Bret Devereaux

The exception to this rule is if you are doing something that aims to get attention for your other work or platform (e.g. you are using their audience). But then you want to be very sure that you are gesturing back in that to the project you want them to know about.

Have an idea? Write a draft, polish it carefully, pitch it at the publication of your dreams. When they pass on it, drop down to the next choice until someone takes it. Now you have a byline. Amend your next pitch to note that your words have appeared in print at X.

Placing articles in mainstream media places is one of those things where the more bylines you have, the easier it is to get new bylines; another reason to start this stuff early (but don't do it for free because bylines by places that didn't pay you don't matter as much).

While you are doing this, be nice, prompt, and courteous, because the gold ticket is building a good working relationship with an editor at a solid publication. If you are a known, reliable quantity, it becomes much easier to land pieces.

If you are building your own platform (like ACOUP)...uh...get really lucky? This advice is harder for me because I think there's a lot more alchemy than science here, so I can only speak to what I did.

My strategy for ACOUP (where I hoped to perhaps have a few hundred regular readers, so...uh...mission accomplished, I guess?) had a few basic elements: 1) Write with posts appearing on a regular schedule so readers knew when to come back looking for new stuff.

2) Conversational writing more akin to a written 100-level lecture than an 'essay.' Teaching experience can also help you get a sense of where the average person is in terms of subject knowledge, so you know where you need to start.

3) Honey on the cup of wormwood (Lucretius, DRN 1.939-41) - always lead with the hook, where the hook is going to be some modern connection, either a modern work of pop culture or a modern assumption about the past.