Is Taylor Swift our President? my kindergartener asked

On pitching Newsweek and how even when it's not about her, it's totally about her

This is part of a monthly series called Path to Publication.

In it, I will unpack the story behind my stories. These reflections are part process, part strategy.

There will be clear takeaways for your own creative work. I will include sample pitches, along with editors’ names and rates (at the time my published pieces went live). I’m sharing the intel I’ve gathered in the hope that it can help you place your own work.

At the beginning of 2022, I had, essentially, zero bylines. Since then (in the span of two years), I’ve published nearly 50 short essays. It’s not like I became particularly prolific. I’ve always been a writer. I just became serious about learning the tips and tricks for placing a piece in a popular outlet. And that’s what I’m looking forward to sharing with you.

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After corresponding with about a dozen agents I realized that if I was going to sell my memoir, FAMISHED, I needed to turn it into memoir+ (a personal story with reporting and research woven throughout).

A bit of (recent) history about the “saleability” of memoir: the memoir boom happened in the 1990s with books like Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club and Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes — books I grew up reading and loving. Then, the personal essay boom occurred in the 2010s. Personal stories became ubiquitous. Anyone could share their experiences on the internet — and those narratives were often not subject to editing or craft. As Leigh Stein has argued, today many personal essays are “published” as captions beneath social media photos.

In other words, the market is glutted. Everyone has a story. And many of those stories have not been revised with rigor or attention to craft.

So I had to distinguish myself. This involved revising my memoir extensively. I wanted to make sure my memoir did not just confess but also confided.

This is a distinction Meghan Daum makes that I really appreciate. Confession dumps vulnerability on the reader and runs. Confiding makes larger meaning out of vulnerability.

I also worked to build my author platform. One way to build platform is by publishing pieces in outlets with significant readership.

On Halloween afternoon in 2022, I booked a meeting with developmental editor, Jill Rothenberg. Before talking book revisions, though, Jill began our Zoom meeting by asking this:

you’re going to write a piece about all this Taylor Swift stuff, right?

In case you don’t remember the news about Taylor in October 2022, she had just released the music video, “Anti-Hero,” and she received public pressure to edit out a scene that had been criticized as fatphobic.

I read a number of think pieces about the controversy, but none of them were landing with me. Even though the scene connected to some themes within my memoir, I didn’t feel I was in quite the right position to write an op-ed about the topic.

But I’m not really someone who says no to a challenge (or a homework assignment).

So, I tried.

I wrote a 700-something-word piece about fatphobia, specifically exploring the ways fat people have been harmed in the medical system. I talked about the brilliant, ‘You Don’t Look Anorexic’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com), which features some of my favorite influencers discussing the ways their struggle with disordered eating was not just ignored but perpetuated by doctors — all because they were fat.

The research was important (and a lot of it ended up in my forthcoming memoir), but it wasn’t specifically tied to my own personal experiences (and this is what I believe ultimately made the piece feel flat).

I pitched my op-ed to about a dozen outlets in the span of three days (the news cycle moves fast! I had to capitalize on the moment!)

No one said yes.

Until Newsweek did two months later.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

It was almost the New Year, and I’d been pitching a holiday essay to various outlets. Because my essay was timely (and fully written), I only waited a day or two before moving on to pitch new outlets.

There are mixed feelings about simultaneous pitching. Typically, writers are advised to only pitch one outlet at a time. Though some editors respond to their pitches with nos, not all respond. Some say you can include a line in your pitch that says something along the lines of, “if I don’t hear back by XX date, I’ll assume you are not interested and move onto other outlets.”

I believe the rules regarding simultaneous pitching change a bit if 1) the essay is timely, and 2) the essay is fully written already.

I followed these rules and pitched both Newsweek and Salon within the span of a few days with my holiday essay.

Salon said yes. Then a few days later, Newsweek said yes, too.

Eek.

I was nervous to respond to Newsweek and say that the essay had, in fact, already been accepted — but the editor, Katie Russell was gracious and invited me to “consider them in the future.”

Photo by Brad Switzer on Unsplash

Anytime I’ve been given that sort of invitation, I think of the future as now. I thought about what I’d already written that may be a good fit for Newsweek. And I remembered my Taylor Swift op-ed from months before. Though that particular cultural moment had passed, I thought,

perhaps these conversations could be tied to the New Year in some way.

So, I pitched Katie with my idea. Here it is:

Dear Katie,

Thank you so much for corresponding with me about my personal essay related to the New Year and grief -- and thank you, too, for your invitation to stay in touch.

I'm writing to see if you would be interested in another essay I've written entitled, "I'm taking a tip from Taylor Swift by editing fatphobia out of my New Year's Resolutions" (the draft is copy and pasted below). 

She wrote back after Christmas and said, yes, she was interested — if I was open to edits. And I was! I’m always open to edits. I try not to get too precious with my words.

We exchanged 29 emails about edits in the span of several days (yes — that’s right. I went back and counted).

The piece I sent her originally became something else entirely.

And — here’s the most significant shift — we totally edited Taylor out.

Hi Anna,

Thank you so much for working on this. I agree that these edits are much tighter, and the piece feels more focused now, so thank you. I've taken another look, and I actually think that the Taylor Swift angle might be a tad distracting. I've edited the piece to focus on compassionate New Years' Resolutions, but let me know what you think. 

She was right — my original TS cultural peg was distracting the reader from the point of the essay.

The essay shifted entirely, focusing primarily on making self-compassionate resolutions.

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Newsweek’s My Turn (personal essay) vertical does not pay.

So why would you want to publish there? The simple answer is reach. My brilliant friend Rebecca Morrison told me they reach [DRUMROLL]

100 million unique monthly readers.

[So, you don’t do it for pay. You do it for platform]

Much to my consternation, after we finished our extensive edits, Newsweek wanted me to send not just one, but multiple photos of me running to pair with the piece. For 100 million unique monthly readers to see. Eek.

(This felt less self-compassionate, and more move waywayway out of my comfort zone. Which is, perhaps, another essay for another time).

Here’s the final essay, if you’re interested: 'I Drastically Changed My New Year's Resolutions—the Results Were Amazing' (newsweek.com)

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Thanks for reading. What questions do you have about timely pegs and publishing with Newsweek?