Kenn

Lisa

A year ago I was a nurse just about to go on to maternity leave. Having had my baby I set about making my passion and hobby of writing as my hopeful new career to allow me to stay at home with my baby who has serious health problems.

I broke into writing for magazines by being down right upfront and emailing editors asking them to give me a chance, in fact my first 2 writing breaks were for magazines and I continue to contribute to them. I never thought it would happen in that order and considering I had no qualification, training or portfolio to show I guess I was just lucky?!!

Email every single editor of every magazine you wanna write for and despite what some people say about editors some are very accommodating!

Good luck!

Lynsey

I’m not sure that this fits your category here but I can’t seem to find anywhere else to ask this. I’m a freelance writer in South Florida and I’ve been doing this for about a year and a half. I write about dating, realtionships and basically the odd people and situations that come my way. I currently write for 2 local magazines but am dying to break into the national market. How do I go about this? I have no idea what the best options are. I’ve tried mediabistro, craigslist, websites for each magazine, etc with no luck.I know it’s all about timing and getting your work into the right hands so any advice you have I would love. Is an agent needed and if so, how do you go about choosing one?

Thank you!
Lisa

I’m not sure that this fits your category here but I can’t seem to find anywhere else to ask this. I’m a freelance writer in South Florida and I’ve been doing this for about a year and a half. I write about dating, realtionships and basically the odd people and situations that come my way. I currently write for 2 local magazines but am dying to break into the national market. How do I go about this? I have no idea what the best options are. I’ve tried mediabistro, craigslist, websites for each magazine, etc with no luck. I know it’s all about timing and getting your work into the right hands so any advice you have I would love. Is an agent needed and if so, how do you go about choosing one?

Thank you!
Lisa

The comaonies I work for have very strict work ethics and make it clear to their clients that the service beign provided is that only of a ghostwriting one. Yes, I must say I do get a pang of guilt occasionally that I may be making life easy for some college bum who just is too lazy to do any work, but equally these people need money (and in some cases lots of it!) to pay for the service which your average lazy student would not have I guess?

In the service I advertise on Ebay most of the clients use me to run ideas past, get help with referencing, or searching for informations sources, but THEY do the work at the end of the day. I actually find this really gratifying as they really appreciate my help.

This also pays well and I don’t get that guilty feeling so much!

Email me at lynsey.keep@hotmail.co.uk if you want to know any more.

Lynsey

Since you asked, I’m going to agree with Kim about more education writing. That’s mainly what I do, and it’s very different from blogs or the web. Freelancers who write for education usually never see their names attached to their work. Clips are often rare because of confidentiality agreements. I can tell Company X that I worked for Company Y and give a general overview of what I did, but Company X can’t see what I actually did for Company Y. That’s why most companies have their own writing tests. It’d be interesting to read about the experiences of other education writers.

Along those same lines, I like reading about different types of writing that I don’t do, like when Phil talks about newspaper writing or someone else talks about technical writing.

I also like the motivational stories idea.

@Lynsey – Oddly enough, I was considering the benefits of ebay recently. It’s good to hear that it works for you!

I’ve only been in freelance for about 4 months now, but I feel I owe most of my new knowledge to this site. It has also helped me land a gig I love.