Aliya S. King

I’m going to share three of my real life pitches that worked with various degrees of success.

The first is a very informal pitch I sent to Smokey Fontaine at GIANT. I was writing for GIANT regularly and I had a relationship with Smokey. So I didn’t need to introduce myself or explain why I was the right person for the project. This style of pitching is ONLY when you have a strong relationship with the editor. I’d run into Smokey a few days before and he told me to send him a few ideas. This was one of them.

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I got an email from a dear reader yesterday. And she was a bit frantic.

She’s just published a short piece in a national entertainment magazine. (Yay!)

She sent off a thank you email to the editor, (good job!), and asked about pitching more stories. The editor invited her to start pitching. (Yay!)

And then she freaked out.

What to pitch!? She started flipping through the magazine, hands on her keyboard, ready to dash off an email with tons of great story ideas.

Luckily, before she pressed send, she emailed me:

Hey Aliya!

How are ya? I’m kind of in a bind. Do you have any advice for generating story ideas? I got the green light to start pitching [NAME REDACTED] But I think my ideas are wack or they already have them covered, which means they’re not original. I can write. I know this. Pitching is my problem!!! Ughhhh.

I told homegirl to step away from the keyboard. She was about to make a grave mistake.

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