30-Day Branding Challenge: Reflecting your brand in your queries

Yesterday, we examined how the queries you send can help guide the creation of your brand. Today, we'll talk about branding the opposite direction:

How do you put your brand in every query you send?

Yesterday I touched on one way: In your "why I should write this story" paragraph (and if you don't have one of those, you should create one for every query), you should include one sentence that cogently explains your brand. You create it by finishing this sentence:

I specialize in...

For example, "I specialize in simple changes that make a big difference in one's health and relationships;" "I specialize in moving and in-depth investigative stories that make a difference;" or "I specialize in upbeat, quirky stories that revel in my subject's humanity, not their flaws."

Whatever it is, you should know it and you should be able to express it.

But you should also be able to do that time-honored writer thing: Show don't tell.

And you show your brand by pitching stories that are consistent with it. For Jen Miller, she markets her brand by pitching stories on the Jersey Shore. You can do this by pitching stories on quirky people you want to profile, or by pitching investigative pieces.

There's a side benefit to this kind of brand development: This is an opportunity not only to embed your brand in your clients' heads, but to get closer to the type of writing you love to do.

So take a few minutes and free write: What do I love? What do I specialize in? What am I great at?

If you've won any awards, this is one way of telling what you do well. And if you've won those awards doing writing you're good at but are burnt out on, then it's a chance to refocus your querying toward work that feeds your soul.

And then start coming up with vague ideas for stories. Any little kernel that's been fermenting in your head, write down. If it fits with your brand, give it a top priority with your querying.

It's not that you can't query short or simple stories that might bring in money while you build up a practice that supports your brand and your passion. But you should be querying every week or every month stories that support your brand. Make it a goal to send at least one query before the month's end that reflects your passion and your strengths, and then you're marketing your brand.

Photo by Valeriana Solaris

30-Day Persistence Challenge: Motivating Yourself into Persistence

Recently, I did a story for BlackEnterprise.com on "The Power of Persistence." In it, I interviewed Damon Brown, the freelancer whose amazing persistence I chronicled during the Marketing Challenge.

In the article, I describe the similarly inspiring work Brown is now doing on another story:

He’s currently in talks with a prospective client to write a lengthy feature after pitching the editor more than 20 stories over the past four years.

“Here I am, with a tough publication, pitching in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and they’re heavily considering a major feature that’s probably worth $5,000,” he says.

The way he got there, he said, was a combination in believing in his story ideas, ruthless self-appraisal, and doing the tedious follow-ups that have built the relationship with his editor.

This points out one of the challenges of persistence: Persistence is about boundaries--and who likes boundaries, especially when those boundaries keep you from experiencing pleasure? It's sensation--bodily sensations of which we're usually scarcely aware--that drives us. If something isn't pleasurable, we avoid it. It doesn't matter that in the long run that the physical sensation of selling a story you love is usually one of elation if the feeling every month when you follow up, or when you get a rejection is depression and hopelessness.

That's why I suggest there are a few ways to motivate yourself to be persistent. For the sake of discussion, let's just say the persistence is about querying to your goal every week (say, four queries a week). For most of us, it's emotions that motivate us. Here are the top three. Which motivates you?

Fear
"If I don't do this, my business will fold and I'll have no money again and I'll be evicted and I'll end up living on the street--and that will make it really hard to get new work! Plus, I'm a bad person if I can't get it together to query. Bad freelancer! Bad!"

Desire
As Brown says, "“I have a mission to cover pop culture and subcultures that are misunderstood. I really believe in this feature idea. I have the attitude, ‘We have to talk about it.’”

Or:

"I really want that new purse/to buy that house/to have a cushy retirement/to go to the chiropractor, and selling this story will help me do that. Oh man, I want it so much I can taste it, I can feel the weight of that purse on my arm. What else do I need to do to get it?"

Joy
"It's so fun to come up with these ideas. It's like a game to shuffle around my ideas with markets to find the right fit. I find it intellectually stimulating and enjoyable. Plus, writing queries is its own art. What can do with them today?"

Those are the big three. (Have another? Leave it in the comments.)

What I find, however, is that no motivation is pure. My desire and joy must overrule my fear to get me to send the query. So consider that next time you want to avoid your querying:

• What's the joy, what's the desire and what's the fear?
• Are they rational?
• And what's the long-term benefit?

Photo by baejaar, apologies to the grammarians in the audience.

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Wrap Up

It's that time, you guys. This challenge has been great for my business, and my serenity. I hope it has been for you, too. Tomorrow I'll ask you to choose the next 30-day challenge, so start thinking.

In the meantime, here's what we accomplished and covered this month:

Terms of Engagement: A new challenge, a new approach

What Yogic Philosophy Tells Us About Marketing: Approaching marketing with an eye on nongrasping and serenity

Should You Care About Money? New freelancers often feel they should work for passion, not money. Here's earning money can help your craft

Establishing a Marketing Bottom Line: How often do you query? Have a plan

Contract Bottom Lines: What types of terms are you willing to agree to. Know before you sign

Little and often: A way to fit querying into a busy schedule

The Perils of Self-Promotion, Part 1: Why it's not rude to promote yourself

The Perils of Self-Promotion, Part 2: Guest blogger Kristen Fischer tackles the question of promotion vs. being discovered

Creating a Marketing Plan that Works: A teleseminar on marketing plans

Fear of the Query Interview: Debunking the top three fears of interviewing sources for queries

Streamlining the Query Interview: Three ways to make query interviews efficient, effective and respectful of all involved

Surviving Editor Silence: Five ways to cope with editor silence

Query Rejections and the Economy: Rejection always suck, but right now they can be scarier. Here's how to recover and keep marketing

Saturday Bonus Bloglink Edition: Tips for great queries; working for free; rejiggering your marketing when you get unsatisfactory results; take a vow of marketing stability

The Power of Persistence: Guest blogger Damon Brown shares how he kept querying for four years to break into his target market

Juggling Marketing and Motherhood: Guest blogger Sara Aase shares how she fits marketing into half-time business and full-time motherhood

Fear Not the Cold Pitch: Guest blogger Jeanine Barone explains why she loves querying

Crafting Bull's Eye Queries: Guest blogger Bridget Mintz Testa explains the process of drafting queries that get a 40 percent success rate

Jumping into Social Media Marketing: Q&A with Jenny Cromie on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook

Saturday Bloglink Edition, Now with Extra Twittering: Follow me on Twitter; some rules for tweeting; rating your Web site for effective marketing; tackling procrastination; treating marketing like throwing a ball

Write Once, Sell Twice (or More): Guest blogger Kelly James-Enger shares the fundamentals of reprints

Organizing Story Ideas: Four ways to keep story ideas organized and off your desk

Get Yourself Connected: Building a strong network

Web Site Essentials: Q&A with web designer Tracey Kazimir-Cree on what writers should include and avoid in creating their Web sites

Breaking into Corporate Writing: Fundamentals of landing corporate clients, with Susan Weiner

What's Stopping You? If the economy is warping your querying toward sure bets, read this.

Photo by sarahgoldsmith.

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Saturday Bonus Bloglink Edition

This week brought us some great marketing and query posts from around the web. Here are a few of my favorites:

Kristine Hansen at the fabulous Renegade Writer Blog shared Seven Tips for Standout Queries.

My favorite, besides going for the quirky, is to slow down:

"Take a deep breath (yoga breaths if that’s your thing) and let it sit for a day, maybe even overnight. What you might discover during your time away is an added source, or a fresh idea for a sidebar. Not only will this make for a stronger pitch but you’ll feel more confident about its idea too."

Jenny Cromie, whose blog, The Golden Pencil, I raved about yesterday, did a great post this week on whether it ever makes sense to work for free. I'd argue no, but she does a great job of breaking down the options strategically.

Then, Erik Sherman, whose pearls of wisdom I've shared several times, wrote on his blog this week about what to do when your marketing efforts fall short of expectations. In Erik's typically thorough and thoughtful manner, he gives very concrete suggestions for appraising your efforts.

I also love that he says that a 10 percent success rate on your marketing is "very healthy." I knew I wasn't the only one who thought so!

And finally, though this isn't directly about the world of freelance marketing, it is a concept that I strive to take into my marketing efforts: Taking a vow of stability. What Gretchen Rubin, in her Happiness Project blog, is talking about is monks who take a vow of stability to stay at whatever monastery they are directed towards.

She applies this to marriage (which is apt), but I'd also argue that it applies to marketing. After all, setting a bottom line for how much and what kind of marketing you'll do and then sticking to it whether it's boring or not, whether you're busy or not, is another form of stability.

And I would also argue that so doing creates a lot more financial stability in your life as well. Try it out and tell me what you think.

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Query rejections and the economy

I don't know about you, but all this financial news is bumming me out. And causing me to associate every query rejection with the Titanic-like demise of the publishing industry.

Last week, I was at my nadir. I received four rejections in a row, and I knew--just knew!--that it was a sign of the financial times. There's this little voice in my head that kept chanting, "Give it up kid--you've had a nice run, but this economy is too tough for you."

Now, you'd hardly be human if the current economy weren't making you at least a little on edge. For the anxious among us, myself included, that edginess can translate into constant worry--and worry to ascribing meaning to all kinds of things in a way that is both useless and damaging.

If you, like me, are having a hard time getting queries out--or bouncing back from rejections--because of the economic stress, don't shoulder it alone and let yourself get paralyzed.

Share the fear

I posted my concern--along the lines of, "Is anyone else taking rejections more personally in the current economy?"--to a freelancers' board to which I belong. There, I got all kinds of great encouragements ("If anyone will make it through this economy, it's you!" and "I see your byline everywhere; you'll be fine!") and reality checks.

Here's what I learned:

Rejection is less personal now than ever.
If a company doesn't have a budget, it really isn't personal if they don't accept your story idea. So if you are taking it to mean something about that company, it doesn't.

However, it may mean that you need to refocus your marketing efforts toward markets with money. Right now, I'm asking my clients as I query them if their budget is in tact for 2009. Most don't see to mind answering, and it's helping me query with more confidence.

Replace the negative with a positive mantra.
Jenny Cromie, who wrote a fabulous post on her blog, The Golden Pencil, about feeding fear or the faith in your career, encouraged me to create a mantra that can replace the "Give it up kid" one that pops in there naturally. The one she suggested went:

I know I got four query rejections yesterday, but I also have confidence in my abilities and know that these rejections probably have more to do with the economy and less to do with me. Eventually, someone is going to say "yes" so I think I'll send out four more queries today and maybe a couple of LOIs ...

The short version that I've created for myself of this is, "I accept that if I keep querying, I will get assignments."

And guess what? I did get an assignment and other editors are considering more of my queries as I write this. Querying is still a numbers game. Just because the market has changed doesn't mean that essential fact has.

It may mean the numbers will change. I'm considering upping my weekly minimum of three queries a week to higher-paying markets to four or five. I met that easily last week and am on track to do the same this week.

Turn off the news.
I've said it before. If the economy is freaking you out to the point where you interpret everything as a sign of a coming Depression, it's time to wean yourself off the CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, NPR, NYTimes.com and any other news source that transmits trauma directly to your eyeballs. Unsubscribe or skip blogfeeds that focus on job losses, etc.

Keep the focus on what you can control. The economy? That's not one of them.

Keep your expectations sane.
Every writer goes through cycles in their business: Sometimes you're so busy that you have to turn away work. Other times, you have so little work that you can devote all your time to business development. That cycle is probably going to continue in 2009. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this market.

Here's what I know from my own experience: I earned more last year than I ever have in my journalism career. Most of it came in the last half of the year during the bailout hearings and foreclosure nightmares. If I look at my business--not the economy as a whole--I see that my business is fine.

Take a look at yours and look to see if you have real cause for alarm or if you're just absorbing cultural fears.

To sum up:

• Don't keep it to yourself. Check in with other self-employed folks.
• Ask clients if their budgets have been affected and adjust your marketing plan to accomodate the new reality.
  
• Create a mantra that reaffirms that if you keep querying, you'll get work.
• Turn off the news.
• Get a reality check based on your business, not the stock market.

How do you cope with rejections in the current economy?

Photo by reubenaingber.

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Surviving Editor Silence

Editor silence. It's the silent scorn of the freelance world.

Or at least it can feel that way when you've spent hours on a query and it disappears into an editors inbox, never to be heard from again. Several freelancers I know do everything they can to avoid querying in order to protect themselves from the paralyzing silence they get in return.

That can be fine--it can force them to develop marketing efforts that involve long-term relationships with clients without having to query, for instance--but it can also be the death knell of a thriving freelance career.

I've said before that I don't really understand what makes a query sell--or what makes an editor respond. I tend to think that the planets have to be properly aligned, the editor must have just the right amount of caffeine in her system and the query must land in her in-box on the day after production has neded.

You can't time their system. You have to create one of your own.

So how to cope with the silence? Here are tips that work for me and other freelancers:

Send a blast.

Some freelancers swear by simultaneous submission. Send the query to five or more different editors at once and you increase your odds of selling the piece, or at least getting a response.

To do this, research the publications you think would be a good match for the idea and find the right editors' email addresses. Make sure not just to copy and paste the idea into five separate email windows and press send. Each should be tailored to just the right tone and audience for the publication at hand. One query may become a service piece. Another a feature. The point is to increase your chance of a response and to make the sale.

Have one in the hopper.

Some publications forbid simultaneous submissions--and it's never a good idea to send queries to competing publications at the same time. If that's the case, I tend to have the next publication picked out and ready to go when I send the first query. That means the query is ready to go, in the Drafts file in my email program. That way, if the answer is no, or if I hear nothing, I get it out again right away.

I feel good, because I know the idea is out there, trying to rustle up some work.

Move on to the next great idea.

Constantly refreshing your email program is the business equivalent of waiting by the phone for that dreamboat to call. So distract yourself with something else that might even be dreamier (comments about my approach to dating should be sent to private email...) Sure, we all get attached to ideas we think are great. But it's harder to pine for one editor's answer when you've got 10 or 20 queries floating out there in some stage of development.

Take action:

• Generate an idea.
• Research a market.
• Contact/interview sources.
• Draft the query.
• Send it.
• Follow up on it.
• Reslant and resend it.
  

If you're busy enough doing that, you won't have time to wonder why That One Query doesn't call or write, and why the editor doesn't either. Get cracking on something you CAN control.

Follow up.

Querying isn't just hitting send. It's following up and up and up. If you haven't heard back for a while, send a follow up asking if they're interested or not. It's simple enough.

If all else fails, accept the silence.

Some editors just won't ever respond. They're swamped, they're disorganized, they're non communicative. And your query may be off base. But until they develop a telepathy app at the iTunes store, you'll never know.

Take the silence as a no and move on. Remember that it has nothing to do with you. You may have fallen in love with the idea and become attached to it, and that's great. It's a sign of how much you love your work.

But silence isn't a repudiation of your idea. It's nothing. Literally.

Photo by dcfdelacruz.

What do you do to cope with editor silence?

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Streamlining the query interview

You've shaken off your nerves. You're ready to do an interview or two for that great query you're putting together.

Here's how I make the process quick and painless.

Ask current sources what they're working on next.

My best story ideas often come in the middle of interviews for something else entirely. If a source says something interesting that's off topic, don't treat it as a distraction. If you think there may be a story there, ask more.

There are two other great questions to ask at the end of interviews: "So what are you working on next?"

Or, "What's the one thing no one is writing about that needs to be covered?"

This may elicit a lengthy response, but it's important. That way your interviews do double duty, and you build on the expertise you're already developing.

Don't promise anything.

When I contact expert and "real person" sources for queries, I make clear that I don't have an assignment yet. I tell them where I plan to pitch it--"story proposal" is the preferred language--and how the process works. Something as simple as, "I'll be pitching it to X magazine, and if I get the assignment, I'll contact you for a more lengthy interview."

This is key because to have serenity, you can't manipulate people into working with you. You may be able to justify it away fine, but your subconscious will remind you at inopportune moments that you aren't working in integrity.

Plus, misleading sources adds extra pressure to your marketing efforts: You'll tell yourself, "This source is depending on me!" You may feel that anyway, but at least if you're honest, you can talk yourself out of that particular rabbit hole.

Do yourself and your sources a favor: Give them the dignity of making a decision with all the facts.

And let's face it: Querying doesn't need to be any harder than it already is.

Keep it short.

While I try to talk on the phone to most experts--because it's almost a guarantee that I'll need to ask follow up questions to be sure I understand the technical side of things--I work to keep that initial interview to 5-10 minutes. After all, you can't guarantee a story, and you don't want to waste your time or his.

Let the source know from the outset that you'll take 10 minutes, and explain that it's to respect both his time and yours. When 10 minutes come, don't ignore it. Alert your source and see if there's anything else he needs to say.

If he's continuing to go on and on, tell him you have another interview scheduled and make a graceful exit.

Do it by email.

Experts usually get a phone call, but for real people, I can often get what I need via email. I did this the other day: I sent a call for "real people" sources to fellow freelancers and trusted friends. When I got a few back, I emailed the people and listed 10 questions.

Usually I try to keep it shorter--closer to five questions. But in this case, I needed to approach the issue from several angles to see what would stick. I got back an email later that afternoon, and now I'm writing up the pitch.

I spent 10 minutes total on the process and I have a source with which to lede a longer query.

What time-saving techniques keep you pitching?

Photo by magnusfranklin.

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Fear of the query interview

The one gripe I hear from every new freelancer is that they aren't paid for the time they spend writing and sending queries.

They resist contacting people to quote in their queries, fearing three things:

• That the source will laugh at them/hang up on them/deride them for asking for their time without a guarantee of being in print.
• That no one will talk to them without a big name--or any name--publication attached.
  
• That they should be spending time on income-generating work instead.

And then there's always that resentment: Why should I, if there's no guaranteed return on investment?

To which I say: Welcome to self-employment, my friends.

This is what's call the cost of doing business. It's a hard--or maybe not so hard, depending on your mindset--reality that up to 40 percent of any self-employed person's time is taken up by marketing and networking. For me, that number hovers between a quarter and 30 percent.

It's also true, for me at least, that only about 15 percent of my queries sell. Does that mean I'm bad at it?

No. It means I'm constantly reaching out to new markets and figuring out, through the trial and error of querying, what that magazine is looking for. I think of it as educational time.

I also don't resent it. I look at is as an opportunity to write about things that matter to me. If you're only taking assignments and not querying, you're probably writing some number of stories that aren't all that interesting to you. You do them because it's your job, not for passion's sake. That's a path, eventually, to burnout.

So I say, why would you pass up the chance to write about something you're passionate about? I don't.

And so I query.

But how to get over those top-three fears? Here's how I address them for myself and my clients.

Fear #1: The source is gonna laugh at me/hang up on me/deride me for asking for time without a guarantee of a quote.

First of all, there's never a guarantee of a quote, even when you have an assignment. If you regularly promise sources that they'll be in your stories, you're setting yourself up for a lot of chaos and drama that will steal your serenity.

But here's the hopeful part: I can't recall the last time a source refused to talk to me for a story proposal. Most people want to be listened to, especially if it's about something that matters to them. Those are the people you want to interview anyway.

Most experts are in the business of raising their profile by talking to the media, so they don't bat an eyelash at the chance that their words won't be quoted.

Trust in your sources' passion and interest in publicity, and you'll be fine.

Fear #2: No one will talk to me without a publication attached to my name.

This was particularly difficult for me as I started freelancing after nearly a decade in newspapers. After all, I had been working under the assumption that my paper's name opened doors for me. People responded quickly. I thought the paper gave me power.

It turns out, like Dorothy, that I had the power all along.

The reality I found was that I was the brand now. My years of experience as a reporter made me a credible interviewer. The publications I had under my belt gave me some credibility.
Even if you don't have that, build on what you do have: Do you have years in the corporate world? Do you have an expertise based on your previous job? Do you know a lot about the particular topic due to years of private study? It all counts.

Fear #3: I should be spending time on income generating work.

You are. The fact is, you won't have work if you don't query, unless all your work is with one or two clients who feed you assignments without having to query. But in this economy, even that isn't a great idea.

What works best for me is to have a set number of hours I seek to spend on marketing a week. For me, it's five hours. I give myself that time, and permission to use it to tool around publications' Web sites, visit bookstores, seek sources, craft the queries, follow up and reslant and repitch.

In another post, I'll share ways I make it easier to interview sources for queries.

What helps you overcome the fear of the query interview?

Photo by Mia Takahara.

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Establishing a marketing bottom line

When I did my first business plan, I thought I'd have to do maybe 10 or 20 queries a week to get the kind of work and income I needed.

Today my plan is quite different, and it's landed me a lot of high-quality and high-paying work. The key has been to have bottom lines and stick to them.

Here's the simple fact about bottom lines: Without them, you'll spread your querying around so haphazardly and so broadly that you'll feel panicked and confused about why your work isn't fulfilling your professional and financial needs. But once you establish your marketing boundaries, you're free to focus on what you want to query and where to send it.

I focus my bottom lines on three terms:

• How many queries to send a week.
• How much the client pays.
• How the client pays (ie, on acceptance or on publication).

If you have a business plan, you know the answer to those questions. If you don't, it might be worthwhile to sit down and answer those questions quickly--because they will guide your bottom line marketing behavior.

Today, I'll tackle the first and tomorrow I'll elaborate on the second.

Question #1. How many I send weekly: Three queries, minimum.

There are several ways to arrive at this number. Erik Sherman has a whole matrix for helping you figure out how many queries you need to send in a week to get enough work. When I started out, I didn't have a clue how many queries I'd have to send before I made a sale, so just to be safe, I assumed I'd need to send 15 a week. That was my goal.

I quickly failed. And failed. And failed.

Now I have a better idea of the number I need to send before I make a sale. But for me, there's a difference between what I know I should do and what I'm capable of doing. To me, three queries a week seemed doable, it didn't overwhelm me and it seemed like it might be enough to make a difference.

If querying is particularly painful for you, the number may be one a month. If you're particularly prolific, you may think nothing of sending 10 or 20 queries a week. The point is to choose a number and stick with it for at least a month.

Check in with yourself: Does that number work for you or are you spending more time resisting working on your queries than sending them? Are you berating yourself for not meeting your goal instead of sending the next query?

Adjust your number according to your answers.

What's your weekly query minimum?

Choose the next 30-day challenge

It's that time again. Not only is it a new year, full of unique challenges we can't begin to fathom today, but it's time for a new 30-day challenge. I'd love to see in the comments below which of the following challenges you'd like to tackle next?

Financial Challenge

2009 will be a stressful year for most of us, given the state of the world economy. So now's the time to put our finances in order. This challenge will address credit card debt, cashflow issues and other financial freakouts that suck the serenity right out of us.

Marketing Challenge

The key to my success is always marketing, whether that means networking, sending letters of introduction, or generating and reslanting queries. In this challenge, I'll lay out ways to make marketing easier, challenge you to send more queries and maybe even offer a prize to the person who sends the most queries.

Another Self-Care Challenge

The beginning of the year is always a time to come down from the excesses of the holiday season--too much spending, too much eating and too much drinking. So how do we realign and focus for the new year? In this challenge I'll consider some options.

Let me know which you'd like to see--and even feel free to suggest other challenges if none of these spark your interest.

The next challenge will start in mid-January, after I get back from a well-deserved vacation.

30-Day Biz Planning Challenge: Goals vs. Actions

Day 5's goal: Focus on your part.

I asked several freelancers to tell me their biggest obstacle to creating a business plan and one of the most commonly recurring reasons was that they didn't see the point. Freelancer (and personal mentor) Conn Hallinan had this to say:

How do you make a business plan if you have no control over the means of distribution? It is the same reason peasants during the Middle Ages didn't have a business plan: they had no power over anything, plus they had to bow to their lords (just like us!). For instance: My business plan is to write four 5,000 word articles for The New Yorker at $3 a word, and an 8,000 word piece for Atlantic at $4 a word. Also I intend to produce five other magazine pieces at $2 a word, minimum 4,000 words. That's my plan, and after I have smoked this really good stuff that someone from Humboldt gave me it seems perfectly reasonable. Once the stuff wears off, it is back to begging for four magazine pieces at $1 a word, and an every other week column at $75 a pop. So, good business plan: have a partner who is too smart to try and make their living as a writer.

To which I say: Good point. We don't control the means of production. We can't make the New Yorker hire us.

Does that mean we shouldn't have business plans? I argue no, and I'll tell you why.

To use the words of business planning guru Tim Berry, whom I interviewed for a forthcoming blog post on this site, "If I'm a fisherman, I can't control how much fish I catch. But I sure as heck can control what stream I'm fishing in."

Having a business plan is not Secret-style fantasy. It isn't magic. You can't just "conceive it, believe it, receive it." You have to plan it, practice it and produce it. A business plan isn't about the end results but the steps you'll take to try to get there.

Want to write for The New Yorker? I can think of a few steps to get there:

• Figure out who writes for them now and what path they took to get there. Are there intermediary magazines you should try to break into on the way to getting to The New Yorker?
  
• Ask for an informational interview from one or two contributors. You really can. They're people just like you and me.
  
• Subscribe to the magazine and the intermediary magazines.
  
• Study their content to get a sense of which stories would be appropriate for them.
• Improve your craft to bring your writing to be up to The New Yorker's standards. That may mean taking a class. It may mean experimenting with different styles. It may mean reading books. Figure out what will work for you.
  

And most important:

• Query them. Every month. Even if you get a "no" every time--or worse, no response at all. I queried The New Yorker this year. They turned my story down. They were very polite about it. Nice people there at The New Yorker.

Those four steps? That's what goes on your business plan--not "write four stories for the New Yorker at $3/word." You can't control whether they buy the stories. But you can control how you act.

And there's evidence that it does work. This week I met a freelancer who said he queried a big-name magazine regularly for four years before he broke in. But he finally did. Now he writes for them regularly.

And it's true in my life. I'm close to breaking into one of my target markets because I followed the steps above. I increased my income. If the measure of your success is The New Yorker or Atlantic, you won't feel successful and a business plan will feel like a waste. But if your measure of success is progress, your business plan will help you accomplish your goals.

30-Day Organizing Challenge: Flow Through Work

Day 22's goal: Create a workflow plan

Every Sunday night I sit at my computer in the quiet of the waning weekend (can you tell I don't have kids?) and fill out my plan for the week.

I started doing this because of a very big problem: I was coming up against deadlines and realized I didn't know what I needed to finish. Or, I'd forget that edits were likely on stories I'd already filed. I'd turn in a story and become resentful when I needed to drop everything to make a few follow-up phone calls.

Now that's crazy. Edits, as any writer knows, are a very important part of the job.

What I realized was that I didn't resent the work. I resented myself for not allowing time for it. When I started this challenge, I got a lot of questions about creating time for marketing, time for invoicing and other administrative work like scanning and shredding or addressing mail, time for the gym, and time for personal things.

This chart is how I make time--and make my priorities.

My method is very basic--a Word document marked with eight columns. For you, it might work better to do it in Excel, in ACT or in your Blackberry's calendar function. The key is that whatever system you will use is the right one for you.

This is my low-tech solution, and these are what the columns include:

Column 1: Client/assignment.

On my form it comes out something like, "Chron-nabe" or "TMG-GINA." Any shorthand that helps me easily identify the project.

Column 2: Final deadline.

Self explanatory. It allows me to include both stories I've filed but for which I have expected edits and those for which I haven't invoiced. Everything stays on there until I send the invoice.

Column 3: This week.

Under this heading, I list what needs to be accomplished this week. For stories I've turned in, I always write, "Poss. edits"--possible edits--to remind me that work is not done. For stories I haven't begun, this usually means researching or contacting sources.

Columns 4-8: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

For each day, I write what I expect to accomplish or what I need to accomplish to stay on-target for my deadline. It also allows me to see that if I have three deadlines, as I do this week, I need to stagger writing them. That way I don't end up frantic and trying to draft three stories in one day.

How Many Rows?

I include a row for each assignment, from inception to invoicing, but also have ongoing tasks that get their own rows--so named because that's what I list as the deadline. It's not that they're not important. It's that they're always due. These include: Querying, Gym, Networking, Admin and Personal.

It reminds me that 1) these are real priorities and need to be scheduled in; and 2) I need to find time to do them every week. This is not optional.

In those "ongoing" rows, I include what days I'll hit the gym or go to yoga, include lunches scheduled with editors, days to scan clips and file old docs, etc.

How It Could Work for You:

Organize your rows.

Start by listing your deadlines by date. On my current list, I have an assignment that was due on Sept. 12 and one due Dec. 16. On the former, I'm waiting for edits, and I use the schedule to remind myself to drop a note to the editor. On the latter, I remind myself to get started this week seeking sources so I'm not slammed as people leave for the holidays.

After the deadline rows, I have the ongoing rows. On those, I remind myself to draft the update to my Web site, write posts to this blog and remind myself that my friend's birthday is on Thursday and need to buy her a present.

Get specific

It's not enough to just say I'm going to query this week in the query row. For me, it helps to list the specific query I'm going to send and the queries I'll follow up on.

The same goes for contacting sources in the deadline rows. I try to write which sources I'm going to call (listed by abbreviation to save space). That takes some of the crisis out of figuring out what to do next when I'm busy.

Make it visible

After finishing the chart, I print two copies. One goes on the bulletin board above my computer monitor, where I can look at it all day long if I choose. The other goes in my planner. It's small enough that it fits just fine.


Do it daily

The real gift of this list is that it saves me time when I make my to-do list for the day. (Not a list person? Sorry. This is the only way I can ever hope to get anything done.) When I fill out my to-do list for the following day--I write mine in the evening so I don't have to think about it when I get up in the morning--I transfer what I haven't accomplished today along with what my chart tells me I need to do. That way, I have a fighting chance to stay prompt with all my work and out of chaos and drama.

This, my friends, is the real source of much of my work serenity. Include everything, schedule it, and try your best to stick to it.

What works for you to keep yourself on-track in work and life?

30-Day Self-Care Challenge: Day 22

Today's Challenge: Query and follow-up

I loved Robert Middleton's most recent post on marketing. He reminds us that we all want to shut down during an economic crisis but gives us some very good reasons to keep marketing, and some less-scary ways to do it:

* Call up someone who's talked to you about contracting your services and check in.
* Network, network, network.
* Offer a "strategy session" to new clients to allow them to get to know the way you work and what you can offer.
* Re-evaluate whether your Web site is as effective as it could be.
* Offer a teleseminar--free for you and them, and increases your visibility.

"When things are contracting, the best strategy is to expand," he says. "If you have an expansion strategy you are seen as more visible, more credible, and more valuable. Expansion doesn't necessarily mean spending a lot more money on marketing. It may mean doing many more low-cost marketing activities."

Amen to that. As you all know, I've been on a self-imposed news blackout for the past week. It was the only way I could function, focus on my 1 percent and continue working. That doesn't mean I haven't seen any news: It's on at the gym, at the bank and I can't help walking past newsstands and looking. It's force of habit.

But I have been working on querying. My goal is three queries a week--it seemed manageable to me. I started thinking when the economy started tanking in earnest the other week that I should up it to four--and maybe I will. But for now I'm sticking with three.

Why?

Because I found myself, as Robert said, contracting. I wasn't sending any queries. So getting three out was a victory. This week, since it's a short one for me (I took a long weekend--a self-care move that I will blog about later this week) will pose a challenge in sending three queries. But I have a plan:

* I have a backlog of old queries--some of which are particularly calling to me at the moment.
* I have an invitation from a new-to-me client to send some feature ideas.
* I have other freelancers I can call on to encourage me and keep me on track.

And though these aren't new queries I think they're just as important: I have a list of clients and prospective clients to whom I owe follow-ups. I sent one follow-up today and will call on the second tomorrow. There's a third to follow up on after that.

In some ways, I feel like these are more important. These are the queries I've already spent energy and creativity on, and they are clients and markets on which I've set my sites. They are part of my business plan.

And the more I follow up, the more I show them that I'm serious.

How is this self-care?

It's probably obvious, but I'll spell it out: I'm focusing on what I can control--my marketing. And I'm working on expanding my business. And here's the real piece of self-care underlying that: Every minute I spend querying is a minute I'm not spending fretting, agonizing or hiding under the sheets and waiting for Congress to fix the economy.

I loved Cheryl Miller's most recent self-care advice on this topic: Overwhelmed by the big questions? Ask yourself the small ones.

So instead of asking, How am I going to survive this recession? I'm asking myself, What queries do I need to follow up on?

What small questions can you ask yourself today?