About Me

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I am a 69-year-old gay disabled amateur part-time writer living in Slough, Berkshire UK. I have published around 60 articles in 20 leisure and lifestyle magazines. I live with a range of health issues including heart disease, chronic kidney disease, Type 2 diabetes, depression, atrial fibrillation and restless leg syndrome. (I'm working my way through the medical dictionary!). I'm a member of Slough Writer's Group which is interesting and informative. Latest News. 10th July 2023 Awarded 'The Sandy Lee-Guard Award for Endeavour' by the Slough Writers Group. 6th December 2023 Completed studying 'Writing for Magazines' with CityLit University. January 2nd 2024. Fell over in the lounge and fractured my left femur (whilst recovering from fracturing my right femur in July 2023). May 2024. Completed studying ' National Centre for Writing' course 'Creative Non-Fiction - An Introduction'. 3rd November 2024. Began studying 'Article Writing and Freelance Journalism' with 'Writing Magazine'. Expected duration 8 Weeks.

Saturday, 7 October 2023

Writing for Magazines - generating ideas

I'm sometimes asked how I come up with ideas and where to publish them. It varies.

When I started writing for magazines in 1996, I tried out the suggestions made to me by writer Gordon Wells. An established writer, Gordon suggested that I made a list of everyone in my life, starting with family members. He recommended that I would come across stories relating to these people. I did this, and remembered that my grandfather George Wiseman, had a horse drawn narrowboat collecting milk for Cadbury in the 1920’s. To cut a long story short, this led to my article ‘Chocolate on the Shroppie’ being published in Canal & Riverboat magazine.

Other stories came in different ways. I approached a number of different magazines offering to write reviews of websites relating to their speciality. I had around eight commissions including ‘Skin Deep’ magazine and ‘Mad about Dogs’ magazine. Another success were three website reviews for ‘The Art of Bonsai and Japanese Gardens’ magazines.

Another way of finding potential outlets for feature articles is by studying the current editions of the ‘Writers & Artists Yearbook’ and ‘The Writers Handbook’. The most recent ‘leads’ gained from the former was ‘Dogs Today’ magazine. See the ‘LATEST WORK’ section of my website.

I sometimes put an ‘appeal’ to hear from people in Facebook groups and pages. This was the case when I asked for suggestions from people using ‘Assistance dogs’. This led to the feature in ‘Dogs Today’ and ‘Able’ magazines about 18-year-old non-binary and autistic Eliot Best.

Another possibility is that people simply suggest ideas to me and this is where you come in. Do you have an idea that might interest me? Alternatively, do you know of a publication looking for freelance contributions? If so, please send me details at sloughwriter@gmail.com . I would of course acknowledge your assistance.

But of course, the most rewarding way is for you to write the article yourself. If you need some basic guidance, please see me online article ‘Writing for Magazines’ which you can find at: http://www.richardhill.co.uk/talks/

Best of luck!

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