Jane Ammeson on How to Write for Magazines

by Jane Simon Ammeson

I had moved to Corpus Christi, Texas from Southwest Michigan with my first husband who had recently graduated from the Notre Dame School of Law and accepted a job with a firm there.

I immediately began looking for job but while I was waiting—and hoping—I had little to do so I began hanging out in the history room at the local public library. Going through their archives, I discovered an old murder case about a beautiful blonde who was killed—and I can’t even remember the rest of the story, but it was intricate and had to do with double dealing and jealousy.

It was a great story. Now at the time, I didn’t know you were supposed to send a query letter. I was a psychologist not a J-school grad. So I wrote it up as an article and sent it to Corpus Christi magazine.

As luck would have it, the magazine had just been purchased by an advertising agency and had a new editor and no one to write the local history column. And a tawdry murder story was definitely the ticket.

Yeah, I was very lucky indeed.

When the New Editor Came On, Poof, I Was Gone

The magazine wanted someone to write their Ranching & Farming column. So here I am, an urban gal who grew up near Chicago all of a sudden writing monthly columns about ranching (what did I know about cows?) and Southeast Texas history.

I started sending out other stories that I had already written (I hadn’t quite learned the query thing yet). An article about a ghost who haunted the highways in Southeast Texas got accepted by Texas Monthly and the editor then asked me to write a couple of other stories about the area.

The senior partner at the law firm where my husband worked got me a job writing a column for one of the private clubs the firm belonged too (they paid in trade but the food there was wonderful, so hey) and I pitched a story to Braniff magazine and got a couple of assignments before they went out of business.

But the company who had the Braniff contract also had contracts to produce other airline magazines and so I ended up writing Midway Airlines until they too went out of business, Continental (ditto), TWA or Pan-Am (I can’t remember which) and Northwest Airlines. Northwest took a while to go out of business, so I wrote for them for almost a decade.

Then the publishing company who had the contract lost it but luckily the new publisher kept me writing so I had another three years or so. Then NWA was taken over by Delta and another company had that contract. I worked for them for a while but then the old editor was let go and the new editor had her own writers and poof—I was gone.

How One Writing Job Leads to Another

By then my husband (who hadn’t yet turned into my ex-spouse) and I had returned to Michigan and I started writing features for the South Bend Tribune as well as other local magazines and newspapers. I began writing about food and travel for both the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune and also took over the food column for the largest newspaper in Southwest Michigan after the columnist retired.

I’ve been writing that column for over 20 years (time goes fast) and also do a lot of work for a larger newspaper in the Chicagoland area. I’m now writing books.

Currently I’ve written 14 books, have two more at Indiana University Press that are going into final edits and two more that are way overdue—but I’m working at them. My travel book, Lincoln Road Trips: The Backroad Guide to America’s Favorite President, recently won the bronze for best travel book in the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition.

As they say, that and five dollars will get you a Venti Latte at Starbucks.

That, interestingly, quickly led to an offer to write book reviews for the New York Journal of Books and a few emails from publishers asking if I want to submit book ideas.

Book writing can be anxiety producing and it’s a whole lot to organize but I love researching—I guess it goes back to all those Nancy Drew mysteries I read when I was young.

I Like Writing Historic True Crime with Femme Fatales

Just to clarify, I don’t write mystery novels, I write true crime, so it’s non-fiction. I like historic true crime and particularly femme fatales who murder spouses/lovers for their fortunes though my latest, due out next Halloween, is about Belle Gunness, who might not have been very femme, but she was definitely fatale—killing approximately 40 or so people around the turn of the last century, then staging a fire where her three children (yes, besides killing Norwegian farmers for their money she also murdered children and women) and a headless corpse was found.

Some assumed it was her body though the size was all wrong, others that she had beheaded a woman, placed her body with those of her children and then escaped. This happened in 1908 and to this date no one knows whether she got away and if she did, exactly how. I believe my research offers a very reasonable answer.

Is Culinary Travel is One of the Biggest Niches for Writers?

Regarding food and travel: Someone told me that culinary travel is one of the biggest niches though I don’t have any stats to back that up. I can believe it though.

What people eat reflects their culture, their history, and their environment. I took a trip to the Rueda wine region in Spain and discovered that in some of the small villages people had wine caves carved into the hard rock beneath their homes centuries ago out of the hard rocks.

Many families have their own plot of grapes and after harvesting and fermenting them, they store the wine in their caves to age. Cave-aging also offers the perfect conditions for wine as well. I was lucky to visit several of the caves and met with their owners. The caves were comfortable underground rooms with kitchens, dining areas, storage for the wine casks and fireplaces.

When the weather was inclement they could cook and drink their wine in the cave and when it was sunny and beautiful, go above the surface, look out over the river, and eat and drink. Because of its uniqueness it made a great story and I sold it to an editor but then Covid hit and since no one in the U.S. can travel to Spain, it is languishing on her desk.

I love to travel and research. I love driving backroads—if they’re dirt, even better, exploring out of the way places, spending time (yes, this is truly pathetic) in old museums and archives and making historic connections. I guess I found this niche for true crime almost at the beginning of my writing career when I discovered that old murder story in the Corpus Christ Public Library. For historic travel, I really believe in historic preservation and digging up the past.

And food and travel are so intertwined, what people ate in the past, the cultural connections of food and place are all part of a travel experience.

My Tips When It Comes to Writing for Magazines

1. Study the Magazine

This is going to sound very pedestrian, but time has taught me it is so true–study the magazine before pitching/if they have writer guidelines online read them.

I remember covering a chef event for Caribbean Travel & Life and there was another writer there also covering the story. When she found out who I was working for, she complained because she had sent a story to my editor and never heard back.

I asked her what her story was about, and she mentioned a destination in the Pacific. I said the magazine is about the Caribbean and that’s why they weren’t interested.

She actually said (and remember she was a published writer) that she thought her story idea was so good that they should have made an exception.

2. Choose Topics Similar to Those Covered Before

Go through back issues of the magazines you’d like to write for and come up with some topics that are similar but not the same. By that I mean, if they always do a ski issue, don’t pitch the same destination, but do pitch an idea that fits in with the type of destinations they cover.

3. Pitch—a Lot

Write a short cover/query letter, double check for spelling errors and then send it out. I am a firm believer in the more you pitch the more likely you are to have a taker. So spend a day or two every month or so just writing queries.

Remember in these days, with almost everything on the web, you can’t really pitch a story that’s already run unless it has a different local or is for a different market. Even then, tell the editors that it appeared somewhere else. Better to be upfront and lose a sale then to be caught later and never get a chance to write for them again.

4. Don’t Let a Rejection Stop You from Pitching Again

Also, it’s important to keep in mind that even if they can’t use that pitch, if they like your style, they’ll likely to think of you for future assignments. And don’t let a rejection stop you from pitching again. Be like one of those bouncy toys that whenever you hit them, they pop up again.

4 Things a Writer Has to Do to Write Well About Food

1. First, you have to really like food, be ready to experiment (cricket tacos anyone? Goat stew?) and to really think about what you’re eating.

What are the flavors, does it have textures and layers or is it just one flavor—like hot.

2. Ask questions—learn the techniques the chef uses, what their philosophy is about food and cooking, what led them to become a chef.

Understand the context of the food. Is it made with a special local ingredient that is only available a certain time of year? What’s the history—have people always eaten this food for centuries? What ingredients are called for? Who planted or brought the food to the region?

3. Don’t be a food snob.

Eat street food. It is sometimes more representative of the food culture of where you are then what is served at a fancy dinner.

The comparison to me is eating elote (corn on the cob spread with mayonnaise and spices) is what everyday people eat while the lasagna I had at a press dinner in Acapulco was certainly not.

4. And always be polite.

People have food allergies, and your hosts will understand that. But I’ve been on press trips where a writer or two will just say, oh I’m not going to eat that, it’s weird, do you have any hamburgers.

Really?

My Most Lucrative Type of Writing Assignment: Articles for Glossy Magazines

I take the assignments they give me; I pitch stories to them and when they ask for ideas for the coming year I give them a ton. I’m always agreeable to rewrites no matter what—even when I want to shout but you told me to do it this way, read the assignment level.

Understand that editors have deadlines and it’s necessary to be timely. I recall being on a press trip and saying I had to go back to my room early because I had to turn in an assignment and another writer said oh they can wait for it. But they can’t. They’re relying upon you.

I also understand there are few copy editors anymore so it’s up to me to make sure that copy is as accurate as possible. I try to do the best spell check, name check and fact check possible. That’s the way to keep getting assignments.

I Never Turn Down a Writing Assignment

I always had a day job as a psychologist and did my writing at night and on the weekends. I loved writing so it was like a hobby that I was making money doing. But my day job provided a pension and health care, so I never thought about quitting.

Plus working as a psychologist is like interviewing people for articles and books. You ask questions, you listen, and you analyze and synthesize what they tell you. The big difference, unless you’re writing a report for the court, is that no one knows about what you and your client talked about.

As for maintaining an income over the course of a writing career, that can be tricky. You would need to rely upon resources available at public libraries rather than paying for your own subscriptions. I personally pay (and it is tax deductible) for subscriptions to several newspaper archives likes newspapers.com and newspaperarchnives.com, genealogy sites like Ancestry.com as it is very helpful in my true crime research. Public libraries provide these for free.

I think cutting costs is so important if writing is your only source of income. Even though it would be a pain, you can even use the library for free Internet as well as all the websites they link to.

Budgeting is important. One month you can get a lot of great checks and the next month, just a few dribbles.

I never turn down anything. It drives my (newish) husband crazy and it means staying up really late and sometimes feeling overwhelmed, but my thought is if you say no, someone else will say yes and when the editor has a really great assignment, guess who s/he will call? The person who helped them out and didn’t say no.

Also, sometimes you can write a story for a local paper/magazine and it has broad appeal so you can place it in other markets.

My last thought on this is, every time I write something even if I’m like oh who wants to write about that—I end up learning something new and interesting. Every time. Honest.

Advice for a Young Writer Who Wants to Write for Magazines

I would say look for a day job at first unless you want to get a full time job writing for a newspaper, website, or magazine. Those jobs are out there though not as plentiful as before.

If you chose to freelance, then be ready to take a lot of knocks but to keep pitching, over and over. Pitching is like a full time job. And then, if they say yes, you have to do the actual writing.

I believe joining writing groups is important too. I belong to several travel writers organizations and I’m about to join a mystery writers organization. I also am joining a food writers group too. You can network online and in person at conferences, make connections, and also they all have market news and information about press trips.

If I had to drill down on my tips, they would be:

• Never quit pitching.
• Make sure you’re pitching the right ideas to the right magazine.
• Don’t argue with the editor (people do, seriously).
• Don’t say, it’s too long you cut it where you want to the editor (yes, people do).
• Over research, not under.
• Don’t try to fake it. Suppose you don’t know something, say how old the town is your writing about—find out. Don’t fudge.
• Always be on the lookout for a different slant/angle on a destination, a historic or culinary tie-in, a look at a place that is unique.
• Consider the magazine’s target audience when pitching. Is it a sleek, sophisticated city magazine read by cool urban types? Write for them, not the geriatric set who want to know about bus trips and easy to get to places. But if it’s Senior Living magazine, write for them not millennials looking for the best bar and most trendy restaurant.

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Jane Simon Ammeson’s most recent book is Lincoln Road Trip: The Back-Roads Guide to America’s Favorite President, a winner in the Travel Book category for the 2019-20 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. It was also a finalist for a 2019 Foreward Indie Award for Travel. Her travel writing appears in various newspapers and magazines.

She also writes about historic true crime including How to Murder Your Wealthy Lovers and Get Away With It: Money & Mayhem in the Gilded Age, A Jazz Age Murder in Northwest Indiana, and Murders That Made Headlines: Crimes of Indiana.

When she’s not traveling, writing, cooking, or swimming, you can find Jane in her garden writing her weekly food column for the Michigan newspaper, Herald Palladium or other articles for newspapers, websites, and magazines on food and wine. And yes, she’ll have a glass of wine by her side.

For more information, see Jane’s website and travel blog, and connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram.

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Lincoln Road Trip: This fun and entertaining travel guide includes the stories behind the quintessential Lincoln sites, while also taking you off the beaten path to fascinating and lesser-known historical places.

Visit the Log Inn in Warrenton, Indiana (now the oldest restaurant in the state), where Lincoln stayed in 1844 when he was campaigning for Henry Clay. Or visit key places in Lincoln’s life, like the home of merchant Colonel Jones, who allowed a young Abe to read all his books, or Ward’s Academy, where Mary Todd Lincoln attended school.

Along with both famous and overlooked places with Lincoln connections, Ammeson profiles nearby attractions to round out your trip, like Holiday World, a family-owned amusement park that goes well with a trip to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial and Lincoln State Park.

Featuring new and exciting Lincoln tales from Springfield, Illinois; Beardstown, Kentucky; Booneville, Indiana; Alton, Illinois; and many more, Lincoln Road Trip is a fun adventure through America’s heartland that will bring Lincoln’s incredible story to life.

Available on Amazon.

A Jazz Age Murder in Northwest Indiana: The Tragic Betrayal of Nettie Diamond: Nettie Herskovitz was wealthy and widowed. Her suitor, Harry Diamond, was a dashing young bootlegger a decade and a half her junior. At first she resisted his advances, but soon the two were married with an infant daughter.

Disinterested in a domestic life, Diamond shot Nettie on Valentine’s Day 1923 while riding in their Hudson sedan. He tried to pin the crime on the fleeing chauffeur, but Diamond made a mistake. Though mortally wounded, Nettie lived long enough to identify her attacker to police and change her will.

The sensational Diamond murder became tabloid fodder–a Roaring Twenties story of roadhouse floozies, illegal booze, orphaned children, trust funds and legal acrobatics.

Available on Amazon.