Flip through the latest edition of Writer's Market, and read what editors
want:
"Break in by writing short pieces..."
"Break in with our department articles..."
"Break in with short news articles about our industry..."
These days, more editors expect beginning writers to submit short
articles—newsbreaks, book reviews, short humor, anything under 500 or 600
words. Editors want to see which writers have the talent and professionalism
to succeed. They're wary about granting feature assignments to writers they
haven't worked with before.
How can you write, submit, and get paid for your shorts?
Ideas
Ideas for shorts come from the same places as ideas for feature articles.
Dig into your personal experiences and memories. What have you observed in
your town? What have you read in magazines, newspapers, and books? Many
magazines may talk on and on about some new medical treatment or beauty
regimen. Go against the hype.
Many shorts start as pieces from feature articles or even books. Recently,
USA Today ran an article about how a lack of sidewalks in cities leads to
obesity. You can take the information from this particular article, do some
original research, and write a short about convincing your city's civil
engineers to make your hometown more walker-friendly.
Find a willing editor, and receive a check!
Writing
How do you query for short articles? The same way you query for feature
articles. Many other articles and books tell you how to query editors. I
suggest that you emphasize the turnover time when it comes to short
articles. Don't query an editor with an idea unless you can finish it within
a week. After a month or so, many editors forget pitches for major articles.
Imagine them forgetting about your book review or filler. Follow the
writers' guidelines. E-mail your query with contact information (your name,
address, phone number, and e-mail address). Snail mail your query with a
self-addressed stamped envelope and any available clips. Wait for a reply.
Editors can respond anytime from ten minutes to three months or longer.
When you receive a go-ahead from an editor, write your short article like
your feature articles. Create a compelling lead, add the meat in the middle,
and tie the thematic elements tightly at the end. Many experts tell writers
to write tight. With short articles, you must write extremely tight. Stay
away from digressions and pretty prose that don't contribute to the slant of
the article.
Most feature articles need five to seven sources-interviews from experts,
books read, statistics researched. Over a three-week turnover (from go-ahead
to submission), you probably spend 50% to 75% of your time researching. On
the other hand, most shorts require fewer sources. You can research and
write the article within a week. Even though shorts require less research,
they demand the same accuracy as feature articles. When submitting the final
manuscript, you'll need to provide your editor with a list of contacts for
fact checking. Whether you write a 100-word newsbreak or a 5,000-word expose
in Harper's, accuracy is part of professionalism.
Next you revise your article, taking out unnecessary information and words.
Submit the revised article to the editor, on or before the deadline.
Getting Paid
So your editor accepts your short article. What about payment? Just by word
count alone, the average feature article pays more. It's obvious-at ten
cents per word, you receive a bigger check for a 1500-word article than a
500-word article. Editors may pay more for a feature article, but short
articles are easier to sell. They're perfect for the beginning writer.
They also work for the professional writer. How?
It's hard making a living as a freelance writer. Most writers have several
projects going on at the same time. Say that you're working on a couple of
major articles. With research, writing, revising, and the waiting that the
editor puts you through, it often takes weeks or months to get paid for your
work. With short articles, you can write quickly, in between your major
projects. You can use some of your "big-article" research to create a
newsbreak or a book review. Many national publications pay up to a dollar
per word for short articles. So a 200-word article can pay some of your
bills.
"I'm definitely not believing this! This is nuts!" My good friend and
fishing partner Kent, exclaimed as a rambunctious Belize permit melted the
line off the reel deep into the backing. This permit was trying desperately
to stay in formation with the rest of the school we had been tracking for
several minutes. Shortly, our guide Thomas Paz, deftly tailed this rather
smallish trachinotus falcatus over the rail, removed the fly, and had him
back in the crystal clear water and totally revived in a matter of seconds.
Kent Kilborn, and I were in the last hour, on the last day of an absolutely
marvelous fly fishing adventure to Ambergris Caye, Belize. We had a number
of shots at permit throughout the week, but until now had come up empty. We
also spent one entire day on Ambergris' famous Savannah Flat in pursuit of
resident and migratory tarpon, but saw only three, had shots at two and had
no bites. Soon after our trip, we heard the tarpon showed up in legions! But
that's why they call it fishing, not catching. Anyway, we caught a ton of
bonefish and finally on the last day, two permit!
We knew from firsthand . . . ah, reading, that permit needed to be enticed
with some sort of crab pattern or maybe the occasional Clouser. In fact in
only forty years of fly fishing I had actually landed one in Honduras on a
Jan Issley rag crab pattern a few years ago. For a week now, offerings of
crab patterns to these Belize residents produced permit behaviors from blank
refusals to abject terror. More on that later.
It had been a week since we met on the dock in front of El Pescador Lodge
near San Pedro, Belize. He had flown in from California, I from Florida's
panhandle.
"How was your flight?" Kent asked.
"Don't know. Slept the whole way down. Too excited to sleep last night.
Good to see you."
It was getting on toward late afternoon of our travel day. We made our way
to what was to turn out to be an afternoon ritual, hot hors d'oeuvres and
cold Belikin beer. We met the other guests, enjoyed a tasty seafood dinner,
and scurried up to our rooms to prepare equipment for the next morning and
try to get a little rest.
Kent was a beginner to the saltwater flats. Nonetheless, he is a natural
athlete (varsity tennis in college and a low golf handicap today) and has
been fly fishing for more than thirty years. He has tossed flies at salmon
and trout, lots of them, and BIG ones, all over the American west. He's fly
fished Alaska, so real big creatures going crazy on the other end of real
big fly outfits are not exactly new to him. Even so, it was the third day of
our trip before Kent was regularly SEEING the fish, CASTING to the fish, and
HOOKING the fish. And to be that adept after only three days may indeed be a
new world record.
Seeing the fish
The saltwater flats game is all about seeing the fish. It's a real
challenge to learn what to look for and how to look. Even after you have
seen several fish over several different bottoms it is seldom easy. And the
numbers of bonefish around Ambergris Caye give you a lot of practice.
Bonefish (to a slightly less degree, permit) have a mirror-like finish that
reflects the surrounding environment. The first thing I usually see of a
permit, besides the puff of marl where it used to be, is the black dorsal or
black forked tail. With permit and bonefish, often you see the shadow before
the fish. Sometimes the water surface tips you with "shaky water" or
"nervous water," or a wake or push. Other times bonefish look like moving
green wine bottles. If you're real lucky, you may find "tailing" fish, the
classic gossamer tails out of the water reflecting light and the telltale
"slurping" noises as those tails break the surface. Needless to say, a good
pair of quality polarized glasses are an absolute must. Spend as much as you
can on them, a hundred bucks is not too much. Take a backup pair.
Though we spent a good deal of our time wading the flats, we also spent
some time poling around looking for singles and doubles and looking for "muds."
The guides of El Pescador are real pros at these techniques. And since
Belizian bones are noted for numbers more than individual size, the latter
technique is very popular. A school of a hundred bonefish can quickly cloud
up nearly an acre of normally gin clear water. These huge schools often
break up into squadrons of ten to twenty fish. If you find a large school of
mudding bones, you may pole out ahead of them, stake out and catch several
out of the group. In that case you're looking for flashes in the mud, or
other fast glimpses of moving fish. You're usually making relatively short
quick casts. We had a number of occasions when both anglers had bonefish
screaming line off our reels at the same time. That's pretty rare, and can
be, let's say, very interesting.
Casting to the fish
While you don't really have to cast a hundred feet (though most guides
would love you for it), you probably do have to cast forty or fifty with
only one or two falsecasts. If you can't do that, practice until you can.
Since almost all saltwater flats are pretty windy most of the time, you must
learn to love the wind. Call it a part of the experience. If it's really
windy, you can usually get closer to the fish. Learn to throw as tight a
loop as you can. Maybe take a lesson at your local flyshop. Practice casting
into the wind. You really need to place your fly so it looks like it's
trying to get away from the fish. Even very small things moving toward most
flats residents, look unnatural and are likely to spook them.
Hook the fish
I've tried about every way to screw up after the fish eats. A nice subtle
classic trout "lift" just doesn't work very well and usually moves the fly
out of the strike zone. A hard bass style strike usually has the same
effect, with the added spectacular explosion of rapidly fleeing fish.
Anything you do with your rod hand is probably a mistake. My advice? Just
keep stripping. You might even give a slightly more enthusiastic strip when
you actually feel the fish. Then use your non-rod hand to help clear the
line. Even small bones like most in Belize, can run off almost all your
flyline, and a two or three pounder may get into your backing on his first
go. After you're "on the reel" a high rod tip can help you stay clear of
mangrove shoots and the like.
Flies
Very common patterns worked just fine on these Central American bonefish.
Anything with a little orange (egg sac) seemed to be preferred. The spawning
Gotcha, Bone-crushers, and sparse (no hair, just flash material) Charlies
all worked in size six and eight. For mudding bones the number six Jan
Issley Yucatan Special in tan worked well.
Last day
Our very last day we fished an area southwest of the lodge that guide
Thomas called the "Lagoons." This area had huge flats; most of them almost
completely surrounded by forests of mangroves. As the tide dropped and the
sun burned strong from a very clear sky, the bones got spookier and
spookier. I had retreated to a 16-foot leader tipped with eight-pound
fluorocarbon and a very sparse number six Crystal Charlie. We caught quite a
number of bones that day. Finally Thomas announced we'd better leave or
there wouldn't have enough water to get off the flat. He also said he knew a
flat on the way home that sometimes held schools of permit. I knew he was
just saying that to ease that slightly empty feeling you always get on the
last flat of the last day.
But he did stop on the way home and almost immediately a healthy school of
permit showed up. They all ignored several "perfect" presentations of the
obligatory, now small, crab pattern. But they didn't spook . . . until I
tied on a chartreuse and white Clouser and shot that over their heads.
"I never saw so many permit go in so many directions, so fast!" said Kent,
"Those guys blew up before that Clouser even hit the water."
"Yup lined them, but wasn't it exciting?"
After that fun encounter, it really was time to go on home. I reluctantly
stepped down from the front platform and started winding in flyline. Then,
talk about luck.
"Senor Hugh, don't sit down yet. Look out there at about ten o'clock."
Another school pushed up on this flat. Thomas had been telling us all every
day that a person had caught a permit on a small Charlie here in this area.
After all those permit doing their "permit thing" with traditional permit
flies, finally the light came on! His English and our Spanish, though
English is the primary language in Belize, left us thinking "a person," when
in fact he meant PEOPLE. "People catch permit all the time around here on
small bonefish flies!"
A person could be an accident, people means a pattern. Down went the ten
weight. Up came the eight, with the sixteen foot eight pound tippet and
number six Crystal Charlie. On about the third cast to this second school,
the four pounder described earlier, fast to the sparse Crystal Charley
ripped left, right and deep. We even took another one, of about three pounds
a few minutes later! Two permit in the last hour of our last day in Belize!
Though small they were both certainly big fun!
