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Write From Home: Lessons From The Editors

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Write From Home: Lessons From The Editors

Writers talk about rejection all the time ? just part of the job. But getting rejected by a no-pay publication really scrapes the barrel. I know: it's happened to me more than once and now that it's been years [of therapy] later, I can admit lessons learned.

1. Competing Market

My first novice article submission was to an AboutCom site. The writing was good, and loaded with links to other helpful sites. It was the latter that got the piece booted. The website editor simply did not choose to publish articles that might lead readers to sites similar to her own.

This goes directly to the "study back issues" mandate offered by experienced writers. Even if you don't agree with a specific editor's approach, you need to write to those specifics or submit elsewhere.

2. Preaching to the Choir

Animal organizations are usually sorely in need of donations, whether financial, by way of goods or content for newsletters. However, an article on the care and feeding of feral cats, garnered from years of experience in rescue work, was rejected on the grounds that it was targeted to the wrong readership.

Acting on that advice, I searched out and submitted to "how-to" publications directed at readers not involved in stray cat rescue, and published the article multiple times. For example, a gardening ezine was interested in it from the point of view of "pest control" rather than any humane reasons per se. Semantics aside, people who might never have read the thing in some radical animal rights newsletter were potentially reached.

3. Regurgitating

There may be nothing new under the sun, but at least try to give your article a unique twist or perspective. To my knowledge, I've never been rejected on the grounds of simply rehashing; however, as an editor myself, I've turned down many submissions due to repetitive themes and outlooks.

It's shocking how far some writers go to avoid writing: I obtained permission from a recent journalism grad to reprint a wonderful article of hers that I'd stumbled across. While doing research into the topic (for purposes of artwork), I found the exact same article. Verbatim. Written by someone else.

Use those No/Low-Pay Markets

I'm still using those free articles to get paying jobs: clips from a couple of humor parenting stories written nearly five years ago pulled in two assignments from national US print publications. Similarly, I base everything I write on rejection lessons learned over the years: study the publication (not just the guidelines); put yourself as a reader of that magazine; flip your angle, dig deep and work hard for originality.

Published freelance writer and copyeditor, Stephanie Olsen, is publisher of JustMarkets. For paying, telecommute writing jobs and markets (your only source on the web six mornings a week!), visit http://www.justmarkets.com. Get your Free Market of the Day, bi-weekly newsletter and Welcome Gift today.

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In The News:

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Google on Tuesday hauled out a tool it last used nearly a year ago to warn users infected with the "DNSChanger" malware.

Microsoft has taken its Google Street View-like service Bing Streetside offline in Germany after German citizens expressed their worries about how Microsoft handles requests for blurring of images, the company said on Tuesday.

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The U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday it was looking into the unauthorized access of a website server in its statistics wing, after hacker group Anonymous claimed to have collected and released 1.7GB of data from it.

Lenovo's net profit for its fiscal fourth quarter grew by 59 percent, as the world's second largest PC maker saw continued growth in sales across both mature and emerging markets.

An often-repeated concern that the U.S. Patriot Act gives the U.S. government unequaled access to personal data stored on cloud services is incorrect, with several other nations enjoying similar access to cloud data, according to a study released Wednesday.

Facebook is to settle a class-action lawsuit in California that accused it of appropriating its users' likenesses for its Sponsored Stories advertising feature, according to a court document filed Tuesday.

Touchscreen laptops and tablets with the upcoming Windows 8 OS will be priced higher than their non-touchscreen counterparts, Dell's CEO said on Tuesday.

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SAP is buying cloud-based e-commerce vendor Ariba for US$4.3 billion, the companies announced Tuesday.

Verizon Communications on Tuesday became the first service provider to say it will use Alcatel-Lucent's upcoming 7950 XRS core routing system, which will bring the French-American equipment vendor into the carrier core routing business for the first time in about a decade.

Having managed and rescued dozens of projects, and helped others do so, I've noted that there is always one critical success factor (CSF) that has either been effectively addressed or missed/messed up.

Dell on Wednesday reported a drop in profits for the first quarter, weighed down by a revenue decrease and slower sales of consumer products.

In its third day of trading, Facebook's stock is still in a slump, taking the shine off the frenzy that led up to the company's initial public offering (IPO) last week.

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Besting a record set by Yahoo in 2009, the research arm of Microsoft have deployed a new technique for quickly sorting large amounts of data, called Flat Datacenter Storage (FDS).

A Florida VoIP carrier has filed a net neutrality complaint against a Georgia utility and broadband provider, after the utility accused the VoIP firm of theft of service for using its network to deliver voice service without paying for it.

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Hackers claim to be just days away from jailbreaking Apple devices running iOS 5.1.1, the latest firmware release for iPhones and iPads, letting users load applications from outside of Apple's iTunes App Store.

Microsoft said that a skew toward more exploits on Windows Vista can be attributed to the demise of support for the operating system's first service pack.

The nation's space efforts entered a new chapter today with the launch of the first commercial vehicle to the International Space Station.

The price bar for PCs keeps dropping, with chip maker Via on Tuesday announcing a US$49 APC computer with a customized version of Google's Android operating system.

Preparing for the eventual widespread conversion to IPv6, the Nmap Project has updated its namesake security scanning tool so it can scan IPv6 networks using a variety of novel techniques.

Alcatel-Lucent is set to give Cisco and Juniper another run for the money in core routing 10 years after its initial attempt failed.

A new variant of SpyEye malware allows cybercriminals to monitor potential bank fraud victims by hijacking their webcams and microphones, according to security researchers from antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab.

Sony on Tuesday showed a digital media hub that uses Wi-Fi to connect its PCs, tablets, smartphones and PlayStation game consoles, a product that it hopes will be part of its comeback.

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Google said Tuesday morning that it has closed the deal to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion

YouTube and German music royalty collecting society GEMA have appealed the outcome of a lawsuit filed by GEMA against YouTube, in which a German court ordered YouTube to inspect the titles of uploaded videos to filter out potentially copyright-infringing content.

Google has finally closed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and will now start working on new devices while keeping Android open, it said on Tuesday.

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A pair of Microsoft-backed industry groups applauded the ultimatum European Union antitrust regulators issued to rival Google over alleged anti-competitive practices.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said Monday that its application system for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) has reopened, more than a month after it was brought down because of a software glitch.

EMC has acquired Syncplicity, an enterprise file-management service provider, for an undisclosed sum.

A judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission has determined that a Kodak patent asserted in a complaint against Apple and Research In Motion is invalid, Kodak said on Monday.

The security vendor Trusteer is warning banks to look out for a sophisticated Trojan capable of emptying the account of an online customer.

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The Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider the petition of Joel Tenenbaum, a former doctoral student at Boston University who faces a fine of US$675,000 for illegally downloading 30 songs.

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Samsung is blocking a hack of its S Voice digital assistant software that allowed any Android phone running Ice Cream Sandwich to use the app.

Advanced Micro Devices aims to improve the quality of high-definition video and 3D graphics on equipment in casinos and hospitals with its new R-series processors, which the company announced on Monday.

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Google has "a matter of weeks" to address four antitrust issues identified by European Union antitrust regulators. If Google addresses these issues the case can be solved by a so-called "commitment decision" instead of formal antitrust proceedings resulting in a fine, said JoaquAn Almunia, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Competition Policy.

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IBM is offering employees who are nearing retirement a one-time opportunity to take advantage of a program that would guarantee their employment through Dec. 31, 2013.

Europe's top court has ruled that the functionality of a computer program and the programming language it is written in cannot be protected by copyright.

Your boss wants it yesterday, but it better be good when judged by the standards of tomorrow. Your customers want every feature they can imagine, but don't you dare confuse them by giving them all the buttons they want. Your fellow programmers want your code documented, but they just respond "tl;dr" to anything you write.

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Taiwanese smartphone vendor High Tech Computer said on Sunday certain models of its newest smartphones have passed U.S. Customs and are being released to its carrier customers, after the company previously warned of a delay in product shipments because of an International Trade Commission (ITC) order.

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Email managers have a lot at stake. After all, the volume of global electronic messages sent via email dwarfs all other forms of electronic communication, including social networking. Since the inception of electronic mail, which, according to some Internet historians, can be traced to a small mainframe app called 'MAILBOX' from the mid-1960s, human-to-human messages have been created, transmitted and stored in electronic format. But early email administrators could hardly have envisioned the complexity of current email infrastructure and the concomitant maze of technical, security, business and regulatory challenges.

Pakistan late Sunday reversed a block on Twitter in the country over material it considered anti-Islam, the country's interior minister said.

Technical problems at the Nasdaq exchange affected the trading of Facebook shares on Friday, the much-anticipated day of its IPO (initial public offering), Robert Greifeld, chief executive of Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., told reporters on Sunday, according to published reports.

Chinese regulatory authorities have approved Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility, paving the way for the deal to close within the week, company officials confirmed Saturday.

In the latest move in a complex series of patent-related cases, Apple filed a motion in a U.S. district court late Friday to ban Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the U.S.

Apple's plans for a Bluetooth 4.0-based iWallet could be the beginning of the end for the venerable cash register.

Write From Home: Lessons From The Editors

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