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| photograph by Michael Gwyther-Jones on Flickr under CC licence |
Here in England. people everywhere are
preparing for next weekend's celebrations of
the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
For weeks, newspapers and magazines have
been full of articles on everything from The
Day I Met the Queen to How to Make Royal
Icing.
Special days and celebrations are ideal
subjects for the jobbing writer looking for
publication online, in newspapers or
magazines.
Well-targeted anniversary articles are
excellent too for the short 150 word fillers vital for
plugging those small page gaps. Fillers are
always needed and a good way for new
writers to break into publication in magazines.
How to Check Out Anniversaries
To check out anniversaries for a
particular day use Wikipedia with care,
use a search engine or try newspaper and radio
websites. Your library may have a copy of
Chase's Calendar of Events.
The New YorkTimes has an on-this-day feature
And Ottowa Researchers provide a similar service for Canadian birthdays and events.
What Happened Today?
In 1819, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom was
born and Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish astronomer died on this day in 1643.
In 1930, pioneering pilot Amy Johnson became
the first woman to fly from England to Australia while in 1962 American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbited the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
It would have made an ideal article for this
year being a fiftieth anniversary--editors love
round dates.
They also like quirky and unusual articles. Everyone will be targeting articles on the main stories. But for a writing magazine, you'd be better tackling today as the first publication date of Mary Had a Little Lamb.
How to Find Submission Dates
Obviously check for submission guidelines or request them by email. Remember that many magazines are working as far as six months or more ahead. In other words you might need to submit Christmas dates in May.
And how do you know what the magazine is planning if it's not in the guidelines? Check out the media kit or advertising calendar. It lists the year's planned covers and main focus for each month--useful if the magazine is one which is not visibly open to submissions. Here's an example from the New Hampshire magazine and another from Eating Well.
Footnote
May is also Revise Your Work Schedule month (oh dear, I should be doing that) and if you're looking for a recipe for Royal Icing, here's one from the BBC.
Anne Duguid is a senior content editor with MuseItUp Publishing and her New Year's Resolution is to blog with helpful writing,editing and publishing tips at Slow and Steady Writers far more regularly than she managed in 2011.
