by Annette Young
If you want to know how to write for publication, you simply need to start thinking like a professional writer and begin to plan your work.
This isn’t always easy, I have had some of my writing students say that it depletes their creativity when planning and they enjoy writing when inspiration strikes. All writers enjoy that effortless time when the words tumble from conscious thought but this will not make you a professional writer.
Unfortunately, the successful writers out there have to dig deep when the words just won’t come and yet a deadline beckons with some urgency. Some might enjoy writing under pressure, others find that pressure merely halts the creative process all together. There are lots of ways to make writing more enjoyable and productive for yourself and if you want to know how to write for publication and how to take your writing to the next level, have a read of my favourite tips:
- Start to think like a professional writer and absorb life as it occurs. Keep your brain stimulated and your creative processors engaged. Jot down ideas as they occur to you because you will lose them if you don’t.
- Read lots of different publications. Get a feel for magazines and try to analyse what they offer the reader. Think age range of readership too as different publications will be looking for varied content which matches their readers expectations or needs.
- Look out for house style. Every publication has their own style and voice throughout, match your style so that it fits with the overall tone of the articles inside.
- Whether you are writing fiction or articles, check that your idea hasn’t been published previously. It helps if you are a regular reader of course to know this, but you can also send off for their writing guidelines, it will tell you the topics to avoid.
- Coming up with articles that have been previously published within their pages already is not necessarily a bad thing, it simply means you are on the right track. You just need to keep coming up with ideas of this quality.
- Make sure you know your facts. Check them before submitting any work so that mistakes don’t come to light after publication.
- Set aside some dedicated writing time and stick to it. I often reward myself if I have had a productive day or week. A treat of some description works well to keep motivation levels up.
- Start to grow a thicker skin. Whilst not realistically possible, it does help when rejections are received. Chalk your rejections down to experience and learn from them.
- Make sure you keep a record of articles or stories sent out and note where you have sent them. Record your successes and failures, it all helps to develop your inner writer.
There are so many potential writing opportunities out there that sometimes these can be quite distracting to the less experienced writer, think about what you want to achieve and narrow your focus to one or two publications. Create a new writing habit now and it will soon start to become second nature. To be successful you have to live and breathe all things writing and you will find that your writing and publication potential increases in a very short time.So now you know how to write for publication, get started, think, plan and write but most of all, enjoy the whole process towards publication.
