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This section is dedicated to helping writers understand the process of writing and marketing their work. Here you will find a detailed plan to merchandise your non-fiction writing. This plan contains parallels to the merchandising of any other product. Your words, after all, are the product you wish to sell. Basically, this means Merchandising Your Words . Of course, in order to sell this product, it must be of reasonably good quality. Therefore, we will detail some of the craft you must learn in order to write salable articles. This will include, among other things, instructions on how to handle interviews, article structure, openings, transitions, quotes, anecdotes, emotion, rewriting, conclusions, manuscript mechanics, and dealing with editors; essentially how to make an article interesting and valuable to editors and readers alike. Click on the subject of your choice above to visit that section.
If you have read numerous books and articles on how to write for national magazines as we have, no doubt you are already discouraged. There seems to be an unending stream of warnings about how hard it is to "break into" magazine writing. "The competition is enormous," they say; "The editor's slushpiles are the size of Mount Rushmore. It takes years; a degree in journalism; an expensive computer set up," and more. We say you do not have to have these things, it does not have to take years, and worrying about the competition is a waste of time. Slushpiles, though large, are filled mostly with unsightly literary garbage that will not stand a chance against your work if you read, absorb and execute the instructions laid out on these pages. Being a professional freelance writer, however, takes at least as much self-discipline as any other self-imposed endeavor. Sticking to the plans suggested in this section may, at first, seem difficult. But in the long run you will develop your own system, a set of personal rules and guidelines that takes over, sets your itinerary for you, does your scheduling, keeps you motivated, and leaves your mind free to do that most enjoyable of all things: write. To access the various instruction pages, click on the page titles in the navigation bar above. If you are a beginner, we suggest that you start with the first one and go through the pages in order. Thanks for visiting. We sincerely hope you gain some valuable knowledge while you are here.
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