Hey, I've been trying to write for mma news sites and magazines. Recently, my strategy has been to watch an event, write a piece on it, and send it to an mma news site or magazine. They email me saying that they're sending it to their editor to look at it and then they never get back to me, which I'm pretty much guessing is the same as the whole "don't call us we'll call you" thing. I've been sending the same piece to different websites and I'm thinking they don't like the piece I wrote. Would it be PC to submit another (different) writing sample to a website even if you've already submitted one to that site and no one called you back?
what event have you been writing about? send it to me and i'll critique and give you some direction.
jim dot genia at ubs dot com
FCF editor
The above offer is one you should take him up on. As for sending new articles, yes, constantly, every ones first article, short story, or book is rejected.
Post your last piece here please...Lets see what you can do.
post it..buck-up boy............
You should try to get to events that are local to you and then you can actually get a first hand account of the fights. You need to do interviews, take pictures, travel and pay for the motel, gas and meals out of your own pocket. Get ready to lose lots of money as the market is saturated with 'MMA writers'. If you get Press Credentials get ready to fight for a good camera position or be posted a sh!tty spot because most main stream media have the best spots because the promoters want bigger and better exposure from local media such as local paper and T.V.
Anyone can just watch an event hours, days or weeks later and write what the whole world saw. What are you telling me that I already didn't know?
Then you have to make sure your grammar, spelling and structure are correct. Editors are not there to correct your mistakes they are there to make a magazine, web whatever sellable. Yes they are being polite with you.
Good luck.
Mike "The Shooter?s Shooter" McNeil
give a sample^^^^^^^^^^^
you should try to have your own blog.. write all the stories you want and just by pass the mma news sites..
you can still send them the stories but for all of the stories that don't make it through.. have your own blog to post it to.
think of it as an online resume with examples of your work.
go to blogger.com and set one up there..
everytime you finish an article.. throw it up on your page.. or send it to the news sites/mags first.. no response after a day or two.. put it up on your own site.
ive noticed many pro mma writers dont use spellcheck
hey SiouxNYC, I'd be grateful to have you read over my piece, I'll email it to you okay, thanks.
Hey RdotC, I noticed when you cover events on your blog, you put it in the format of "Round 1: here's what happened....Round 2: here's what happened..." I just put the whole thing in paragraph format like "In the first round xxxxx but the second round definately went to X fighter who dropped his opponent with xxxxx." Do you find that just writing the whole thing in outline format works better than essay format? Thanks.