Sarah-Beth Watkins - The Lifestyle Writer: How to Write for the Home and Family Market

First published by Compass Books, 2013

Compass Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK

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Text copyright: Sarah-Beth Watkins 2013

ISBN: 978 1 78099 984 5

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

The rights of Sarah-Beth Watkins as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design: Stuart Davies

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

To my Mum, Julia Barrs-James, for supporting all my lifestyle choices including being a writer.

All my love.

Look around you. What does your life contain? Home, family, children, grandchildren, eating out, good health, holidays abroad? Or maybe its not so sunny and your life includes relationship issues, a lack of a decent holiday, imminent surgery and a clapped out car. Wherever you are in your life, whatever you are experiencing, you can turn your life stories into saleable articles for the lifestyle market. People want to read other peoples stories. Humans are fascinated by other humans; what theyve got, what they are doing, where they are doing it and whether we can do it too!

The Oxford Dictionary describes lifestyle as the way in which a person lives. Well, that should provide us with many an idea! Lifestyle magazines include everything from the home and interiors, fashion and beauty, food and nutrition to health and well-being; parenting, childcare, travel and days out are covered too.

Lifestyle writing focuses on the things that are important in our lives. From raising children, dealing with health issues and being pregnant to decorating your home, managing a city garden and where to go on holiday; writing for the lifestyle market encompasses the aspects of our lives that we can share with other people.

Youll never be short of ideas when you are a lifestyle writer. Everything you do or have done has the potential to be a lifestyle article. If you get stuck for ideas, just talk to your friends and family. What experiences have they had that you could draw upon to write a lifestyle article? Ideas are all around you. Start looking out for them!

Lifestyle writing is one of the easiest markets for a writer to get into mainly because first person viewpoint is often used. This means you can tap into your own experiences to begin your writing career. There are hundreds of magazines that publish lifestyle articles on a weekly basis who eagerly await freelance writers to send in their stories. Its a market you can write for and this book will show you how.

The first article I ever sold was about the differences between the births of my two sons. It started as simply as Jake, my firstborn son, was born in a hi-tech hospital in Northern Ireland (Your New Baby, 1997). That one article for a parenting magazine led to many more lifestyle articles for the same magazine and their website. I began my writing career by writing about pregnancy, child-raising and how to survive as a parent when my children were young. What has affected your life recently that could make a good article?

And what has happened in your past that you could draw on for another interesting article? My latest article was also written from a first person viewpoint and examines my recent foray into making home-made wine. I grew up in a household that produced the most amazing wines from next to nothing and I used this as an introduction to the article.

My grandparents made home-made wine. They made it from anything and everything: grapes, potatoes, marrows, tea - you name it, they tried it. They started making it during the Second World War and carried it on for many years. As a child I helped pick the grapes and crush them between my tiny toes. Not in a Greek vineyard but in the back garden of a small house in London. We were reared around wine: the smells, the process and later on, the taste. (BackHome magazine, 2012).

When you begin to look at your own life experiences, you will realise that you have just so much to write about. And not just that, but experiences that can help inform, instruct, advise and support your readers too.

A market is a term used to describe where you can sell your work. So its not the fruit and veg kind but each magazine, website or publisher is a market where writers can sell their lifestyle articles. There are so many markets out there from magazines and newspapers to websites and e-book providers that it would be impossible to list them all. Lifestyle markets are everywhere, from local publications like Parish journals and community newsletters to national magazines and newspapers and on to global book publishers.

It is estimated that there are 3,300 magazines in the UK and over 10,000 in the US. Magazines are published weekly, sometimes monthly, so thats a huge market looking for writers to fill their pages on a regular basis. And you dont have to just write for magazines in your own country. I live in Ireland and Ive sold articles to magazines in the UK, America and Canada so the world really is your market. The best guides for up-to-date information on potential markets are The Writers and Artists Yearbook and the Writers Handbook (UK) and the Writers Market (US). They contain lists of magazines, newspapers and publishers that you can submit your work to. Well look more closely at how you can research these types of market in the next chapter.

There are also over 644 million websites on the Internet - someone had to write them! Ok, they may have been initially developed by a computer tech somewhere but they still need writers to produce new articles, website content and blogs for them. Websites are constantly changing, regularly being updated and they need writers to keep them going. Web writing and blogging about lifestyle subjects can be a lucrative market for writers.

Depending on where you find your information, the book industry is stable, unstable or in dire jeopardy. The event of the e-book has changed the face of publishing and there is a huge debate raging about whether this spells the demise of the printed word. I think there will always be a place for both print and e-books and that place will continue to have many lifestyle titles. As well as mainstream book and e-book publishers, the Internet has led to the production of many self-published works. As a writer this means you can produce a book about literally anything and have it available to download directly from the Internet. So if you write a lifestyle book, there will always be a market for it, whether you do it yourself or are contracted to write it.

Why not? There are many opportunities to see your work in print and earn an extra income from your writing. You dont have to commit to writing a book if you dont want to, you can start writing smaller pieces before moving on to bigger things. You can give lifestyle writing as little or as much time as you have available while still building up a portfolio.