Write a magazine article

I’ve always known that my writing skills are good enough. Now I want to prove it to myself.

There are just two obstacles I have to face: What to write about, and where to send it.

I was going to say I was putting this on the back burner, but it would simmer forever. I’m putting it in the deep freeze to get out at a different time in my life.

And take opportunities as they come up! An article is running this year in a journal about electronic reserves at libraries, which is what my day job covers—it may not seem as striking as my music review work, but it is a professional credit, it allows me to show I’ve done more than one field of work, and thanks to a good editor it providing further improvement for my writing.

One of my long term goals is to write more, and one of the types of things I’d like to write is magazine articles. But I never seem to get around to it. For instance, I have a great idea for an article for Brainstorm magazine right now, and I have pulled together a lot of the material I need, but I never actually write it. Which is dumb, because the topic is time sensitive.

I know that I am deadline driven, so for me to write unsolicited magazine articles, I will have to work on my self motivation. But so many things take priority. I guess this means that magazine writing is not for me at this point in my life, and I need to be patient, or I need to shift some other things around and focus on this project.

In the next month, my plan is to decide if this is something I want to concentrate on right now, or something that I want to do at a different time.

I got to do this when I started my own fashion/beauty/lifestyle magazine. It’s a great feeling to research something, then pass on the knowledge in a more comprehensive way to the general public. I am happy to work with budding writers who don’t mind volunteering their time and abilities to achieving their goals. :)

My Grandmother always said I should be published, and now I am looking at getting in to a PhD program and it would help if I were published. So I guess that I should get to it. I write a lot of papers for school and I have to time. So now is perfect. So how do I do this is the next question.

I think it would be cool to be published in any one of the women’s mags I read. I think my article might be somewhere between Erma Bombeck and Gloria Steinham-ish.