thomas farley's blog

As of today I have the following out:

One completed article sent, awaiting publishing, revision or rejection;

Three query letters sent, on three different subjects;

One e-mail sent, asking for a referral.

The difficult part, aside from the waiting, is judging how long to give a recipient time to reply. In the meantime, while mulling that question over, I will continue to work on ideas for new stories.

I’m getting ready for next week. I’ll be spending five days in the backcountry of Nevada, out in the sage, researching some of the activities of a non-profit environmental group. I hope to turn my reporting into a magazine article for a national magazine. This is far more work than I have previously done before receiving an acceptance letter, never-the-less, the story I need is Out There, and that’s where I need to go.

I’ll have interviews and pictures and observations to bring back that will make for a compelling query letter. After acceptance will come the real work, of putting the story together. Could I do an article with less effort? Perhaps. A small regional magazine might be content with some pictures and a few interviews conducted in an office. But I really think that I need to get into the field for an arresting 3,000 word article.

How do you find someone who is lost even to the police? Try social media. In writing an article recently for a local newspaper, I wanted to talk to a woman who had suddenly closed up her restaurant and bar, a landmark in West Sacramento. What happened? A code violation? Or something more permanent?

The three telephone numbers I found for her did not work. She did not seem to use e-mail. People who knew her did not have a contact number. What now? The business did have a Facebook page, although it was nearly dormant. The owner’s last post was in 2010. But people could still write on the wall for the page. So I left my e-mail address there in case anyone had information. Sure enough, a week later, I got a reply.

She had seen the post. Turns out I was not the only one looking for her, in fact, the woman’s best friend had filed a missing person’s report with the police. Everyone’s fine now and there had never been any foul play. My writing for the article can now go on, thanks to a bit of investigative work and social media.