Writing for Trade

“Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!”
William Butler Yeats

Writing for Trade

I’ve been published in magazines three times. It is not a big deal, the thing that I’m proudest of is that I never got rejected. I was hitting three for three.

Here’s the deal: people write for trade magazines to further their names. If you are a theatrical rigging company and begin writing articles on safety, then companies will be drawn to you. Maybe you got a huge budget and did a design and published an article on “how I did that”. Again, the goal is to get your name out there so you will get hired.

People think that you know your stuff.

Here is the other deal: trade magazines really want your articles. They need to fill their magazines and don’t want their own writers to do all of the work. Each industry served by those trade magazines soon learn who is who, trust me.

Trade magazines are almost every magazine you see on the rack. Guns and Ammo, Beading and Beads, Crafts and Supplies, Baby Clothing Now, Cars and Cycles, Live Design, Photography Today, Better Homes and Gardens and so on.

So, perhaps you are crafty and have aspirations to take it farther. Maybe you made a model of the tree in Darnassus and wanted to write a “how I did that” piece. There would be a trade magazine out there who would want that stuff and then when companies need a crafty person, maybe they’d hire you!

My third article was a op/ed call to arms type of piece. I was writing that freelance designers are in such a hurry to get to the next job that they are throwing up cookie-cutter solutions instead of investigating the art inside the work. It was a pretty big hit with my picture in the magazine and everyone at my workplace wanted to talk to me about it.

I remember very well, sitting in a rehearsal for a dance show. People were all over the place. Musicians, dancers, directors, designers and composers. It was a happy mayhem. One of the dancers was talking to me and asked if I wanted to be a writer because the article was so very good.

I looked around the theater and then imagined myself sitting alone at the keyboard.

Baby, I’d choose the theater every time.