How to write

An article for a magazine differs chiefly from a newspaper story in that the magazine must make a wider appeal–to a national rather than to a local interest. The successful magazine writer is simply a reporter who knows what the general public likes to read, and who has learned when and where and how to market what he produces. Timeliness is as important as ever, so he must look to his tenses. The magazine article will not appear until from ten days to six months or more after it is accepted. Some of our magazines begin making up their Christmas numbers in July, so he must learn to sweat to the tinkle of sleigh bells.

I wonder how many hundreds of ambitious newspaper reporters are at this very minute urging themselves to extra effort after hours and on their precious holidays and Sundays to test their luck in the magazine markets? The number must be considerable if my experience as a member of the editorial staff of a big national magazine allows me to make a surmise. I have read through bushels of manuscripts that had the ear marks of the newspaper office all over them. They rarely had a title, for the newspaper reporter’s habit is to leave headline writing to a “copy reader.” Most of the manuscripts were done with characteristic newspaper office haste, and gave indication somewhere in the text that the author had not the faintest notion of how far in advance of the date line the magazine had to make up its table of contents.

Many of these novices showed a promise in skill that might give some uneasy moments to our most prosperous magazine headliners. If only there were firm jaws back of the promise! These men had the nose for journalistic success, but that alone will not carry them far unless it is backed with a fighting jaw.

What happened to me in making a beginning as a free lance producer if non-fiction might happen to any one else of an equal amount of inexperience. My home town had no professional magazine writer to whom I could turn for advice; and though I devoured scores of books about writing, they were chiefly concerned either with the newspaper business or with the technique of fiction, and they all failed to get down to brass tacks about my own pressing problem, which was how to write and sell magazine articles. I was not seeking any more ABC advice about newspaper “stories,” nor did I feel the least urge toward producing fiction.

So I had to go out and get my education as a magazine writer in a school of tough experiences. The immediate results of my plunge into free lancing were:

JANUARY - not one cent.

FEBRUARY- I had not yet caught the national viewpoint, nor had I picked up much practical information about the magazine markets.

MARCH -  It was becoming painfully evident that a fledgling freelancer should, if he is wise, depend for a while upon a local newspaper for the larger part of his income.

It wasn’t until late in September that I “landed” a big magazine. Then–the thrill that comes once in a lifetime–I sold an article to a national magazine.  It required tremendous energy to keep up such a pace, but there was sweet comfort in the thought that, technically at least, I was now my own boss. Gradually, I broke away from assignment work until I was free to write what I liked and to go where I pleased.

Source:  If You Don’t Write Fiction, by Charles Phelps Cushing