Laurie Winslow Sargent

Tag: Laurie Winslow Sargent

  • Writing for Chicken Soup for the Soul

    Writing for Chicken Soup for the Soul

    Authors, one way to get your true personal stories published is through Chicken Soup for the Soul, LLC. Here’s a list of benefits in writing for that company, plus details about a few prolific Chicken Soup story writers.

    Chicken Soup for the Soul books with stories by Laurie Winslow Sargent

    A Chicken Soup for the Soul story is an inspirational, true story about ordinary people having extraordinary experiences. It is a story that opens the heart and rekindles the spirit. ”  ~ chickensoup.com

    I recently was published for the fifth time by this company, including back when the imprint was HCI (Health Communications, Inc.) with Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield. Now CCS (Chicken Soup for the Soul, Inc.) is headed up by Amy Newmark.

    However, I “ain’t nuthin’ ” compared to other prolific Chicken Soup writers in my one small North Carolina critique group. Our group has so many published stories (29 stories, so far, with more in the works) our group has been dubbed “The Chicken Coop”.

    The decided winner so far, in number of published stories from our group, is Nancy Emmick Panko with 14 CSS stories. The other 15 stories are spread out among five more of us: Terry Hans, Barbara Bennett, Dea Irby, JoAnne Check, and myself. (I’ll share a list of their stories in a moment and links to books they were in.) But part of that success is our group’s familiarity with what “makes” a Chicken Soup story, and what doesn’t.

    Be sure to read at the chickensoup.com website their writer’s guidelines for submission. They receive so many submissions, competition can be tough. In our group we’ve also submitted other stories that didn’t make it. Only 101 stories are chosen per book, after many other submissions are weeded out so it’s truly an honor to be included. The stories go through selection rounds until it gets down to the final 101.

    Here are some advantages to writing for this publisher:

    • It’s a great way to be in a book without having to write a whole book, and you get into print fairly quickly.
    • Author bios at the end of the book are generous, and can include author book titles and contact info.
    • Payment is nice: $200 for stories (up to 1200 words long). They also currently send 10 free copies of the book, plus discounts on more to sell if you like.
    • The company is great about suggesting ways to promote the books and engaging their authors in that. One current way is through Twitter parties. The also have a digest just for their authors to spotlight how some are helping promote the books.
    • It’s a great way to get a story of yours visible by many more readers than one of your own books might generate — stories you want to encourage as many people as possible. (This has been my favorite benefit, because I love to share stories about amazing ways God has answered prayers.)
    • It builds your author credits and helps readers become familiar with your author name.

    How to submit to Chicken Soup for the Soul:

    Check out Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Possible Book Topics page with current titles the publisher is seeking submissions for. It’s kept updated, with deadlines and usually has 3-5 books in the works. There’s an additional tab to submit your story right there online. (Edit it first –maybe with your own critique group!)

    But WAIT! Bookmark this page so you can check out these Chicken Soup titles, some you may already own, and read stories by my group members who I’m so proud of.

    By the way, another book, The Ultimate Dog Lover (2008) was a spin-off book by HCI, so not technically a Chicken Soup book. It’s worth mentioning because another terrific thing this publisher does is send requests to their existing authors for more material. Sometimes that’s an email with more detail about needs for upcoming books. However, in this case, it was a request for photos. My beloved dog Nikki earned a full-page in the book; her photo happened to be on my computer desktop the day I got the email request. Very serendipitous.

    You might enjoy our joint Bio at the end of that book, which became its own story:

    Laurie Winslow Sargent is an author specializing in family play–including play with her four-year-old miniature American Eskimo Mix, Nikki. Nikki loves soccer (catching the ball in the air with her front paws, dribbling, and blocking on command) and bounce-passing a basketball. She wipes her feet on a mat (for a treat!) and hops into her crate when she hears the AOL “Good-bye!”. Best of all, when her family returns from work or school, Nikki greets them with and excited “Hi!” The sound initially occurred as a yawn, that coincidentally sounded like the word.

    That AOL reference is a clue to how long we ladies have been writing!

    Your turn! Write On.

    Laurie Winslow Sargent

  • Freelance Awakening and Article Sale Dances : Writing for Magazines

    Freelance Awakening and Article Sale Dances : Writing for Magazines

    Wonder how to start writing  for magazines? Here’s my story:

    excited woman imageI still recall, back in 1988 when my son was a toddler, the moment I heard that anybody who put their mind to it could write for magazines. Even me?  It was quite a revelation – for some reason, I’d thought all magazines were staff written. Or at least written by famous writers. What an eye-opener the truth was! I picked up magazines on newsstands with a fresh eye.

    Of course, my next question was, “How?”

    How do you know what content magazine editors want?  How do you approach them in a professional way? How would I learn to write well enough? And of course: What do they pay?”

    I read market listings in the Writer’s Market (updated annually, usually available in library reference areas, but also available from Writers Digest Books). What a marvel! I found — under each magazine title — what editor to contact, best contact method, and pay rates: 10 cents to a dollar a word, depending on publication and author experience. (Sorry to say, rates haven’t changed much in two decades. But they still pay better than free blog posts, right?)  Some publications give clues about content they need most.

    The Writer’s Market is a great tool for finding publications currently purchasing articles. Listings include editors’ names, contact info, themes, and pay rates for articles. The Kindle version may be a good start for you, but if you want to keep up with updates to listings, I recommend the book+online edition. Bear in mind the WM is written the year before publication, so do check to be sure info is current. It helps to visit a publication’s website to verify their current writer’s guidelines.

     

    Still I wondered: although anyone could submit, what were my chances of publication? Some writer’s guidelines tell you your odds of getting in if you are a newbie or mention short sections in their magazines that are most open to less experienced writers.

    I was excited to learn that you usually don’t usually submit an article – you submit a query (article proposal), then write the article after you get a contract for it, with a deadline date and expected word count.

    Some magazines pay on publication (which could be up to a year after you send in your finished article, but is often four months or so). Others pay after the editors have accepted your article.  A few, if they decide not to use your article after all, pay a “kill fee” giving your rights back. (It’s a merciful death, at least with a consolation prize. And not really a death at all, because you can sell first rights to the article again.)

    I tried my hand first at a personal experience story about an answered prayer, and submitted it to Power for Living. I still remember the day I pushed my son in his stroller to the post office in our tiny town, opened up our PO box, and in it was a check! For a whopping $100! I was so thrilled, I jumped up and down screeching. My son shouted “Yay!” too, although he had no idea what had gotten Mommy so excited.

    I wrote more queries.  Bombed out a few times. Overshot to big publications with a lot of competition. Got some standard, generic, rejection slips. Ouch. THAT wasn’t fun.

    But I think I handled it better than most, because I’d run a different kind of business for the previous dozen years. As a crafts-person, I had created and sold a thousand of my off-loom weavings, to art galleries and via art shows. I’d learned not everyone had the same tastes, and that was OK. So I tried to look at my writing as a product, not an extension of my personality. A product I could improve on, but might not fit every publication or season or theme.

    Here’s one analogy: some customers loved my weavings, but ordered colors and designs different from my samples. I figured some magazines might like my writing style, but prefer a different topic or treatment of the topic, or the timing might not be right.

    So I pressed on.

    I kept hearing from writing sources to “write what you know”. To me, that included what I had learned or was in the process of learning from others. One frustration for me at that time was that my toddler son was outgrowing his clothes WAY too rapidly (within months). I realized it was due to the styles I’d chosen or had been given as gifts. So I informally interviewed other moms to figure out what styles a child could wear for the longest periods of time. I fired off a query to Baby Talk, telling them what I was researching and how I’d present the results. I just figured that if I as a mom had questions, so might other moms.

    I was right! And ecstatic when a contract arrived in the mail, offering me a nice per-word rate and a deadline. I had an idea for a second article at the same time, and Baby Talk decided to run them together, in the same issue. The day that glossy magazine arrived in the mail, with my articles illustrated and my own byline, I was over the moon!

    I’m a bit sad to say I miss those moments when I danced with excitement on having articles accepted. I must be getting a bit jaded now that I’ve been honored to have 100+ articles sold over the years. I opened an envelope recently with a check for $1100 from one magazine, and shame on me, I just breathed “Whew.” I was just glad it had arrived in time to pay off a bill. I did not dance in the least.

    So excuse me.  I need to take a moment to relive that moment. To think about how hard it still can be to make those sales, and …

    JUMP FOR JOY!

    Have you had a recent success in writing for magazines that made you burst with excitement? Tell us about it in a comment, below! Give some hope to all those new freelancers looking forward to the day they can dance at the mailbox.

     

    [Image courtesy of stockimages/freedigitalphotos.net]