. I think using a spreadsheet for such structured list keeping is the best way to get comfortable with spreadsheets (if you're "just" a writer) while being the optimal way to improve your own work and note-taking. I do it for public records requests and searching for Craigslist apartments.
Sadly it isn't. People who don't use spreadsheets see spreadsheets as some bean-counter tool, i.e. working purely with numbers and calculations. They don't see the immense value of structuring your notes, at least compared to just dumping them free form into a Word document.
Hey, thanks so much for saying this. It means a lot :)
I agree that spreadsheets are an awesome way to organize life. I've become obsessed with Google Sheets. This year I learned the power of all the plugins. For example, I built a stock tracker that pulls live data from Google Finance (with no programming background). I also built a custom dashboard for my business to track revenue. It worked better than anything else up to $30k / mo in revenue.
Was just going to edit my own comment but since you've shown up with a reply; maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I couldn't find your name anywhere on the page. Not as a byline or at the footer. Might be worth adding it as not everyone will come through your front page. It'd also be helpful to see links to your published stories :)
Very good article. Just after the MacGregor joke, Andrew Stanton says "storytelling is joke telling, it's knowing your punchline". This is illuminating. It's something we probably do instinctively but it helps a lot thinking about it voluntarily.
Zinsser's "On Writing Well" is fantastic, esp. parts 1 & 2 and "The Travel Article" which is a story by itself... I so much love this book!
What's maybe missing from your article is who do you pitch to? How do you find emails of editors and how do you get them to open your message when you're starting out and nobody knows your name?
It's so fascinating to me when people ask how to find editors. Journalists are notoriously addicted to Twitter. Not only are they very discoverable by doing a search for their name/job title with "+ Twitter", many of them are also unable to not reflexively reply to someone who follows them on Twitter. Or even if you don't follow them -- just read Glenn Greenwald's feed and look at how many randoms manage to get his attention.
That said, it's hard to do a pitch via Twitter. I'm just saying use Twitter as a way of getting acquainted. And honestly, reading someone's Twitter feed helps you understand a bit about their personality and where they are coming from, which again, is helpful knowledge in any cold call situation.
Hey, thanks so much for this feedback. I really appreciate it :)
You're right, I definitely missed some important stuff. I sorta took for granted the fact that emailing people has always been second nature for me. Will do a follow up on this since it's just as important.
