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Flying Away From Rejection
By Gwynne Spencer
Rejections! If there were a prize each year for the most,
or the best, or the most cheeky, I'd win for sure. I know
I haven't studied the magazine or the publisher deeply
enough whenever I get one in the mail. How do I know that?
Because one article I wrote for a magazine called Pilot
Getaways taught me how to really study the market I intended
to write for.
Pilot Getaways is for owners of small planes who fly for
pleasure. Since I don't fly, but at the time the fellow I
was associated with did, I figured it was worth a look-see.
As a writer, you have to be flexible, right?
I dutifully trundled down to the nearest bookstore, down
Tombstone Gulch in Bisbee, Arizona and bought a copy of
the magazine. At the adjacent Copper Queen hotel, on the
patio in the blinding morning sun, I outlined each feature
article. I had two columns—vaguely "what" and "how much"--
that told me the content or intent, and the word count or
size.
I knew how many words were in each paragraph. I knew how many
words belonged in a sentence. I knew how many words should
appear in each subhead. I knew how many words ran in the
cutlines. I knew how many paragraphs belonged on the page,
and how many words to include in each sidebar. I knew the
size of each photo, and how many photos went with each feature.
With the fortification of more coffee, I went on to do this
sort of analysis for each of the less-than-feature articles
and around noon, when the fire whistle blew (as it used to do)
I felt like I was the editor, not a prospective writer. The
whole deal took about three hours, and four cups of coffee.
Then I trudged back up Tombstone Canyon to my house (which
used to belong to a notorious gunslinger-turned-judge and
which was haunted by his ghost) and knocked out a rough draft
of an article on Bisbee. When I got to the part about the
airport—how long the runway is, how it is lighted, the
services provided—I hopped in the car and drove out there.
It's a tiny remote airstrip in the middle of a patch of
tumbleweeds and cactus with a few watchful rattlesnakes on
patrol. All the information I needed was also available online,
I later found out.
I took a few pictures of the open pit copper mine, bought a
few postcards of historic sites mentioned in the article,
and bundled it up without so much as a query. About a week
later, I got a call from the publisher wanting the article.
They paid me nicely, and instead of my photos, they arranged
for a flyover in a historic airplane with in-air photos. I
must admit hanging out of a plane by my seatbelt a thousand
feet above the desert is not on my list of activities I'd like
to repeat, but it was instructively unforgettable.
My article ran longer than my romance with the Evil Bastard
of All Time, so by the time it was published I had moved from
Bisbee to Mancos, Colorado, my secret rebel base by the river.
And once I was there, I took out my outline, sat on the front
porch with some coffee, and filled in the skeleton with
information about Mesa Verde, seven miles away. That one sold
too, only I didn't get to fly over the ruins because of the
fires that year and small planes were deemed to be too
dangerous to the fragile ruins. They sent a photographic
crew later after the fires had ended. I didn't even have to
hang out of the aircraft by my seatbelt this time!
What I learned from this was that when a publication says
"study our magazine" they assume you know how to do this
and that you will do this analytical exercise. So instead
of an "F" on your homework, try this technique and you might
get an "A."
A is for acceptance.
BIO
Gwynne Spencer now lives in Monmouth, Oregon three miles
from the state-owned Independence Airpark where they have
a fine little café that has terrific breakfasts and folks
have hangars not garages because they 'drive' their
airplanes to their homes.
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