Publishing in a Large Magazine Requires Hard Work & Polished Skill

What every writer needs to know

Nobody works as a writer for 35 years if they aren’t successful at it. A big part of being successful at anything is whether or not you are good enough to make a living doing it. In today’s writing universe, it’s very easy to get tied up in trying to wrangle “clicks”, “followers”, and “likes”. Don’t get me wrong, for certain types of digital writing, particularly for platforms like YouTube, those metrics are important for sure, but those platforms encompass a different kind of writing — one that I won’t be specifically addressing today, though one that does still bear some similarities.

Accumulating 750,000 ‘followers’, 820,000 ‘likes’, and 1.6 million ‘claps’ doesn’t mean anything though if you’re living in your car, writing on your prepaid TracPhone, and using Starbucks for your internet access.

The fascination with worthless metrics

My point in writing those last paragraphs is simply this, too many people get hung up on worthless metrics. What are worthless metrics? Any statistics that we can see which don’t directly correlate to the quality of your writing or how much money you’re getting paid for it.

Sure, amassing 30, 40, or even 50k ‘followers’ seems really cool. The problem? That’s all it is — cool. It does absolutely nothing to quantify the quality of your writing, nor does it — in any way whatsoever — translate into money in your pocket.

Actually, I take that back, it can translate into money, but only if you’re actively trying to sell something else to those people — something other than your writing. In which case, guess what? You aren’t a writer.

Writers get paid for what they write

Before I start, I have to clarify, that I’m not condemning anyone for promoting a side hustle or for peddling God-only-knows-what, to God-only-knows-who.

If you do that, more power to you. My point is, that your ability (or lack thereof) to sell products or services online doesn’t make you a good writer. In fact, it doesn’t make you a writer at all. It makes you a salesperson and a marketer.

This is the prevailing difference between what are traditionally called writers, and the newest iteration of writers — bloggers. Wherein, the term ‘writer’ is a much more general term, and the term ‘blogger’ designates a specific kind of writer.

Such differentiation was never necessary before but within the past fifteen years or so, a plethora of niche markets in writing have evolved with the advent of digital marketing and self-publishing, making new and different designations necessary.

The differences between being a ‘Writer’ and being a ‘Blogger’

As I mentioned before, blogging is really just a type of writing. However, there are people who can’t seem to wrap their minds around the differences.

Whether some want to accept it or not, there are differences — some are potentially substantial differences, particularly when it comes to getting paid for your work.

I could write an entire article on these differences. In fact, as I write this, I’ve added it to my topic calendar to do a feature on it later this week. (more on topic calendars in another article also).

For the purposes of this story, I think it’s a good idea to start by establishing a few accepted vocabulary terms that pertain to writing today.

Some important writer’s vocabulary words & definitions

1. Mass-Market Serial Publications — Mass-market serial publications are any periodicals that are distributed (or circulated) to very large quantities of subscribers (subscribers are usually customers who pay an annual fee to receive the publication). This includes newspapers, magazines, newsletters, catalogs, and other print or digital media that people sign up for and usually pay to receive.

These types of periodicals are ‘the big boys’. Magazines like GQ, Good Housekeeping, Reader’s Digest, The New Yorker, People, Car & Driver….etc..

2. Clips — The term ‘clips’ is a holdover from years past when there was no internet and writers had to send actual cut-out clips of their previously published articles to editors they were pitching new article ideas to. Writers did this to prove that they had been previously published. Today, this is accomplished by either sending links to published articles or a link to a centralized website containing numerous samples of an author’s work, called a portfolio.

3. Staff-writer — A staff writer is a writer whose full-time job is working for a specific media outlet (sometimes more than one). Staff writers are the opposite of freelancers and get paid directly by platforms and not by their word count. Staff-writers are often also told what to write about, whereas freelancers usually determine their own topics before trying to sell those story ideas to editors.

4. Freelancer — A freelancer is a writer who works as an independent contractor. They can write ad hoc, on spec, or by assignment. These writers usually write what interests them and then try to sell it to various publications after the fact or, in some cases, more experienced freelancers with established relationships and reputations with professional editors can pitch or query their story ideas to editors at the beginning or in the middle of the project.

5. Query — A query is a freelance writer’s written application or request for work. A query is usually a single page. It is a carefully and craftily sculpted pitch that tells a specific publisher about the writer, their work, the specific piece they’re trying to sell, and why the piece would be a perfect fit for that specific publisher. Querying, like painting or sculpting, is an art, not a science. What is brilliant to one publisher is complete crap to another (I will be writing several pieces on querying in the days and weeks to come).

Tying it all together

Okay, now that we’ve established a few basics, I can get into the purpose of this article.

In recent years, I’ve noticed the growing propensity to establish platforms and publishing mills for writers to publish their work, which do not feature any sort of editorial supervision process. On the surface, this seems like a great thing, and in some ways, it is. However, the problems begin to show up when the people who post their work on those unedited platforms begin to believe that they are now on equal footing with their professionally trained, journalistic counterparts — they are not — not even close.

The biggest reason why they aren’t the same is because of training and skill, but the second reason is that the things they write on those unedited platforms are nothing more than unsubstantiated opinions. The comments themselves may or may not be true, but without the vetting and verification of professional editors who are particularly adept at fact-checking and verification of comments and quoted passages, the words carry no factual weight with readers because they were never independently verified by anyone other than the writer.

What’s more, when we look a bit more closely, we can usually determine an ulterior motive for writing the piece in the first place, and it’s almost always some sort of attempt to sell something to the reader — something other than the writer’s words.

This takes the form of workshop lessons, newsletters, video series, and all manner of other nonsense.

What’s worse, there is now a whole segment of people who vehemently wage propaganda wars against those of us who expose this kind of thing. They scream that we are ‘old school’ and ‘jealous’ of the success of this, the new generation of writers. I can absolutely assure you, that isn’t even close to true.

A second epidemic that has arisen as a direct result of this self-publishing craze in recent years is the ‘self-proclaimed expert’ phenomenon.

In a new digital theater that began with the ominous misrepresentations of online dating platforms and has now expanded through the social media revolution into widespread manifest delusions of grandeur, quite literally, millions of people everyday set about projecting an image of themselves to the world that is different from their actual reality. In some cases, these projected personas are drastically different, and in an increasingly alarming number, they can even be dangerously deceptive.

Much more common, however, are the group that suffers from poor self-esteem and attempts to remedy those feelings of inadequacy by self-teaching themselves in some hobby or interest and then proclaiming themselves a certified expert in the field. Many then set about establishing online personas replete with all manner of falsified certifications, licenses, and other accolades which actually end up passing superficial muster.

Keep in mind, these fictional manifestations don’t survive light scrutiny because they are particularly well thought out or expertly crafted by any means. They survive and often achieve their intended goal because most people who encounter and interact with these ‘digital doppelgangers’ don’t have the time, or care enough to bother vetting the falsified credentials they are presented. This is particularly true when the person or group that is called upon to believe the tale is in no specific danger of loss or victimization by accepting the deceiver at their word.

Aside from the online dating arena, nowhere is this subculture of deception more prevalent than in the newest forms of the publishing industry. That’s because for centuries — literally since the invention of written communication — many of us have witnessed firsthand the level of personal reverence and validation that is given freely to those who have mastered the skill of expressing themselves through the written word.

As a direct result of that reverence and validity, there are many who have sought to replicate the accolades afforded to those craft-mastering professionals. Indeed many have set their noses to the grindstone, so to speak, and worked hard to become exceptional writers in their own right. However, there is also an increasing number who use modern technology to achieve that same or greater levels of professional recognition and aplomb, without first expending any effort whatsoever to become a professional.

Rather than putting their noses to the proverbial grindstone, and never endeavoring to become more than fleetingly skilled in the art of the English language or the craft of creatively writing it, this fringe subset of the population has a growing propensity to present completely fictional biographies as substantiation of their ability to offer writing and publishing advice to others.

Along with the advent of a myriad list of self-publishing sites for books, articles, blogs, and social media sites galore, today, literally any living human with an internet connection and a few days to devote to the task, can make themselves appear to have an extensive background in pretty much anything. What’s more, since most of the population of our planet relies on sources such as Google and Wikipedia to ‘fact-check’ their information (if they bother to make any attempt at all), it doesn’t stretch anyone’s imagination as to how this works.

Since entries on any or all of those aforementioned sources are searched directly by Google web crawlers on a minute-by-minute basis, all anyone needs to do is craft a dozen or so congruent social profiles accompanied by a decent looking blog and self-publish a few absurd articles on LinkedIn or crowdsourced publishing platforms like Medium, Vocal, Media, Substack, or Simily, and voila! The digital persona of a brand new, completely fictional expert is born! Throw in a few ‘testimonials’ from some additionally fabricated personas and now you have an expert with co-signers.

Sadly, in the scope of this article, this means that we have an abundance of untrained, unskilled, and often untalented bloggers who desperately want to be bestowed with the reputational recognition of being professional ‘writers’. It also means that many of them have the internet acumen to fabricate a peripherally convincing persona of being an accomplished, well-respected, and thoroughly educated writer.

Unfortunately for them, this sort of all-out deception only carries them so far. Professional editors of top-notch periodicals become the editors of top-notch mass-market periodicals because they know how to evaluate writing on the merits of the writing, not on the reputational fluff that surrounds the writer.

Put another way, while it’s relatively simple to create the appearance of being a well-accomplished writer, barring the practice of plagiarizing the work of one, there is no way to create strikingly concise and well-presented words to a professional editor without the trained and honed skill of a wordsmith that only a well-trained professional writer has.

That doesn’t mean that unskilled and untrained writers can’t have good natural talent and a distinct propensity to write well, particularly if they are avid readers. However, there is a much more acutely skilled and polished expectation of writers who embrace the vocation of writing as a means of procuring their livelihood. Contrary to what the unskilled, amateur wannabes will shout every time they are given a chance, the quality and professionalism of writing are absolutely not subjective.

What is subjective is style and theme. These are not to be confused with quality or skill, though most amateurs try to confuse the two intentionally in order to artificially bolster the credibility of amateur work putting it subjectively on par with the work of polished professionals. There is no accredited professional writer that lends credence to this thinking.

So what makes these different from those who are genuinely trying to help others? The details.

To anyone who has been publishing as long as I have, it is not hard at all to tell when someone is giving bogus advice about publishing. That’s because they promise all manner of grandiose publishing expectations and encapsulate them with comments like…. “…all for the content you’re already writing anyway!”

The harsh reality check

I’m sorry to be the one to have to break this to you, but publishing with the ‘big boys’ doesn’t work that way. Not now, not ever.

In the past two weeks, I have read no less than a dozen articles promising to show ‘newbie’ writers how they can write for major publications paying thousands of dollars per article. So far, every single one of these articles I have read is 100% wrong.

The hard truth

Mass-market serial publications DO NOT accept articles or offer assignments to writers who do not have a substantial portfolio of clips.

Further, contrary to what anybody on Medium tells you, articles that you have published on Medium, Simily, Quora, NewsBreak, Substack, or any other crowdsourced blogging site do not count as published clips to those publishers, even if they earned you money.

Why?

Because absolutely nobody with any sort of professional, editorial background ever vetted the quality of the writing or the material in them. Nobody besides the writer ever determined that they were of professional quality or were commercially viable and — I know this is going to hurt a few egos — most of them simply aren’t.

Most of the pieces that appear on Medium and the other crowdsourced media posting platforms are blog posts. They might be great stories, informative, interesting to read, and even educational, but that doesn’t make them professionally written.

This is why there is an entire discipline of writing, known as ghostwriting. Ghostwriting is employed when people have a great story to tell but are ill-equipped to tell it themselves.

Does this mean my hopes for a professional writing career are hopeless?

Absolutely not. What it does mean is that you have to make a decision. It also means that whatever decision you make is going to require hard work and dedication.

Mastering the craft

There is no getting around it. If you want to be a recognized professional writer, able to write for mass-market serial pubs, you’re going to need to demonstrate writing mastery. And, you’re going to have to demonstrate it to seriously experienced professional writers, editors, and publishers. this is called mastering your craft.

There is a whole school of debate on the topic of whether writing is a skill or a talent. Quite honestly, there is no need for either of these to be mutually exclusive. In my experience as a former professor of English and creative writing, mastering the craft of writing comes easier to some than it does to others — those people have a natural talent for writing.

That being said, there’s no reason that people who weren’t born with that particular aptitude can’t still achieve the same level of mastery as the people who are — they just need to work a bit harder at it. Sometimes, a lot harder.

But if it’s something a person seriously aspires to do or to be, there’s absolutely no reason why they can’t apply the necessary dedication and relentless practice necessary to achieve that mastery.

In summation

The bottom line of this article is simple. If you want to be a professional writer, you absolutely can be. But it’s not easy, it’s not quick, and it requires a level of dedication to the craft of writing that most bloggers simply don’t have, or ever desire to obtain.

There’s nothing wrong with being a blogger either. Just be very cautious when those bloggers try to offer (or sell) you advice on how to be a well-paid, professional writer, particularly submitting to mass-market serial publications.

I will soon be calling for applicants to submit work demonstrating their writing abilities — writers who wish to be personally tutored by me (an Ivy League-educated 30-year professional writer and former Associate Professor of English). The students I select will be taught not only how to write better, but how to sell what they write.

Yes, I said the students who are interested — whom I select. That’s because it will be a waste of my time and your money if you don’t at least have some rudimentary writing ability.

“I can remove rust and shine brushed nickel, but not even I can polish a turd.” ~ Kurt Dillon

If this sounds like the path you envision for your writing career, I can teach you how to master your craft and sell your work to the big boys for up to $2.00 per word instead of on crowdsourced publishing platforms like Medium or Upwork for pennies per thousand clicks or $10 per gig.