COMM 337: Getting started, free-lance writing, opening a blog

COMM 337 is designed to actually put money in your pocket. If it works the way I hope it will, you'll learn how to write and market a publishable free-lance story. You'll learn how to do it by doing it: The main writing assignment in COMM 337 is a 1,500-word publishable story. So you want to get started on it *ASAPest.

[*Translation: "ASAP" means as soon as possible. "ASAPer" means even sooner. And "ASAPest" means soonest of all, like really, really soon. Like right now.]

That means you should start thinking what you'd like to write about and who you can interview for it. I follow the old newspaperman's rule: No interview, no story. So the interviews are important, and they can take forever to line up. Believe me.

When you've written the story, you'll write a query letter. That's the sales pitch you give an editor. It's as important as the story. More important, in fact. Click here to see an example of a query letter that sold an article for me.

It's all in the syllabus, which I have posted to The Mackerel Wrapper below. Link here or just scroll down a couple of posts.

Your textbooks are (1) Donald M. Murray, "Writing to Deadline" [ISBN 978-0325002255]; and (2) "The Writer's Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing" [ISBN 978-1582973340]. They're cheap, and you can get them from BenU or any other online book sellers.

A word or two about blogs --

You'll also start a writer's blog. We'll look at some blogs that professional writers use for their research notes, trying out ideas before committing them to print and, sometimes, communicating with their audiences. But mostly you'll blog about four types of journalistic writing that are listed in the course description, and you'll write the publishable free-lance story.

Link here for some tips on how to start a blog from Robin Good's MasterNewMedia.org website.

Some very good advice for student writers is available from Lesley Smith and Dean Taciuch, who taught a textual media course (English 343) in 2002 at George Mason University.

"OK," they told their students, "we can hear your hearts sinking right now....maybe even a few foreheads are beating on desks in despair.

"But professional writers and professional designers use creative journals all the time. (They may not call them journals. But that's what they are). In their journals they capture:

-- ideas
-- responses to reading (not just 'assigned stuff')
-- half-formed thoughts that might one day jell into 'something'
-- aspirations for projects
-- frustrations with projects
-- new discoveries
-- new techniques
-- revelations ... Smith and Taciuch also threw out some ideas for their students, things they could blog about in their journals. They boiled down to "ideas" - the content of their reading - and "techniques" - the how-to-do-it stuff. They included a final category, which they called "rants (if you must)."

Let's not ago there.

We've got bigger - and better - fish to fry in class.

But writing your way through frustrations - see "aspirations" and "frustrations" with projects above - is a good way to think your way through problems. Sometimes I'll start out with a rant and end up with an action plan as the discipline of getting words on paper (well, up on a computer screen) start to make the gearwheels go around in my mind.

How is that different from a rant? Darned if I know. But part of it has to do with the element of surprise - if I'm surprised by what I'm writing, I've learned to pay attention to whatever it is. It just might be important.

Watch for it. Don Murray, author of one of our textbooks, has a lot to say about surprise. Pay attention to it.

(Besides - it might be on some of your assignment sheets. Do I make my meaning clear?)

In COMM 337, we'll use the blogs mostly to log your reading in Murray's "Writing to Deadline" (sometimes known as the little green book that never goes away for reasons you'll come to understand later). I'll post questions to The Mackerel Wrapper, and you'll post answers to your blogs.