the craft. the drafting stage.

So much emphasis is always placed on pitching. How to craft it, develop our ideas, and know the right things to say. We recently hosted a workshop with managing editor of CRWN Magazine Ashley Simpo on this very topic. We’re so used to rejection as writers, but what exactly happens when an editor says yes? For the next four weeks, we’ll discuss Life After the Pitch.

The contract is signed and now it’s on you, my friend. The actual work of getting this story together begins. The first thing is not to do exactly what I did, which is put a bunch of pressure on yourself. Ha! You can do this, I promise. And if you can’t, you’re going to pretend because you have a contract to fulfill.

What happens next for you really all depends on the type of piece you’re writing. I’ll start with a feature or profile because these are some of my favorite types of stories to write. So you have a subject now and you have to first do the work of setting up the interview. Now, you can also pitch a story if you have an interview already. Whether that person was your friend or just a contact you had access to. Sometimes writers have already done the interview and only need a home for it. But for this purpose, we’ll take it as if you’re starting from scratch.

Now, this was a bit of a lengthy pitch. Honestly, I would shorten it if writing it now, but it got picked up so, alas, it’s all good. This was a story I was hoping to do on author Terry McMillan. One of my literary icons in my world. Her books are partially why I’m here, but I digress.

I hope this email finds you well and though I know the holiday season is fast approaching, I recently saw a few of your pitch calls on Twitter and had been working on something I thought could fit Zora for the first quarter of the new year.

In March of 2020, Terry McMillan is gearing up to release her 11th book, “It’s Not All Downhill From Here” and I want to see her receive the flowers she deserves as a New York Times Best Seller and leader in contemporary stories that have influenced the culture not just in print but on the big screen. Her works like “Disappearing Acts,” “Waiting to Exhale,” and “Stella Got Her Groove Back” have moved the needle of the representation of Black women of a certain age and created iconic cultural moments based on scenes from her books.

It was a writing conference that catered to black women readers and writers in Brooklyn that brought the contemporary women’s fiction writer into the forefront of my thoughts. As I looked onto the stage, taking in the panels of both accomplished and up and coming writers, I felt othered based on the commonality of their literary influences. They gushed over the church of Baldwin, Morrison, and Neale Hurston as they reflected on the question, “When did you first recognize yourself in literature?”

This, of course, led me to think about my own influences which often feel different than my contemporaries. I saw myself in the stories of authors like McKinney-Whetstone, Dickey, and Terry McMillan, not just in my experience as a black woman, but as a writer. These stories full of influence, great language, storytelling, and relatability were the stories I, too, wanted to tell. Yet, when it comes to lists of great and influential black writers, writers like Terry McMillan aren’t mentioned enough in my opinion.

In this piece, I’d love to explore the work and career of Terry McMillan, her influence in Black literature, and the power of stories that come from the heart and are representative of those who feel unseen.

I hope to hear from you,

Essentially I was pitching an essay around the literary canon and who gets to be there and why Ms. McMillan needs some respeck on her name. But it was all in how her work related to me personally. However, the piece was boiled down to a profile when it was all said and done. So I reached out to the publicist and was able to get interest because of course, people want press for their books.

After a lot of back and forth, we had a date and I had a phone number and here we were. I was going to talk to an author who quite literally made me feel like maybe I could write books too. When I dialed the number, shaky hands and all, she picked up and it was time.

We had an amazing chat. Of course, I made sure I was recording and had thoroughly prepared questions. My approach is that I never quite know the whole story when I’m asking the questions. However, I’m getting a wide range of information so that I can craft a story after the fact. I like for it to feel conversational and not like an interview. I like to see what they’ve been asked and try to ask some different questions to shake things up. And if no one has mentioned it before, a great ending question is always, “is there anything else you’d want to share or that you haven’t been asked?” It tends to lead to some really juicy insight they’ve been burning to share.

Once it’s all said and done it’s time to transcribe which is my least favorite part of any journalism writing. I HATE IT and I try to keep interviews as concise as possible so that there is less transcription work to be done. I also like to take some of my own notes during the chat if I can. It helps me highlight anything poignant or that stuck out to me. It also keeps me focused.

One of the best things recommended to me was Otter.AI which is a transcription service. I think it’s free with different paid options and certainly worth it not to have to try to do it myself which I have done in the past. You still may need to edit as it may not catch everything accurately, but it is much better than spending hours rewinding or slowing down the interview to catch every word. You can also pay a person to do it. Gotta find whatever works. But having the written interview helps with quotes or if you’re doing a written Q&A style piece. Which we will get into.

Interview stories tend to go one of two ways. Either a profile story or essentially a Q&A. A Q&A will start with 1-3 introduction paragraphs and then lead into an abbreviated interview. This is essentially verbatim, your question and then some version of the answer as it was told to you. These are typically edited for space and clarity. So you may cut out some questions, edit others to make sure there is still an arc. But I really love feature writing where you are telling a story but intertwining quotes from your interview with the subject as well as getting some third party perspectives as well.

Profiles feel like a sweet spot for me so I was glad to be able to take that approach with this story. I learned a lot about writing profiles through my work with the now defunct JUMP Magazine. Free work by the way, but a crash course for the J-School dropout. (Gotta throw in there that at some point you write for free in your career.) Typically, once I have all the text of the interview, the story starts to formulate for me. What am I trying to say about who she is, what she does and what makes her tick? Well, the NYT bestselling author has constantly been a champion for Black women. And more specifically aging Black women and that continued with her 11th book. So that was the story I started to tell. After that revelation it’s just about sitting down at that laptop and getting to work. Seeing how the puzzle all comes together.

If you’ve pitched an essay, it’s a bit of a simpler process because you’re mostly sitting with yourself and formulating your idea. Crafting a great intro, middle, and end. You may also conduct a couple of interviews if you’re doing more of a reported essay to help support your personal idea and the process is much the same.

Get started early because deadlines are real. Don’t wait until the last minute. I pride myself on delivering on-time barring extreme circumstances because I want to be able to work with an editor again! How you show up is everything. People take notice, so do your best to deliver as clean of copy as possible on time and then you wait. Wait for those edits because believe me, they are coming.

Next week: We’ll discuss working with an editor.

Writing/Job Opportunities

Ploughshares 2023 Emerging Writer's Contest will run from March 1 at noon EST to May 15 at noon EST. The Emerging Writer's Contest is open to writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry who have yet to publish or self-publish a book. Award is publication, $2,000, review from Aevitas Creative Management, and a 1-year subscription for one winner in each of the three genres. The 2023 contest judges are Gish Jen (Fiction), Sandra Cisneros (Poetry), and Meghan O'Rourke (Nonfiction).

Ellen O’Brien is accepting pitches for Outside Magazine and Yoga Journal on health, wellness, training and yoga. eobrien@outsideinc.com.

Daniel Modlin is an editor for Food & Wine's Commerce News & Deals team and looking for pitches. 1st person (sale) roundups / 1st person reviews, preferred. Pitch dmodlin@dotdashmdp.com. ($300).

Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 10 is accepting submissions for their anthology. $100/story. 2000-5000 words unpublished work. (July 1)

Block Club Chicago is hiring Investigative Reporters. (70k).