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5 Key Lessons From My First Pitch: A Writer's Guide to Magazine Success
by Writing Workshops Staff
3 weeks ago
That first year of writing for magazines was a steep learning curve. I didn’t know anyone in that industry. I learned simply by doing. And eventually, I was able to work up to some of my dream publications like The Cut, Real Simple, BUST, and others. I would not have learned how to properly pitch those mags had I not stumbled through some bad pitch experiences early on.
The first time I submitted a pitch, I was 24. It was an unusual move because, unlike a lot of writers, I didn’t grow up knowing I wanted to be a writer. Beyond the classroom, I didn’t think much about it at all. But when I entered graduate school, I quickly became dissatisfied with the dry prose of my program and knew something needed to change.
I was studying film preservation, and while I enjoyed the classroom debates about theory and learning to work with the material itself, I also felt a lack. These discussions were too contained, impossible to bring with me to other environments outside of academia, because, well, they’re kind of boring if you don’t have to psych yourself up to write a thesis about them.
Then Cate Blanchett won Best Actress at the 2015 Academy Awards, and something clicked. I realized that I could apply what I was learning to larger conversations being had online. I could show how classic films conversed with newer ones, how filmgoers influenced the industry, as witnessed by Blanchett’s win for her particularly complex role.
That night, when the show wrapped, I took to the blank page to write what would become an op-ed about women in the Hollywood industry. I didn’t think about word count, possible outlets, or anything beyond my opinion. I just wrote what I thought and explained how it connected to a larger cultural shift. Then, I typed something along the lines of “women’s magazine” or “online magazine” or “women in film magazine” into the search engine and clicked on the link of a blog I’d never heard of. After finding the current email, I sent off a small explainer of the attached piece and waited.
It was – what I now know of as – timely (a piece responding to a pop culture or news event). Meaning that in order for said piece to be relevant and optimally viewed, it needed to go live asap. And it did. I had no idea at the time that the publication of that first piece kickstarted a whole new career.
Join Samantha for her upcoming Pitching Your Personal Essay Zoom Seminar.
I tried to find that first pitch. It’s a decade old though, buried somewhere deep in the archive. And despite all my keyword searches, my inbox refuses to regurgitate the one email I actually want. So while I can’t tell you the specifics, I can tell you that it wasn’t my best. It was short. It didn’t tell the editor anything about myself. And I’m going to guess that it didn’t pinpoint the purpose in a sweet and simple paragraph. But those mistakes taught me some of my first lessons about pitching:
1. That if an idea or a piece is good, an interested editor will work with you despite the pitch
2. That starting small is sometimes the best path
3. That writing for free has its own purpose (it’s how I got my start after all and I still take on unpaid work at times)
4. That it’s always a good idea to follow a good idea, even if you don’t yet know it’s a good idea
5. That you can’t get work published if you don’t submit
That first year of writing for magazines was a steep learning curve. I didn’t know anyone in that industry. I learned simply by doing. And eventually, I was able to work up to some of my dream publications like The Cut, Real Simple, BUST, and others. I would not have learned how to properly pitch those mags had I not stumbled through some bad pitch experiences early on.
My intention for my upcoming Pitching Your Personal Essay workshop is to help writers avoid those early mistakes. During our time together, writers will learn how to approach editors and magazines, how to adapt their writing into catchy pitches, and how to navigate the publishing world.
Samantha Ladwig is a writer based on a small island in the Salish Sea. Her work has been published by The Cut, Literary Hub, Vulture, Real Simple, Vice, Bustle, HuffPost, Crimereads, Vox, and Brevity, among many others. She's also been reviewing books for BUST magazine since 2017. A two-time Centrum Residency recipient, 2025 Tin House Winter Workshop alum, and former indie bookstore owner, she is currently at work on a memoir.
