How To Make a Living Writing...Continued from page 1

Understand publishing. Every publication, from your free local rag to Vanity Fair magazine, exists on its advertising. First publications sell ads, then they flow editorial material around those ads. In a real sense, editorial content is basically filler between ads. The thing about advertisers is that they tend to be unbelievably flaky, which they can do because they know that in the relationship between themselves and the publisher, they have all the power -- which is especially true down at the local level where you'll be starting out. So advertisers come in late with their ads; they suddenly don't like the proof of their ads; they don't pay for their ads; they pull their ads. For all those kinds of reasons and more, publications are forever left scrambling at the last minute to fill space with editorial content that they thought was going to be filled with an ad. This can definitely work to your advantage. If I'm an editor (and I have been, a lot), and I suddenly find out that I've got to fill space that used to be an ad with editorial, you better believe I'm going to remember that stuff you just sent me. If it's clean, and useable -- and especially, usually, if it has a decent picture with it!! -- I'll use it. And I'll be grateful to you, too, because you just became an asset to me. Which means I will be contacting you about future work. So if you really want to maximize your chances of getting published in a particular publication, find out that publication's production schedule. Find out, in other words, what day of every week or month that publication needs to be finalized so that it can be sent to the printer. Advertisers tend to drop out right before a publication's deadline. Make sure your stuff gets to the editor a day or so before it's a sure bet that he or she is suddenly going to be scrambling to fill the space just vacated by an advertiser. That way, when they're panicking to fill that space, your submission, having just come in, will be fresh on their mind, and at the top of their stacked in-box, which'll make it easy for them to get their hands on. In publishing, as in life, timing is everything. Submit your stuff two days before your publication gets put to bed, and rest assured that you couldn't have timed it better.

Learn about word count. Everything about a piece -- being, mainly, its angle and tone -- is determined by how many words it's supposed to be. This piece you're reading right now, for instance, has gone on too long: nobody wants to read a blog posting anywhere near this long. So now I have to end it.

If anyone's interested in my continuing this piece, lemme know and I will. (I can't imagine too many people wanting that; writing is, after all, just a job. And how interesting, usually, is someone else's job? Unless you really are a writer. Then, for some happy reason, just about everyone's job is extremely fascinating. But that's a whole other ... thing.)

Anyway, here's wishing you a wonderful week!

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