Aspiring authors outed (Elspeth visits Career Development Group)

Why do some CILIP groups struggle to find contributors for their newsletters? CILIP must be awash with wannabe journalists. A staggering 28 people signed up – and most of them turned up - for my session for the Career Development Group (London and Southeast) on writing for the professional press.   That was in spite of the fact that last night’s meeting took place on a freezing early January evening, off the beaten track, in Mayfair library.

‘It was very illuminating and full of hope and encouragement for new writers,’ one person told me afterwards.

‘You managed to convince the audience that we can all be professional journal contributors!’ said another.

So if aspiring authors don’t always deliver, it must be because confidence is an issue.  Lots of people came to suggest interesting article topics after the meeting.  Most were too shy to do so in front of their peers.

So if you are nurturing secret ambitions, please don’t hang back.  Update’s always on the lookout for new contributors.  And we can help with a few tricks.

One of the most important is to remember that you’ve only a few seconds to attract a reader’s attention.  So your article, or your press release, needs a really interesting opening sentence to get the reader’s attention.

And if you’re trying to publicise your message, make sure the important part of what you have to say is in the first paragraph, not in the middle or at the end.

For more tips and advice on PR also take a look at Update News Editor Matthew Mezey's blog post ''PR 2.0' + promoting your info service (my presentation to CLSIG)' which includes a link to his presentation.

We’ll be adding a few tips to our website.

A happy new year from all of us!

Elspeth Hyams, Editor