Over at her Media Bistro blog for freelance writers, Claire Zulkey started a long conversation about the art of pitching stories to magazines. Halfway down, she revealed one secret of the freelance life:
"I've been lucky enough to stumble into some good assignments based on contacts. I'm miserable at pitching and it scares me because one of these days I'll have to really rely on it," she wrote.
Luck has nothing to do with it. All good writers are supported by a network of other writers, and Zulkey has a particularly strong group of webby buddies.
Today we will take a trip through her network of friends in my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...
Jason Boog:
Obviously, you know your way around the web pretty well. What are your favorite writing sites to visit? Why? Who are your favorite writers with a strong web footprint? Why?
Claire Zulkey:
I run a blog on freelance writing called MBToolBox and it's actually a sideline of mine to do those, so it's technically my job to look at a lot of writing sites--I more read sites ABOUT writing than sites that actually feature writing...
I get a lot of material from Absolute Write.
I'm in love with Miss Snark, a literary agent in New York. Evil Editor is very useful. So is At Last! Writer Beware. Lifehacker.com is so useful and well-done it's crazy. I could go on (let me know if you want me to.)
My favorites writers with a strong web footprint usually tend to be some of my favorite people period--i.e., we tend to hang out in real life so we can talk about nerdy webby stuff while drinking alcohol.
There are a bunch here in Chicago--I hang out sometimes with Wendy "Poundy" McClure and Jessa "Bookslut" Crispin. Others not in the city include Will Leitch (from Deadspin) and Lindsay Robertson (from Lindsayism.)
There are many others who will probably give me crap for not listing them by name right now.
Oh I'm so popular...
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