August 2008

I just sent an 800-word “Flavor of the Week” sex column to New York Press. If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know I’m neurotic. Okay, so, IMMEDIATELY after I sent the email to my contact, I was like: “Wait. Shit. It’s Friday. Didn’t he say his Fridays are packed, and that’s the worst day to email him????? Or, wait, fuck, was that a different day???” My mind races and I start thinking, “HE’S GONNA SKIP OVER MY EMAIL BECAUSE I’M SENDING IT ON A DAY WHEN HE GETS 200 MESSAGES!!!” I try to calm down, but then I remember: “FUUUUUCK!!! I forgot to mention I based the story on something I’d written in brief!!!”

SIDENOTE FOR NON-WRITERS: Generally speaking, unless you have an arrangement with your editor, you can’t sell a story more than once. If you write a piece for the Glamour, you can’t sell it to Cosmopolitan too. Think of newspapers and magazines as sex partners. They’re territorial, and no one likes to feel like they’re getting someone else’s leftovers. There are exceptions. For example, if you write a kickass piece for New York Times Modern Love, other publications will come sniffing around. Sticking with the sex partners analogy for a bit — Some publications are like Hot Football Players. If you land one of them, all the other guys think, “Whoooooaaa, The Hot Football Player thinks she’s sexy, so she MUST be sexy. I want some of that!” Other exceptions to the “no leftovers” rule? Generally, you can tell a story more than once as long it’s not IDENTICAL. Talking about the same topic in a different way is called genre writing, and expanding a successful short piece into a longer one is simply smart business sense.

As a courtesy, I wanted to let the Press know the piece I submitted was pumped with juicier details and nearly three times the length of the piece that inspired it. But, I was so panicked about going about things the “right” way (i.e. OH, FUCK, I HAVE TO TELL HIM RIGHT NOW!!), that I zipped off a quick follow-up email with at least THREE typos in it. TYPOS. My fucking email had typos. Editors have eyes specially trained to spot those things, and they hate them. To them, spelling errors are like tiny little specks of red blood on a perfectly white bedspread. And it’s TOTALLY not unusual for mags and newspapers to toss submissions that have errors. If that happens to my piece, I’ll be sad for a bunch of reasons but mostly because … if you’ll indulge my self-congratulatory remarks for a bit …. I’m damn proud of the piece I submitted. I showed it to a dude, and he actually blushed. He couldn’t look me in the eye after he read it! That’s *DEFINITELY* a sign it was kind of sexy, no? :)

Whatever. Leaving Twitter, Facebook messages, blog posts, emails and other stuff aside, this week I’ve written: 4 pages for one of my book’s chapters,  a 1,200-word op-ed and the 800-word sex column. I write every day, but I’m sooooo tired of words right now. I’m taking a break for the rest of the day and, possibly, tomorrow. Anway. I pitched the op-ed to Huffington Post and, as I mentioned before, the sex column went to New York Press. I hope they publish my stuff. Fingers crossed. Wish me luck!

Technorati Tags: African American writers in New York, Flavor of the Week, freelance writing, Huffington Post, New York Press, new york writers, sex columnists, Twanna, Twanna A. Hines, Twanna Hines

{ 14 folks got down with the Funky Brown }