Occasionally, while staring into the abyss of a rejection email, I imagine writers and editors to be two opposing entities: sworn enemies, constantly battling to wipe the other out; age-old foes; the dark and the light, etc. And, of course, it is the editors who are intrinsically evil, dismissing writers’ intelligent, well-thought-out pitches with a maniacal laugh like some sort of literary Simon Cowell. But then I come to my senses and remember that, in a previous life, before jumping into the murky ocean of freelancing, I was, in fact, an editor too. I recall the irksome sense of frustration that I felt every time I received a poor pitch; the struggle to fit constructive and kind responses into a busy schedule. You see, editors are people too. And my experience on both sides of this spectrum has allowed me to amass a few tips on how to go about delivering a killer pitch, and plenty of caveats to avoid at all costs.
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