Sending Out Ships – A Guest Blog

Marketing and sales people will tell you it’s all about making the contacts. Freelance writers, too, are often told it’s all a numbers game: the more queries you send out, the better chance you have of nabbing a writing job.

I call this sending out ships. And yes, it is difficult to do. But if you don’t send out any ships, you won’t get any back.

The problem with writers is that we take our work so personally. Believe me, I think it’s a good thing to take your work personally. The best writing (unless you are a hard news reporter) has the author’s personal stamp on it.

So the trick is to write it personally and then send it out objectively.

Back in the dark ages when you had to send out all ships via snail mail, this was much harder for me to do. Perhaps because each ship took a lot of time and energy to send forth. You had to print the manuscript, and figure out how much it weighed, and then address and stamp a SASE, and get it to the Post Office….and so on.

But now that much of my freelance writing is done mostly for and over the internet, I find sending out ships infinitely easier. I subscribe to Anne Wayman’s Abundant Writing News job emails and a couple others, too. I read the emails as they come in. If I see a job that interests me and that I believe I’m qualified for, I reply immediately. I do not wait. I do not tell myself I’ll answer it later. I respond at that very moment. (It helps to have a resume updated and a variety of good clips ready.)

Now, here’s the important part. I send out the ships and then I forget about them. Forgetting (read: not obsessing) about them is key. Much of the time, I never hear another word back. But, sometimes, I do. I’ve gotten several regular gigs this way—which makes it very easy to not waste time worrying about those ships I never get back.

I’m convinced the route to freelance writing success is sending out ships. Try it for yourself!

Guest Blogger: Charlotte Rains Dixon
www.wordstrumpet.com
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