under construction

Most of you know I’m a freelance writer. I work in a lot of industries, but everything I write for money is very different from the stuff I post here—mostly things like press releases and reference book articles and trade magazine articles and technical manuals. For a year or so now I have been trying to break into the world of consumer magazines so I can publish something interesting that you can actually buy at a newsstand. The way one goes about this is by e-mailing story ideas (pitches) to magazine editors. These pitches take a lot of time to craft, so I don’t have time to put them together all that often. Also, the whole process is sort of depressing because, while I’ve gotten a few nice replies here and there, for the most part these e-mails just disappear without comment into the ether, making the whole endeavor feel like a big waste of time.

So I’ve decided to try something different. I’ve been reworking some of the essays from this blog and sending them to publications that accept personal narratives. The good thing about magazines that accept essays is that they prefer to read the whole thing instead of a pitch because an essay is the kind of thing that’s difficult to summarize in an e-mail. And I think that evaluation process might give me a better shot because my essays are probably more compelling than my professional clips or my credentials.

The first iteration of each of these essays appeared here on the Shallow Brigade. They have since been reworked and expanded and scrubbed of the f-word, and hopefully they’re better for it. I recently decided to take down the original versions—three so far—from the blog to make the new ones more saleable.

This process has been surprisingly painful because I have a lot of affection for this blog even though it's silly and it has a very limited audience. (Seriously, I love it a lot.) I think part of that pain is straight-up vanity because I am removing the posts that I believe to be my best, and eventually when someone new comes across this space all that will remain are the entries where I talk about TV shows or wild turkeys or whatever.

Oh well, that’s life. And eventually, if I find I can’t hawk these things in the real world, I’ll post them here again in all their revised glory. Meanwhile, I know that some of you are very talented writers who are much more prolific and creative than me, so if any of you ever want to trade thoughts on works-in-progress, well, feel free to give me a shout. (Or, if you’re not in the mood to trade but you’re interested in playing editor, that works, too.) I’ve always wanted to join a writers’ group, but the sad truth is I’m way too self-absorbed and shy and lazy. But recently I realized that my dream is to parlay all my worst faults into BIG BUCK$ so I can stop writing all this other shit that’s not about me.

Fingers crossed.

KO