Parenting Journalists Conference May 20, 2022 (online)

Do you want to:

* connect with editors of top parenting publications, 

* discover a community of writers and creators who make a good living doing what they love, and 

* learn insider secrets to promoting your work, getting paid to speak and more? 

Register today for the live, online Parenting Journalists Conference on May 20 and unlock a package that includes interactive workshops and networking opportunities, roundtable conversations, master classes and access to a private Facebook group.

We’re excited to be joined by writers and editors for publications such as PBS Kids, New York Magazine, New York Times, Parents, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Washington Post and more for a one- day conference that’s designed to be accessible to as many people as possible. Each workshop is by journalists, for journalists, offering clear takeaways and actionable advice. 

5+ Writing Opportunities for Teens

Today I'm excited to share with you 5 writing opportunities for teenagers and young adults, and these are just the beginning!

I love teenagers. I have three of my own right now plus a 12-year-old and a 20-year-old. I also love writing and have enjoyed doing it ever since I could write. 

Then I realized sometime in my 30s that journal entries, vents, and complaints can turn into magazine articles (and reprints!), short stories, print books, ebooks, PDF downloads, speaking engagements, and more. 

I've taught Creative Writing to a few different grades at our local homeschool co-op, and this past year, I taught English Grammar and Composition to high schoolers. You never know who might be the next Shirley Jackson, Fredrik Backman, Stephen King, or Emily St. John Mandel! There were some kids in there with serious talent, and I promised them I'd get out a downloadable resource so they could start submitting (working on it this summer!).

1. The Adroit Journal 

(high school and up)

From the website: "The journal sponsors the annual Adroit Prizes for Poetry and Prose for secondary and undergraduate writers, the annual Djanikian Scholars Program for emerging student and non-student writers, and the free, online Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program for high school students from around the world. We’re looking for work that’s bizarre, authentic, subtle, outrageous, indefinable, raw, paradoxical. We’ve got our eyes on the horizon. Send us writing that lives just between the land and the sky."

2. OneTeen Story
(ages 13-19)
One Teen Story is looking for great short stories focused on teen protagonists and dealing with teen experiences such as issues of identity, friendship, family, coming-of-age, etc.

3. Skipping Stones

(all ages)
A magazine that celebrates ecological and cultural diversity. Published 5 times a year, they accept essays, stories, letters to the editor, riddles and proverbs, and other creative writing up to 750 words or 30 lines for a poem.

4. Teen Ink
(grades 7-12)
This website, monthly newsprint magazine, and quarterly poetry magazine features personal essays, short stories, reviews (books, CDs, concerts, movies), and interviews from young authors.

5. Teen Voices
(females, ages 13-19)
Teen Voices, the global girls’ online news site of Women's eNews, is looking for girls who are interested in journalism and media to write for its site. All girls 13-19 years old are invited to join its writing staff. Teen Voices also publishes a series by and about girls with physical disabilities, called Girl Fuse. For more information about how to get paid to write, check out the submission guidelines.


And if you're a parent, grandparent, or someone who is passionate about writing about any topic related to parenting, family, and children, I'm also the author/compiler of How to Get Published (and Paid!) Writing About Your Kids: The Ultimate Guide for Selling Your Stories to Parenting Magazines, a great resource you should check out for yourself! You can find out more about me here.

"How to Get Published (and Paid!) Writing About Your Kids: The Ultimate Guide for Selling Your Stories to Parenting Magazines"

Get those articles and ideas out of your computer, out of your brain, and out of your paper files and into the email inboxes of editors! Result = get published, collect tearsheets, and watch the money hit your account and mailbox from reprint sales!

How to Get Published (and Paid!) Writing About Your Kids: The Ultimate Guide for Selling Your Stories to Parenting Magazines will change your writing life! The 7th edition of this invaluable resource that has already helped so many writers get published includes information on how to get started selling your original and reprint articles and essays. It goes on to cover everything related to writing for this market, including keeping good records, setting up a freelance writer website, invoicing, and so much more. Then comes the best part: the 384 paying markets. The market information includes regional parenting magazines, national and online parenting magazines, even international markets. I've included pay information when I could find it or earned it myself. Writing success is waiting for you!

Check out what previous buyers had to say:

How to Make Over $500 for Each Regional Parenting Magazine Article Reprint

Let me start by saying not EVERY article I write makes this much money. I've written and submitted over 100 in the last 10+ years since I started doing this (that's only 10 per year, people, so consistency counts), and a handful of them did very poorly. By poorly I mean sold to one or two magazines then went into oblivion.

Some have sold a total of a few hundred dollars. But today I want to share with you the 

ARTICLE ROCK STARS

I'm sharing this not to say, "Woo hoo, I am awesome and check out how much money I make doing this." Instead, I'm sharing to say, "Wow, I didn't realize that it all added up like this! I mean, I knew my Christmas Peace piece did pretty great, but it might hit over $1,000 in total sales if I tweak it a bit! This can happen for other writers as well, and there seems to be plenty of room for all of us to make money writing from home!"

The Write Anywhere Series

Coming Summer 2022 and only available as an instant-download PDF (individually or as a set)! Start a new career for about the cost of a fancy coffee and a muffin!

How to Organize Your Published Magazine Article Tearsheets

Are tearsheets even a thing anymore? I checked YouTube to find out how to organize my published magazine article tearsheets and just found out how people were organizing pages they'd torn out of magazines for later reading. 🤔

Back in the olden days, you needed them to send out with queries to show that you had worked with a magazine, but these days so much is online or they don't even care what you've done before. It's rare that they even get sent out anymore. But, according to this piece, The Basics of the Magazine Tear Sheet, you should definitely still be keeping them.

Now the challenge is this: how do you organize them?

If you're like me, you keep at least one tearsheet from each article you've had published. But when you've got over 125 articles published, how do you organize them so you know which reprints to resend each year to editors in a timely manner so they can consider them for upcoming issues?

Well ... I used to file everything in a stand-up system like a milk crate or a tubs where you can store hanging file folders. I spent a lot of time creating ONE manila file folder per article. After over 100 articles, that turned into a bit of a mess—and here's why... 

I tried to organize them by topic, which got confusing and arduous for my already overtaxed brain. A birthday tearsheet easily went into the BIRTHDAY, but a tearsheet about sending teens to camp would be both a TEEN and a CAMP piece. What if your TEEN has a BIRTHDAY at CAMP? Forget about it because now your brain has just exploded with too many organizational possibilites! 😂

Now take a little dance break and 
check out Suzannah Windsor Freeman's 
piece titled 
6 Organization Tips for Disorganized Writers

Tell me about your article organization system (digital and physical paper). Or come on over to my Parenting Magazine Writers Group on Facebook and share there!

Image by Ro Ma from Pixabay 

My Self-Publishing Journey with Amazon and Beyond

*I'm updating this post because I'm now teaching an English Grammar and Composition class to high schoolers at our amazing Catholic homeschool co-op. I teach seventeen students, including two who are my own children. I've got a few kids in the class who show great potential and who I fully believe will go on to be writers, either full-time or part-time, and I want to lead them well! So I've tweaked this post a bit to benefit the younger crowd too.

Self-publishing is such a deep subject! There is a lot more involved than just the writing. Marketing, for example, is very important, as are editing and proofreading. I'm currently considering hiring an AdWords management company to help me with my marketing efforts so I can really get the word out about my self-published books.

I asked my writer friend Chris Lienke if I could use her questions as a basis for this post, then I'll sprinkle in some others as well. She says, "I'm considering publishing a writing book ... but need some details like this before spending too much time on it."  Here are some of her questions:

Write for Western New York Family Magazine

 

Western New York Family Magazine is looking for writers for their 2022 issues. See guidelines below, and click here to see the specific information about their 2022 needs.

These guidelines have been taken from my book, How to Get Published (and Paid!) Writing About Your Kids, which you can grab on Amazon in print and Kindle here. If you have article reprints and no clue where to start reselling them, or ideas for some fantastic new pieces but no idea who might want them—check out my 441-page print book of tips, tricks, and insider information, as well as 384 paying parenting and family markets! 

Marie Claire No Longer Publishing US Print Edition

Sad news! Check out the article below, posted September 2021 at New York Post. 

Marie Claire Quietly Ends Print Edition after 27 Years

However, Marie Claire plans to turn more attention to its digital platforms and will publish occasional special print editions which will be available for purchase at newsstands and bookstores.

Western New York Family Magazine Call for Articles for 2022 Issues

 

DIGITAL ISSUE - Western New York Family Magazine (wnyfamilymagazine.com)

Western New York Family is looking for articles for their 2022 issues! 

Please read the information below to see what they are looking for, and good luck to you 😃 You can find the complete list of guidelines here (taken from my book) on The Published Parent!

Proofreading Jobs from Home: 20 Ideas + Income Potential #remotejobs

I have met many writers and published parents who are also passionate about editing and proofreading, so this post is for you! I work primarily on Fiverr, and I have received almost 3,000 positive reviews since I started in 2013. 

Benefits for me include:

* Being able to work from home and homeschool! 

* Being able to pick up and travel with my family and make money while we're away from the house. 

* Not having a boss.

* Not working in a cubicle anymore.

If you want to join Fiverr just to check it out and possibly sign up to do your own proofreading jobs from home, please use my referral code!

Here's what I have come up with so you can also enjoy this kind of lifestyle. The first two services I am not familiar with because I just haven't had the time to dive into them. They are reputable sites that ask for a proofreading test or sample, but I hear competition can be fierce, and I'm not about underbidding my services!

The Published Parent 2021 Income Report

Welcome to my 2021 income report. I love to know how others are doing in my industries, and I enjoy sharing my own successes and challenges. I hope this inspires you in some way!

I'd love to hear your income goals for 2022, so please share those in the comments. As I get more organized in my homeschooling, my home, and my business, I'm finding more time to work on passion projects that can bring in money, such as my cookbooks and books about things like homeschooling with less stress and more fun, etc., although I have to admit this year will see me working on a handbook for our homeschool co-op and also an operations manual (both sorely needed!).

My income was down this year due to taking on more at the homeschool co-op and taking on the teaching of two high school classes (Grammar/Comp and Modern World History), but every bit is helpful around my place! Here are the figures from 2021:

December 2021 Income Report with The Published Parent

The McLoughlin household is holding steady and working from home still! 

I am still blessed to be able to work from home proofreading, blogging, writing articles, and writing books and to be able to do it in my sweatpants or swimsuit, out on the deck or at the dining room table, at my house, or traveling with my kids and husband for his work to places like Wyoming, Arizona, Texas, Chicago, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, and more.

I like to share my income from home with you to show you that I am a real person with unique challenges and actual successes. No, it is not a full-time income, but I am not aiming for that right now. I am thankful and grateful that my husband has a good job as an engineer, and that my main job is homeschooling. Words are just my part-time job for now. When the kids are grown, I foresee working more hours with my word career and helping to pay for travel and retirement. But that's still a few years away :-)