On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 02:50:04 GMT, andy asberry
wrote:

The wait for notification could be worse. My wife (a romance novelist) has
had editors take ten months or more to get back to her about novels she's
submitted.

I can see why freelancers would shy away from time sensitive subjects.
The article could be near stale before the first editor rejected it.

Well, it's not *quite* so bad if the freelancer in question has an
established relationship with the editor. If I had a truly time-sensitive
article idea, I could just email or phone the editor at KITPLANES and say,
"Hey, Brian, what about...."

If he gives me the go-ahead, I'm then on assignment, generally with a
deadline. So things happen quite a bit quicker. Being on assignment is
handy for a freelancer; it does get you a little better attention. If I
call a company and say, "I'm Ron Wanttaja, a freelancer, working on an
article about...." I may or may not get much help. But if I can say, "I'm
Ron Wanttaja, on assignment for KITPLANES..." it opens doors quite nicely.

That's one of the fun bits with my name...it sounds a lot different from
what people think it does. Usually, once they see my name written, they
realize they've seen my stuff in print. But when they hear "Ron
Wahn-Tie-Ah" over the phone, they figure it's just some dumb hick trying to
break into the business. :-)

BTW, for those who didn't see my "Avwriter's Primer" posted here a while
back, I stuck it up on my web page.

http://www.wanttaja.com/avlinks/avwriter.htm

Ron Wanttaja