Learning how to pitch an article to your favorite media outlets could be the key to you finally getting published and paid so you can stop being a starving artist cliche and finally be a well-fed writer.
My first article for Well + Good was published last month and I was ecstatic. As a freelancer who primarily writes health articles, I’d had Well + Good on my byline bucket list for a while.
To be honest, cold pitching is not my jam. I’m much better at building relationships with editors. So oftentimes I only have to send a two-sentence pitch to editors to get an assignment or they come to me with ideas, and I don’t have to pitch at all.
But if I want to see my byline in a variety of print and digital publications, I must pitch!
In any pitch, it’s your job to answer 3 crucial questions: Why this? Why now? Why you? Here are my top tips for how to pitch an article to your favorite media outlet.
Comments Off on First Person: Personal Narrative Writing Workshop
by javacia
You have a story worth sharing and I want to help you write it.
That’s why I’m teaching First Person, a personal narrative writing workshop set for June and July 2024!
This 6-week writing workshop series (hosted live via Zoom) will guide you through writing several brief personal narratives that you can later pitch to your favorite publication, adapt into a blog post, or use to jumpstart your book project. Throughout the workshop, you will also get feedback on your work from me and other workshop participants.
Here’s what to expect each week:
2-hour meetup
30 minutes of teaching on a topic related to non-fiction and personal narrative writing
Prompts to inspire your writing
Time to write
Time for critique
Time for networking and Q&A
You’ll also get two 30-minute 1:1 sessions with me.
The final workshop will also include tips on how to get your work published.
Meet the Teacher
In case you’re new around here, my name is Javacia Harris Bowser and I am an award-winning freelance journalist, essayist, and blogger and the founder of See Jane Write — a website and community for women who write and blog. I’m the author of the essay collection Find Your Way Back: How to Write Your Way Through Anything and a 2022 recipient of the Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship for Prose. I’ve written monthly columns for two magazines and written first-person reported essays for a number of publications including ELLE magazine.
I have 20 years of professional journalism experience, two journalism degrees and I also taught English for 10 years. So, as you write your pieces, I can help you with grammar and grit!
So let’s do this!
We will meet from 4 to 6 p.m. CT on the following dates:
June 23 and 30
July 7, 14, 21, and 28
I’m only accepting 10 participants for this workshop.
Workshop Cost: $500or two payments of $250 (Collective members, before purchasing, email me for details on your member discount.)
Creating consistent content is important when you’re trying to build your brand and platform as a writer. And when it comes to blogging and posting to Instagram, I am usually Queen Consistency. Usually.
Last month I published ONE new blog post and sporadically posted to Instagram only when I felt like doing so. And while the blogging break was planned, the shoddy Instagram posting was not. But I know exactly why it happened.
A walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells. – Patrick Leigh Fermor
I’m so obsessed with the topic of walking and writing I should write a book on it. Duncan Minshull did. In his book Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking, Minshull includes a letter that Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote to his niece in 1847. In it he declares:
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
Søren Kierkegaard
These words could have been my mantra last year. In 2020 I committed to walking for exercise for at least 30 minutes every single day – in spite of the fact that I was going through breast cancer treatments. And I stuck with it. I walked just hours after my lumpectomy. I walked after surgery for my chemotherapy port placement. I walked after my first chemotherapy treatment and I walked on the days when chemo made 30 minutes feel like 30 miles. I was even quoted in Oprah magazine because of my walking challenge!
In addition to faith, family, and friends, the things that got me through cancer were walking and writing. And therefore, I believe I can walk and write my way through anything. And I am convinced that walking and writing go hand-in-hand.
