Today is day #8 of quarantine days. For us, here in Alexandria, VA, it all started on March 16. Since then, I’ve been using my time wisely, mostly working on a huge backlog of work I seem to never find time to do and embarking on a massive spring cleaning project that would leave Marie Kondo probably speechless.
One of the things I felt the urge to do was to clean out my writing e-mail in-box. Phew. No small feat! It’s amazing how the sent items can quickly add up when you’re sending out stories for publication, writing queries to new editors, communicating with interviewees on a number of tiny details, and exchanging photos back and forth. It’s business as usual in my writing world, but it weighs down my e-mail significantly, making it less efficient to process.
So, I decided to go through my sent items folder first. I processed around the first 600 sent e-mails pretty quickly, making sure I really didn’t need one correspondence or the other. And then, I hit upon my golden egg of discovery, which inspired me to write this blog post.
Look at the main photo from this blog post. See if you notice anything interesting about it.
I won’t name this publication by name, but if you look closely, you’ll see which publication I’ve been trying to target since January 2019. Now that we’re in March of 2020, I’ve been “courting” this publication for 15 months now, which only shows how determined I’ve been and how aggressively I continue to pursue that which I want.
For me, gaining a foothold in this publication would be a major coup, like winning the lottery. I don’t know why. I desperately want to break into nationals right now, and I’m looking for lots of interesting ways and opportunities to get me what I want. I’m really excited about my future and am riding this wave as carefully as I can.
Right now, I actually do have an actual contact at this publication to whom I’ve addressed many detailed, lengthy queries with exact information on what I want to write about and how I’d proceed, leaving no stone unturned in the process.
The rejections have been extremely polite and kind. I continue with my work. I’m studying my industry of choice and looking for that special nugget of information that will eventually make its way into the next query for this publication. I’m confident one day I’ll break in. I’m determined.
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