My first published magazine piece was a word-search puzzle in 1989. They sent me a postal order for £3.50 as payment. (It was a long time ago!) Although I was experimenting with other forms of writing during my late-teen years, this was the first time someone had accepted and paid for any of my writing.
Until this point, I had not considered writing for monthly publications. Instead, I’d focused on bigger projects, like stage plays and books, completely ignoring a market of thousands of magazines, all of which need a lot of new words every week, month, or quarter.
Writers can see the results of their writing efforts relatively quickly when writing magazine articles, because many monthly magazines work three or more months ahead, allowing for a shorter time period between having the initial idea and getting paid for it when compared to bigger projects like books. Weeklies work on a shorter lead time.
I began writing articles for the magazines I enjoyed reading, like my local
