Hi all, I’m really looking forward to seeing some of you at this month’s Writing for Change, where I will share with you everything I know about pitching to papers (and magazines, too).
Getting your voice published in the mainstream media is one way of effecting change.
But you need to know the basics of how to get your idea in front of editors, and then you need to be prepared to turn out something good quality, with a tight word count, and fast!
If you’re prepared to do that, then nothing stands in your way!
It’s also a very useful writing exercise to think about ‘pitching’, even if this is not something you are sure you are interested in. Pitching is all about getting yourself into a headspace of catching the attention of someone who probably knows nothing about your proposed topic. To do this, you need to distil your idea down to its very essence. And, to a certain extent, you need to ‘commercialise’ it, in the sense of thinking about how you can package it up into something that wide numbers of people are going to want to read. Whatever piece of writing you are working on, doing this can help you to improve it and get it published. It’s all about getting that editor to say, YES!
I learnt how to pitch by trial and error. I had no background as a journalist, no training, and (perhaps most importantly) no connections! In spite of that I’ve been a columnist for both Telegraph Women and for Best magazine, and written for Daily Mail, Guardian, ipaper, The Independent, Grazia, Mother&Baby, Juno mag plus a few more!
So join me on Thursday evening, that’s TOMORROW - 27th March - 6pm to 8pm UK time. I hope to see you there. All are welcome. Milli x
The zoom link you need is: