Could you sell an article about dreams to a
nudist magazine? I did! And you’ll be able to as well, once
you’ve read on and discovered what you can do to increase your
powers of lateral thinking – powers that can turbo charge your
sales techniques and open up many more markets for you to write
for.
Imagine being able to get your thinking cap on
and come up with half a dozen original, unusual, appealing ideas
for virtually every magazine you like the look of – even if you
know little or nothing about the general subject of that
magazine. Imagine how many more markets you’d be able to write
for.
A lot of writers make the mistake of pouncing
on the first idea they get – and it may be a good one – but the
first idea to pop into your brain when you think of a subject is
usually the most obvious one. The beauty of lateral thinking is
that it gets you to dig deeper and reach those unusual ideas
that editors love… and don’t get often enough.
Let me explain. I knew nothing about nudism
when I read about Health and Efficiency magazine, for "today’s
naturists". But I read that the editor, like every other editor
on the planet, wanted to see unusual and original ideas from
freelance writers. I’d just written a piece on ghosts in dreams
for another magazine, and I’d done a lot of dream research, so I
wondered… could I possibly write a dream piece for a nudism
magazine?
Yes I could. I queried the editor with an idea
on nudism in dreams (you know the type – sitting naked on a bus,
that kind of thing…), and he went for it. Within the next ten
days or so, I’d written it, sent it in, and received an
acceptance letter by return. So I thought I’d try the technique
again – and sold an article on erotic dreams to an adult
magazine… with very little extra research.
And that’s how I started using lateral
thinking to come up with fresh ideas for loads more markets.
There are several ways you can use it, but the keys to doing it
successfully are below. I’ve used all these methods, and they
all work equally well:
- pick a favourite subject, and brainstorm as
many things related to it as you can think of on a piece of
paper. For dreams, I came up with this – dead people appearing
in dreams, naked self in dreams, erotic dreams, relevance of
animals in dreams, colour or black and white dreaming, memories
in dreams… and so on. Try doing this for at least 30 minutes, to
make sure you’ve got plenty of ideas. It should prompt some
possible markets for your ideas, too.
- alternatively, start with a market. Pick a
magazine and brainstorm some possibilities. Don’t restrict
yourself. Even silly ideas can lead to good articles! For a cat
magazine, I managed to come up with (and sell articles on) cats
in film and television, well known sayings involving cats, the
Egyptian links with cats, superstitions involving cats, cats
through history, and alien big cats. That last piece was
actually sold to a different magazine, which led me to think
what’s good for cats is good for dogs – so I sold them a piece
on ghostly dogs, too. Lateral thinking leads you in all kinds of
wonderful directions!
- build a list of 20 or 30 magazines – all
kinds. Get yourself a real mix written down. Then take your
favourite subject and think about how you could write an article
on that subject for each magazine. You probably won’t come up
with an angle for each one, but it will stretch
your lateral thinking skills and produce some original ideas.
If you use these suggestions on a regular
basis, I’m sure you’ll find yourself coming up with more and
more original ideas in a very short space of time.
