The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 1 January 2010

Writers' Digest, October 2004, pages 26 to 33, has a collection of short "nuggets of wisdom" related to getting published. Maria Schneider is the author of the compilation. Take a deep breath, and here we go:

"Try not to send too many pitches at once. You can overwhelm an editor. No more than four for short pieces, one or two at the most for major articles." Margo True

Back when writers was at nodaka on bitnet, and I was reading things from Japan, there was some argument or something... and I posted a whole slew of stuff, message after message. Someone wrote to me offline and suggested that I was burying my own message in the morass (or something like that). I thought about that, and have tended to post only one or two messages a day ever since. It helps me to focus on getting one good message through (instead of trying to hit my target with a shotgun of messages in the general vicinity) and avoids burying the reader.

I figure the same thing applies to editors (and slush readers, etc.). If you bury them in a pile of stuff, they are more likely to just toss the whole mess without bothering to read each one. Put a few tasty ones right in front of them... and they are more likely to pay attention.

Don't avalanche -- pitch.