8 Places to Find Good Writing Jobs and Pitch Calls
Avoid the content mills and cold emailing
You can spend days of your life scrolling content mills and taking $5 jobs (eek) or…
Try your hand at responding to writing jobs and editor’s calls for stories.
Pitching editors is an excellent skill to learn, but cold pitching is hard. And finding pitch calls in the Twitter and wide-web sea is tough!
Thankfully, some writers enjoy the hunt.
They round up all the juicy “calls” and jobs into neat newsletters, so you can give editors exactly what they’re wanting and land that gig.
Here are some of the (many) pitch call newsletters. Sign up to some and take a squiz at what editors are wanting:
Paid pitching newsletters:
Some of these have free shorter versions
A Bunch of Paid Writing Opportunities by Ashley Broadwater (I’m a paid subscriber to this one).
Opportunities of the Week by Sonia Weiser
Freelance Opportunities by Kaitlyn Arford (seems to be free but encouraged to “buy her a coffee”)
Free pitching newsletters:
Journo Resources — Huge weekly job list sorted by experience level
The Writer’s Job Newsletter — I just subscribed to this, so we’ll see what it’s like.
Funds for writers — not jobs, but MONEY so could be interesting…
Authors Publish Magazine — sends out mostly fiction and creative opportunities.
But, I don’t know how to PITCH?
All good. I’ve got you covered there, too.
Pitching is just putting your best ideas forward to editors. The main goal is to sell your story ideas.
Three is usually a good number of ideas to send, unless you have one exceptionally strong one. Editors want your strongest ideas, so do your research.
- Make sure they haven’t recently published a similar idea.
- Check your idea is different in some way to what’s out there already.
- Read the publication to see if your idea fits.
It’s not you for sale
Many writers make the mistake of trying to sell themselves in a pitch. They list their writing experiences and how much they love to write.
Or worse, they say things like, “I’m new to writing, so not an expert, but I’m giving it my best shot.” (If you don’t believe in you, why will they?)
But editors care less about you and more about whether you can deliver a great read.
Sure, tell them 2–3 places you’ve been published, but remember, it’s not the most important part.
A pitch should be short, to the point, professional, and story-focused.
There’s an easy way to do this:
The Ultimate Guide to Pitching Editors (pay what you can afford or have it free)
More to help you sell your stories:
Kelly has been telling and selling stories for 15+ years. Grab free resources to help you do the same.
