The do’s and don’ts of personal essays:
– Do research on who you want your target audience to be.
– Don’t send in stuff that editors get all the time.
– Do send in the unusual, provocative, or controversal.
– Don’t take the easy route. Do go for something deeper. Like something that is polictical and engaging about our world.
– Do find a way to take someting that is popular and use it in away to create a hook that will captivate and lure your readers into your compeling personal essay.
– Don’t write someting that you can’t write from an outside persective. Pretend you are a fly on the wall listening in on a couple’s conversation.
– Do find someone to critique your personal essay or to edit it for feedback before seding in the final copy.
– Do follow the submission guidlelines for what editors want in the queries when submitting.
Places to Send Your Personal Essays to:
– The New York Times Modern Love
– The New York Times Magazine Lives
– Psychology Today Two-Minute Memoir
– Self
– Cosmopolitan
– AARP The Magazine
– Salon..com Lifestyle section
– The New Yorker
