WD Editors

Chapter 2
Identify Your Audiences

“To me, there is no such thing as a good idea or a bad idea. There’s an idea that you can sell to a particular magazine, and there’s an idea that is a perfectly good idea that will not sell to a magazine, at least not a magazine you want to write for.”
~ Elizabeth Rusch, mother of two

Our readers will be everybody, right? Nope.

The most successful writers are intimately acquainted with their audiences and know the best way to speak to them, but you can’t be that tuned into everybody. You have to narrow your focus.

Most moms start writing for an audience just like themselves. And yet, because it seems so obvious, audience identification can be tricky if you over-sympathize with your audience or if don’t think about them enough. Spend time understanding your most natural audiences, because this step may well make the difference between writing for a specific readership and writing for no one at all.

Take a Closer Look at What You Read

All published materials, from bestsellers to blogs, have a clearly defined target audience. If you subscribe to or read a magazine regularly, chances are good that you fall into its target market.

Take a complete inventory of what you read. Empty your magazine rack, check your coffee table, look on your bookshelves and your nightstand for every book, magazine, newspaper, and newsletter. And don’t stop there. Open the Favorites folder in your Internet browser and see what you can see. Are you beginning to notice a pattern in your reading habits? List all of your top reads by name, type of publication, and name of the publishing company, like these samples:

Books: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year, by Anne Lamott. Anchor.

Magazines/Periodicals: Better Homes and Gardens; Bargain Style. Meredith Publishing Group.

Newspapers: The Oregonian. Metro newspaper. Newhouse News.

Online Publications: BlueSuitMom.com. Advice for professional mothers. BSM Media.

Examine Your Roles

To choose a good first audience, look at those you easily identify with and branch out from there. Start by jotting down keywords that describe you. Yes, it’s labeling or stereotyping, but stay with it. For example, here are some of mine. I am a:

Woman
Wife
Mother
Parent
Writer
Teacher
Friend
Daughter
Sister

Easy enough, so far? Now choose at least nine words that describe you. They won’t all be the same as mine, but keep them fairly straightforward for now.

From these nine, narrow your list down to your top four. They may be the words that strike you as particularly pertinent to you today. They may be related to ideas that have been on your mind recently. Or they may be your top four of all time. Use your instincts and don’t overthink it. This is not the time to choose “daughter” because your mother would be disappointed if you didn’t. This is the time to say, “I’m picking lover because I’ve been thinking about sex a lot lately.”

Your keywords will now be put to work finding your best audiences. On a blank page, draw a pie chart (Cathy Belben gave me the idea for this step of the process): first a good-sized circle; then two lines, from top to bottom and side to side, to divide your pie into quarters. Just beyond the outer edge of each quarter-slice of pie, write one of your top four
keywords.

Then, use a table to explore your keywords in a little more detail before you fill in each quarter-slice of pie. Start by listing your keywords in the left-hand column, then ask, “What characterizes me in this role?”

Write down what sets you apart from, or connects you to, the norm. Write whatever pops into your head and don’t be too picky. The point is to dig deeper into potential material for each of your chosen audiences. Once you have some ideas to work with, ask, “Who specifically would identify with or be interested in these topics?” Brainstorm specific descriptions until your audiences distinguish themselves from the crowd, like “Generation X moms,” “Holistic moms,” “Creative moms,” or “Literary-minded moms.” I can think of four magazines right off the top of my head that these types of moms might read (and you will be able to as well, once you familiarize yourself with a variety of publications):

Generation X Moms: Hip Mama (zine)
Holistic Moms: Mothering
Creative Moms: Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion
Literary-minded Moms: Brain,Child

Transfer the name of the publication into the pie-chart section where it fits. Then go back to your original list of publications you already read. Do any of them fit into your slices of pie (audiences)? If so, fill them in. As a reader, already familiar with their tone, content, and style, you are uniquely qualified to write for them.

As you move along the regular grooves of everyday life, you’ll start noticing new publications that fit your top four audiences, publications you never noticed before. Could they become publications you could potentially write for? Heck yeah. Start collecting (see the sidebar “Finding Your Audience at the Magazine Rack” later in this chapter for more information about this process). It will be a lot easier now that you can run the thousands of magazines out there through the filter of your best-bet audiences. When you’re starting out, this can diminish the feeling of being overwhelmed or going off in too many directions at the same time.

Now that you are getting in the habit of audience identification, you will be able to do it on the fly for any publication that comes at you. Of course, you won’t choose publications to suit only your best audiences forever because that would limit your success in the long run. When you’re ready to branch out, you’ll know how. Simply add another audience to your list. But start out by identifying the audiences that suit you best and collecting as many publications for those specific audiences as possible, and you’ll be prepared to make the most of each of your ideas.

Opposites Instruct

If you want to learn how to write well enough for national publication someday, you might actually be better off studying articles written not for your chosen audience, but for one you wouldn’t typically read. Why? Because articles in your best-audience publications are difficult to study when you are distracted by all of the tips, ads, product recommendations, and photos targeting someone just like you.

For example, if you aspire to write for an audience of affluent, urban women, grab a couple of magazines that target affluent, urban men. (Look for a sexy woman on the cover and ads inside for luxury cars, men’s jewelry, and expensive alcohol.) Take a good, hard look at the articles you find in there, both long and short. What can you learn about magazine publishing, in general, and how to write for a targeted audience, specifically, by studying a totally different type of magazine than you usually read? A whole lot.

Finding Your Audience at the Magazine Rack

It’s magazine-collecting time. Visit your local newsstand, bookstore, or library and look for publications that match each of the four audiences you listed in your pie chart. At this point, you’re not studying, you’re just gathering as many publications as you can find. Bring home four publications for each audience type. That’s sixteen publications all together-do not pass go until you’ve collected them!

THE BENEFITS OF FREELANCING

Freelancing teaches you valuable lessons about your business strengths and weaknesses while helping you establish published credits. By practicing some basic journalism skills, you can work your way up the writing ranks and increase your chances of literary success in the short and long run. By freelancing, you will learn about and get used to:

Partnering with editors and being edited
Taking assignments and meeting deadlines
Finding your unique style and voice
Strengthening your writing craft
Being self-employed
Taking pride in doing your best work

If that doesn’t convince you, here are a couple more benefits:
Freelancing reduces mommy mush-mind. One of the most distressing things about being the mother of young children is that your brain often feels like it has turned to mush. Moms spend so much time goo-goo-ga-ga-ing that, when reintroduced to the company of adults, it’s easy to feel like a kid at the grownups’ table. Writing with specific short-term goals in mind is a mental challenge and an outlet for creativity, inspirations, and ideas, which feels especially good when what you hear all day begins with “Hey mommy! Hey mama! Hey mom!” So give your mind an adult-level workout and see how you feel afterward. The opportunity to focus on a goal will help your mind feel sharper, and soon you’ll be back among the articulate!

Freelancing is a mental stress-buster. Writing short articles can help you break up the arduous yet monotonous tasks that comprise day-to-day life as a mother. Mixing up writing breaks with daily chores can help you focus, take your mind off problems, and even help you work through some of those crises that are bound to crop up when you’re the only adult home all day.

And remember, every writer has to start somewhere. This isn’t the end of the road, it’s just the beginning! Julia Cameron started out as a journalist. Anne Lamott wrote restaurant reviews. Barbara Kingsolver credits journalism with forcing her away from her computer to meet people she would not otherwise see.

Start simple, diversify later. Novelist Jennie Shortridge, author of Eating Heaven and Riding With the Queen, didn’t start out as a novelist; she simply knew that was where she wanted to end up.

I left a corporate marketing job in 1995 and started freelancing for local and regional magazines, then national ones. My dream was always to write and publish fiction, and writing shorter nonfiction pieces actually helped me learn to write in a concise way, on a deadline, and to do it every day. I also learned a little about how the publishing world works and began to make important connections that have served me well throughout my writing career. For instance, my editors at Glamour and Mademoiselle are both now authors themselves, and provided blurbs for my novels.

Start short, come back to short later. Plenty of writers, having scaled the mountain called Writing a Book, continue to write articles because it provides welcome mental relief (not to mention money) from longer, more arduous projects. Author and freelancer Wendy Burt has published more than five hundred articles, and despite her author status, she still returns to the short stuff to keep herself happily productive.

On any given day I will be working on three or four projects-usually in different genres. If I’ve got a boring business article to edit, I’ll take a break to work on some fun greeting cards or bumper sticker ideas. I’ll go back to editing the business article then “reward” myself by working on a short story or filler.

Flexibility is good. Show me a group of mom writers at the peak of their careers and I will show you writers who didn’t and don’t balk when it comes to writing nonfiction along with, and often alongside, everything else.