🤘🏽 I’m Tawny, your favorite writing teacher’s favorite writing teacher.
I teach ethical, sustainable approaches to storytelling, media strategy, and self-promotion. I’m an author and beverage co-founder who reports on mental health, the non-alcoholic drink movement, and publishing/media trends through a pop culture lens. Come hang!
Social media is not just for doomscrolling and comparing your body, mind, and career to strangers while making billionaires richer. It can also be market research that validates your proof of concept, which can then become published writing.
This month’s issue of Behind the Pitch invites you to use social media as a playground for your ideas, start a conversation, then use that convo to prove to editors that your essay or article is worth publishing. It’s always been hella difficult to get freelance writing work, but it’s even more difficult now. Editors are overworked and underpaid, and their writing staff has likely been laid off, or their freelance roster has been begrudgingly replaced by AI.
Grab a cold bevvie and take a deep dive into my pitching process so you can land some bylines, too.
A few months ago, I posted this on LinkedIn:
The post got a lot of engagement, but more importantly, it sparked an actual conversation. People debated AI use, creativity, voice, and whether LLMs are helping or hurting their writing process.
That’s when I knew there was an essay here. So I posted again to do even more research:
This post really took off, getting nearly 100 likes and 35 comments. I tell my clients and students to pay attention to what gets people talking. Stop chasing vanity metrics or making a desperate attempt to go viral. Use social media to test your creative ideas. Then, you can take that proof of concept to editors to show that you’ve already started a conversation and you want to keep it going on their website.
First, I pitched Literary Hub, where I’ve contributed a few pieces. They passed, but I’m no stranger to rejection. I knew there was a story here, so I pitched publishing queen, Jane Friedman. She said yes!
Below you’ll find an 8-minute video that walks you through the actual pitch I sent to Jane, along with a template you can use to pitch your own ideas.
Happy Writing!
-Tawny
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.