Interview with Linda Formichelli
Interview by Amy Brozio-Andrews
Linda Formichelli writes for Redbook, USA Weekend, Fitness, Women's Health,
Business.com, Writer's Digest, and other magazines. Linda co-authored The
Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success
and The Renegade Writer's Query Letters That Rock, and offers e-books and
e-courses for writers. Linda lives in Concord, NH, with her writer husband and
two cats. Her interests include science fiction, languages and linguistics,
Archie Comics, Thai iced tea, and cat rescue.
Linda's website is
www.lindaformichelli.com.
How'd you make the jump from going to
school for Slavic Linguistics (MA from U.C. Berkeley) to freelance
writing?
I had actually been accepted into the Ph.D. program and had finished one
semester when I realized that although I loved the subject, it wasn't something
I wanted to do for the rest of my life. As I considered different careers,
publishing came to mind. I set up informational interviews with several
publishers to see if this was the career for me. It wasn't, but I thought that
my experiences with informational interviewing could be the makings of a great
article. (I had always been interested in writing-- I still have the rejections
I got for the sci-fi short stories I sent to magazines when I was in high
school-- so it's not like this was an unexpected revelation.) I read a book
about query writing, wrote up a query, sent it to several career magazines I
found listed in Writer's Market-- and landed an assignment from EEO
Bimonthly, a career magazine for women and minorities, for $500!
I still write for the magazine group that published the now-defunct EEO
Bimonthly. This past February, I sent them a box of brownies to celebrate
the tenth anniversary of my first published article.
For newer freelancers, do you suggest keeping up a diverse
portfolio of corporate writing, magazine writing,
etc., or is it better to build up a reputation in one particular niche and then
branch out?
I usually urge
writers to diversify so that they have several streams of income to rely on.
However, whether you tackle a few different types of writing at once or get into
them one at a time is up to you. The way I did it was kind of a mix of the two:
I started out with magazine writing and corporate writing, then dropped the corp
writing and added books, and then added my e-course. I'm now interested in
getting back into corporate writing again just for a change.
What's the most common mistake you see new freelance writers
making? How about experienced freelancers?
Actually, I see
both new and experienced freelancers making the same mistake, and that's waiting
until your queries are perfect before sending them out. Since there is no such
thing as a "perfect query"-- after all, what one editor loves another might
hate-- you can guess the result: the writer sends out nothing at all. To me,
it's better to get out something, anything at all, than to do nothing. Even if
your query isn't "perfect," which has a better chance of selling: the imperfect
query you sent to 10 magazines, or the nearly-perfect query sitting in your desk
drawer?
Sometimes you'll make a mistake, and that's okay. You may be heartened to know
that my co-author Diana Burrell and I have both scored assignments from queries
that were missing a word in the very first sentence!
Another mistake I see newer freelancers make is spending all their time writing
for those keyword sites at $10 a pop for clips, exposure, or quick cash. If I
can sell my very first idea for $500 (and this was 10 years ago, when I had
limited Internet access and one out-of-print book on query letters) -- so can
you. The money is way, way better in traditional print and online magazines, and
you can use those clips to open doors to your dream magazines; on the other
hand, editors are unlikely to take clips from keyword writing sites seriously.
How did you market yourself and build up your portfolio as a
commercial copywriter in the beginning of your career?
First, when I knew
I wanted to write full-time, I called a local copywriter and asked him for
advice (I was about to move across the country, so I was no competition to him).
He was extremely helpful; he helped me figure out how to set rates, design new
business cards, and target potential clients. I ended up losing his business
card in the move from California to Massachusetts, and I can't remember his
name-- which is too bad, because I'd love to thank him again!
I had a 1,200 baud modem and there weren't lot of online resources yet, so I
went to the library, asked for a local business directory, and copied down the
info for those businesses I thought I could write for. With the help of Bob
Bly's book Secrets of a Freelance Writer, I created a two-page sales
letter and a reply postcard, and sent those out to the businesses on my list.
Eleven percent of the companies I mailed to requested my full information kit,
which is an amazing response! I ended up getting copywriting gigs from such
local companies as Bay State Gas, AFC Cable Systems, Sarnafil Roofing, and even
a manufacturer of jewelry and Judaica whose name I can't recall!
I also built my first website using a book on HTML I found in a phone booth. It
had frames, a purple background, and a pretty bad typo. But it worked (once I
fixed the typo), and eventually I traded my writing services for the services of
a professional web designer. The website helped me attract clients who were
outside of my local area.
What inspired you to begin teaching your online course on
freelance writing? Can you give us the scoop on
any of your students' success stories?
I came up with the
idea several years ago, though I don't remember what sparked the notion. I
decided to do some marketing research first, so I posted on a writers' forum
describing my potential course and asking the other posters how much they would
be willing to pay for such a course. The idea was almost universally panned--
they all said, in effect, "Why should I pay for something I can get online for
free?" Looking back, I realize this was a bogus response, because most of those
writers weren't published, so clearly the abundance of free info online was not
helping them. But I listened to them and decided to scrap the idea.
A while later, I was talking to my life coach friend Kristin Taliaferro, and she
was trying to encourage me to start an e-course like hers, but for writers. I
told her about my experiences doing market research, and she said, "But Linda,
those people are obviously not your target market." She was right! My target
market was people willing to pay for great information and personalized
assistance. So with Kristin's help, I wrote up the lessons and assignments and
did a successful beta test with some new writers I knew. I started the first
session in June of 2005, and have had over 200 students since then!
My students have been doing great. In fact, one of them wrote to me just
yesterday to tell me that she sent out her first query and it was accepted by a
magazine in Rhode Island! Another student recently landed a nice, juicy
assignment from Writer's Digest, and others have been published in
Woman's Day, For Me, E: The Environmental Magazine, Cottage
Living, Black Health, Pizza Today, Wines & Vines,
Michigan Out-Of-Doors, and other magazines.
What's it like having two writers in the house? Is it
wonderful and supportive to have your spouse right there, a fellow writer who
knows exactly what you're going through, or do you end up in fisticuffs over
the daily mail?
It's good to have
someone to bounce ideas off of, but it can also be a pain because we have
opposite working styles. I'm driven and motivated, and he's the laid-back type.
What's a typical day like for you? How much time to you spend
writing, researching, marketing, bookkeeping?
There is no typical
day! However, the lack of a schedule recently started bugging me, because I
would get up at 9 or 10, plop down in front of the computer, and surf around
randomly online for hours. I was spending tons of time in front of the computer,
yet I felt like I wasn't getting much done. So for the past few weeks I've been
getting up at around 7:30 (super early for me!), heading straight to the gym,
coming home and meditating, and THEN turning on my computer. I download my
e-mail, then take the laptop into the sunroom or sitting room (depending on the
weather) where I won't be distracted by the Internet and can answer e-mails and
do a little work (such as article revisions) before my first interview (if I
have interviews that day). If I have an article deadline, I usually write it
after my interviews are done for the day.
On your website's page for your book (co-authored with Diana
Burrell) The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance
Writing Success, you encourage writers to learn how to "break in by breaking
the rules." What was the first rule you remember breaking? And what was the
result?
Well, I mentioned
above that I sent my first query to several magazines I found in Writer's
Market. That means I broke two rules: I sent simultaneous submissions, and I
sent them to markets I hadn't even read. And as you can see, I'm still writing,
so those tactics must have worked!
Believe it or not, I think that the Internet has made breaking into freelance
writing easier and harder at the same time. It's easier because on the Internet
you can find thousands of paying markets, search for sources, do research, and
get in contact with editors quickly and cheaply. But at the same time, having
such easy access to information and contact with other writers means you're
constantly bombarded with other people's opinions and rules on how to break in.
When I started out, I had no one telling me what to do, so I had to find my own
way, making it up as I went along and learning what worked for me and what
didn't. These days (do I sound like a cranky old lady or what?), you can't go
anywhere online without someone trying to convince you of the "right" way to do
things. There is no "right" way, and all this contradictory information only
confuses writers.
Do you still, even as a successful freelance writer, feel
your emotions go up and down with each acceptance and rejection? Does that
ever go away, do you think?
Actually, I never
got upset by rejection... I had so many queries out there that one rejection
from one magazine didn't affect me that much. After all, I still had plenty of
other chances to land an assignment! That's why I always advise new writers that
marketing is their number one job. If they work on getting plenty of queries
circulating, they'll be too busy to sit by the phone like a jilted prom date,
waiting for a call from that one magazine they pitched.
But I was super excited whenever I got an assignment, and seeing my byline in a
magazine was a thrill. I'm still happy when I get a new assignment-- hey, I have
a mortgage to pay!-- but the excitement I felt at the beginning has kind of worn
off.
