Posted by:
Tevai
(
)
Date: September 17, 2015 09:52PM
I don't know anything about professional writing for the Internet, but I think you have an advantage that doesn't exist for many aspiring writers...
You undoubtedly have a local newspaper in your area (Idaho, right???), and maybe you have more than one if you widen the "area" you consider "yours."
Find a story that hasn't been covered in your area (could be a local person who actually has a colorful and newsworthy story...or a local kid growing up who is determined to be [whatever is most improbable in your area] and has [this at least vaguely newsworthy thing] to show for it...or a niche athlete (fencing, or something equally off-the-beaten track)...or some not-yet-told local history story that you've researched and can write up in an interesting way.
Go in to the paper, talk to the editor or assistant editor, tell them you want to write a local-themed story about [name your subject], and might they be interested in printing it?
Learn to write in newspaper fashion (the five "W's"---who, what, when, why, and where---plus the "H" (how), and make sure your story has ALL of them...how to write in an "inverted triangle" (most important facts at the top of the story, tapering down to the least important things)...and how to format the stories you submit (ask the editors how THEY want submitted pages formatted, learn that way, and then check with online sources to see if the evolving larger world has tweaked that basic template, because it probably HAS).
You could volunteer to write obituaries ("obits"), engagement and wedding stories, baby and adoption announcements, and whatever store openings or local community service announcements they have in your area, or maybe do a series of reviews of films at your local theatres, perhaps in conjunction with those theatres (bring in this coupon attached to the story and get your popcorn for $1.00 off)---realizing that your reviews are going to have to be POSITIVE reviews so that you're actually bringing in admissions to those films...
The object is to get credits: actually published pieces (which you are VERY unlikely to get paid for, but which, in the real world, count as legitimate professional writing credits).
Past my first actual credit (a sale to Archie Comics for $25 when I was ten), I went in to our local newspaper (the Woodland Hills REPORTER, which no longer exists) and began writing MANY articles about my Camp Fire group's activities, about things interesting to our local community re: the junior high the Woodland Hills kids went to, and then the senior high Woodland Hills kids went to. Add in one extremely bad poem about the beginning of the school year, and a few additional articles about things of interest to Woodland Hills (I learned all about our community history, and did a brief history series for awhile, with file photos of "the way [a given place] USED to be" (like the park, then in ruins, which was part of the original attraction to our community when it was called Girard...and some human interest profiles of actually interesting people who had lived in Woodland Hills since those early "Girard" days).
I had an adult-sized portfolio of published credits by the time I was in the last couple of years of high school, so I then began publishing at our regional newspaper, the DAILY NEWS---and I kept trying to break into the Los Angeles newspapers (I kept calling the copy desks and they DID take down my stories as I dictated them, but I never actually succeeded in getting them published, either at the Herald, or at the Examiner, or at the Times).
Didn't matter, though, because by the time I was graduating from high school, I had enough credits to ALSO graduate into smaller, but national magazines, starting with PREVENTION (which I had grown up with), and a human interest article about my paternal grandmother (one of the original "health nuts," who raised me on PREVENTION, and how she got SO rejuvenated now that she had changed her diet that she went to college in her 60s and became a teacher all over again, something she had been forced against her will to give up when she first became a mother), and once I got that first PREVENTION credit, I was then able to sell them a few other articles on healthy regional cooking (New Mexico cooking, Native American cooking, etc.), and then I took THOSE credits to LET'S LIVE (published "over the mountain"), and got a whole series of cover articles published on celebrities who were "health nuts": Clint Walker, Glenn Ford, etc., etc....
...and then, using THOSE credits, I got my first job as a staffer at a company which published three regular fan magazines a month (plus about six "specials" a year), where I was writing one-third of each of those three magazines every month (plus miscellaneous articles for the "specials")...
...which led to me being able to write some popular-market books for a small niche publisher (I think I got something like $500 per book, and I sold all rights to the publisher for that $500, but they were legitimate book writing credits by way of a legitimate commercial publisher).
Most of the writers I know have, in their own unique ways, done some variation of the above...and THEY (the writers I am speaking of) went on to write internationally-famous classic books and films (but they were males, and being a male COUNTS---even today).
I don't know how this synchs in with Internet writing, but I do know that you probably need those initial credits to get "in" wherever those Internet assignments are being made.
So my advice is: Start local, and do WHATEVER will get your work published by a legitimate publisher---and your local newspaper emphatically counts. Keep a careful, printed out, list of all of your credits (date of publication, title, approx. number of words in your article, photo credits if any, name of publication), and a file of all of your published articles so you can Xerox any of them on a moment's notice to take to an interview, etc.
At the same time, try to find a "way in" to the Internet market (which, as I said, I don't have a clue about). If you do both at the same time, when you DO find a "way in," you will be ready to take full advantage of the opportunity.
Good luck!!!
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2015 10:09PM by tevai.