Spotlight Interview from the Archive: Elfrieda Abbe/Part 4

Elfrieda Abbe, Publisher/Editor/Writer

Elfrieda M. Abbe served as Editor-in-Chief of The Writer magazine for six years before being promoted to Publisher of both The Writer and Bead & Button, the world's leading magazine for the beading hobby.

Abbe began her career as a freelance writer, working for the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Magazine and an assortment of business and trade journals. She later wrote features for Milwaukee Magazine and became the Editor of the award-winning Arts & Entertainment section for the Milwaukee Sentinel (now known as the Journal-Sentinel)

After working as a publications editor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she assumed the top editorial position at The Writer in 2000 and won four Folio Magazine Editorial Excellence Awards during her tenure.

Here is the fourth and final part of my exclusive newsletter interview with Ms. Abbe:

Mike: What are the traits of writers you love to work with?

Abbe: I love writers who have a strong area of expertise. But in general, writers who get their stories in on deadline and make them the best they can. Clean copy, well written, and delivered in a timely fashion is the best thing in the world for an editor.

Mike: What in your opinion is the ideal writer-editor relationship?

Abbe: A friendly collaboration. Don’t think of Them versus Us. Think of We. Because we both have similar goals. Plus, since this is a competitive business and editors only going back again and again to very few writers, I think it’s important for you to develop good relationships with editors. The better the relationship, the more your odds go up of getting more and more work.

Mike: Revision is such a touchy topic for a lot of writers. Some are very sensitive to every little change and take the whole process personally. What insight can you provide to writers on the revision process that could make it go down easier?

Abbe: The thing is, almost all editors have been writers at one point, or they may still be writing, so we know the other side. But editing is a necessary aspect of the publishing business and writers should understand that. They should also know that editors are merely doing a job.

As soon as I receive a story, I’ll usually do a quick top reading, just to see if it’s going to need anything, either in a minor or major way.

Sometimes the story needs more research or more interviewing. Sometimes it’s all there, but it’s not organized right. Or sometimes, believe it or not, the lead is at the end.

Whatever it is, I’ll get back to the writer as quick as I can and let him or her know what needs to be done, if anything. I try to be as specific as possible about what I want. I feel the better direction you give to the writer, the better it is for everybody in the end.

Writers should know that most times they’re going to be asked to revise something. It’s pretty common. And they shouldn’t get upset about that. The funny thing is, some of the biggest writers we’ve had write for us have had no complaints about revision at all.

What the writer needs to always understand is, editors truly are on their side. They want you to look good. They have a real stake in your success, because if you look good the magazine looks good and all editors want the magazine to look good. We’re not here to be obstructions to great stories.

Mike: Any final words of wisdom?

Abbe: Remember that a writing career, for the most part, isn’t very glamorous. There are a lot of nuts and bolts that go into this business.

Also, when you’re selling a story, don’t think of it as just one story but a building block in your career.

And, finally, learn things that will sustain you day to day, whether it’s something emotionally, financially, or any other way.

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Spotlight Interview from the Archive: Elfrieda Abbe/Part 2

Elfrieda Abbe, Publisher/Editor/Writer

Elfrieda M. Abbe served as Editor-in-Chief of The Writer magazine for six years before being promoted to Publisher of both The Writer and Bead & Button, the world's leading magazine for the beading hobby.

Abbe began her career as a freelance writer, working for the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Magazine and an assortment of business and trade journals. She later wrote features for Milwaukee Magazine and became the Editor of the award-winning Arts & Entertainment section for the Milwaukee Sentinel (now known as the Journal-Sentinel)

After working as a publications editor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she assumed the top editorial position at The Writer in 2000 and won four Folio Magazine Editorial Excellence Awards during her tenure.

Here is the second part of my exclusive newsletter interview with Ms. Abbe:

Mike: What are some of the “don’ts” with queries?

Abbe: Don’t send clips with them. If you send me a good idea and we think we want to do the story, we’ll get back to you asking for samples of your work.

Don’t send me to Web sites to read samples of your work. I won’t do it.

Don’t call me on the phone. This is my No. 1 pet peeve as an editor. If it’s a writer I’ve already worked with, that’s fine. But I don’t want to be pitched over the phone by a stranger. I can’t tell you how many times people have queried me over the phone while I was on deadline and couldn’t talk. It’s not fair to the writer or the editor. I like email queries, though there’s a tendency to be way too casual or breezy, often without a salutation. The email query should be as professional as a letter you would send through the mail. It has to have all the same points. I’ll often get a first paragraph like, “Hi, how are you? Would you like a story about…?”

Poor presentation, overall, doesn’t inspire much confidence. This includes bad grammar, messy handwritten letters, spelling errors and so forth.

Your query should be short and clear and thorough. Because of the hundreds of queries most editors get and never enough time for us to read them all, you need to produce one that is easy to read in a minute or two.

Mike: Other than calling you on the phone, what else really irks you about some queries?

Abbe: The worst is when the writer hasn’t seemed to do any homework at all, or even read the magazine for that matter. I can’t tell you how many submissions we get of poetry and fiction, even though we don't publish poetry or fiction.

In your query, you MUST convey the feeling that you read the magazine, know the magazine, know the magazine’s tone and what we’re all about. I at least need to know that you’ve studied it long enough to know who our readers are and what kind of article will work here.

Mike: Since you’ve done both writing and editing, what are the differences?

Abbe: Well, I’ve always done both at the same time, so I never went through any major transition. They’re very different, I can safely say that, but I’m pretty good at changing hats. You’re more task-oriented as an editor. I mean, you’d be amazed how little time I spend actually editing stories. I’m mostly working with the art department or interviewing authors on the telephone or putting together a budget and getting interrupted a lot. (She laughs.)

When I’m writing, the first I have to do is close my door; I need to focus more when I write. And once I get past the procrastinating, I don’t want to stop, even to eat dinner. When you’re on that roll, it’s such a sweet feeling that you want to keep going and going.

I love the feeling of writing once you’re in the process of doing it, once you’re really into it, but I also love, as an editor, seeing the magazine, all those loose ends, coming together.

Mike: Which is harder?

Abbe: (A long pause.) They both have challenges.

Mike: Has being a freelance writer helped you understand freelancers better as an editor?

Abbe: No question. I know what it’s like trying to generate more and more income, working with various editors, getting great assignments and not so great ones, having to choose between doing a story you love for little money or doing one you don’t love because it pays well. Being a freelance writer was especially great training for coming up with story ideas, which is something I need to do all the time as an editor.

Mike: What writing books would you recommend?

Abbe: My favorite is Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write. I just love that book. It comes at the subject in such a gloriously different way—in a more intuitive, unstructured way than most writing books. She teaches you how to get into a creative mood in more than one way, about the benefits of such things as taking a walk and clearing your head, or looking out the window and thinking about something else.

I mean, every writer has times where he/she is just sitting there and it’s just not coming, and you think you’re not doing anything and you start feeling guilty and pained. She believes in simply letting go and letting your mind just wander, that you’ll be able to mull your ideas subconsciously. It’s a great change from the way we usually think when we’re writing—or not.

A great book.

Mike: Any other great books?

Abbe: Yes, Ralph Keyes’s The Courage to Write. As a rule, I don’t like to dwell on the psychoanalytical and the whole issue of writer’s block and what writers fear. But he addresses some specific writing issues and helps writers overcome them.

He also quotes a lot of well-known writers who have gone through these issues, and any time you can read how another writer, especially an accomplished one, solved a problem, that’s very helpful.

Spotlight Interview from the Archive: Elfrieda Abbe/Part 1

Elfrieda Abbe, Publisher/Editor/Writer

Elfrieda M. Abbe served as Editor-in-Chief of The Writer magazine for six years before being promoted to Publisher of both The Writer and Bead & Button, the world's leading magazine for the beading hobby.

Abbe began her career as a freelance writer, working for the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Magazine and an assortment of business and trade journals. She later wrote features for Milwaukee Magazine and became the Editor of the award-winning Arts & Entertainment section for the Milwaukee Sentinel (now known as the Journal-Sentinel)

After working as a publications editor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she assumed the top editorial position at The Writer in 2000 and won four Folio Magazine Editorial Excellence Awards during her tenure.

Here is my exclusive newsletter interview with Ms. Abbe:

Mike: What’s the best piece of writing advice you can offer?

Abbe: One that always applies is, you have to sit down and write and write and write. It seems simple, but it’s really not. It takes a lot of discipline to do it every day and to do it no matter how you feel that day or how freely the words are coming. You need to write even if it looks terrible. Just turn the editor in your head off and write. And then, once you get something done, when the words are down on the page, you can revise it, edit it, play with it as much as you want and make it better. Remember that this takes discipline, so practice it. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Mike: Anything else?

Abbe: Yes, one of the best ways to improve your writing, in my opinion, is to have other eyes read your work, especially as it’s being done. Jonathan Franz is one author who doesn’t believe in this at all. He won’t show anything to anyone until he’s completely done. But if you do show your work to someone, it should, of course, be someone you trust: a writing partner, a spouse, or a person in a writing group. Since writers work in such a vacuum, it’s a great thing to have an outside point of view.

Mike: You’ve interviewed some of the most successful writers of our time, such as Scott Turow, Sue Miller, Oliver Sacks, Sarah Peretzsky, and Mary Higgins Clark. What interesting things have you discovered?

Abbe: One thing that has struck me more than anything is, whatever level of achievement they are, they suffer from what all writers suffer from: a mighty struggle with the writing process. Of course, it’s not holding them back in any way. It shows you that writing well is not a magical thing. You may have talent, even a ton of talent, but you still have to work through writing problems like everybody else. And I can’t tell you how fascinating it is to get these great writers to talk about that. It’s so good for our readers to know that they’re in the same boat. It gives them hope.

I haven’t met any writer yet who says they never have trouble. The difference between the great ones and all the others, they know by now, they have the confidence that they can—and will—work through whatever trouble they run into.

Mike: Do they suffer from doubts about their work as well?

Abbe: Oh, my, yes. Mary Higgins Clark once told how when she was working on a book her husband would say to their daughter: “I’m really worried about Mary, because she thinks the book is really terrible, that it’s the worst thing she ever did.” And her daughter would say: “Oh, don’t worry, that happens every time.”

Mike: What’s your best advice to beginning or relative new writers about publishing stories in magazines or newspapers?

Abbe: First off, you should learn how publishing works, how publications are actually put together. You also need to learn the players and what they do. Not necessarily the names of people so much as what the different titles in a masthead represent. You need to know the difference between an editor in chief and an executive editor and a managing editor, an articles editor from a features editor.

Mike: What’s the best way for a writer to pitch you?

Abbe: I prefer one idea at a time. Some writers will send 10 at once and I have to pick. I don’t like that. I just want one good idea well developed. Give me your best idea and a little synopsis of what’s going to happen in the article and how you’re going to do it.

In the first graph, you better provide some kind of a hook. It’s doesn’t have to be clever, but it has to make me interested in the subject matter immediately.

In the second graph, tell me how you’re going to do the story. Will you be doing interviews and if so with whom? How else are you planning on putting this story together?

I love it when a writer presents his or her idea well. It makes me want to work with that person.

In the third graph, I need something about your credentials. I need to know: Is this a writer who can work for us? Is this a writer who’s qualified to do this piece? Even if the idea doesn’t work for us, I might be so impressed by the credentials that I’ll call that writer saying, “Sorry, this doesn’t work but do you have another?” And they should have another idea ready.

Some last things: If a competing magazine just ran a story/article/column similar to the one you’re pitching, I wouldn’t be interested in it. I like to give our readers as fresh an angle as possible. So be aware of the rest of the market, not just the magazine you’re pitching.

And be original. I get so many proposals about doing stories about rejection, how to write query letters, how to find ideas. These stories have been done over and over. To death. So if you really want to do something on those topics, you have to make sure to package it differently, with an exciting, new angle on it.

One such story I went for was how to write a query letter to an agent. The twist: an actual agent wrote it! And what the agent did was so useful and unusual: He numbered 10 things needed in a query letter matching exactly what’s in a “sell sheet,” which is what the publisher uses to sell a book. In other words, if you have these points, you have a way for your agent to sell the book. It was a great approach.