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For me, 2022 was the first time since the pandemic that I was able to commit a lot of my time to freelance writing, thanks to a return of consistent childcare. I built my portfolio several months at a time, and used each successful publication as a ladder to get me to the next pitch. Having written a piece for Lit Hub in April helped secure a book review in the Japan Times in May, which helped with a bundled book review gig for NPR in August, which led to this pitch for the Atlantic. While I would personally prefer to spend the entire article dissecting one book, I learned that many publications (like NPR and Atlantic) preferred this bundled approach, which meant that I would read and critique five or more books but with a shorter word count to go with each book. This was exhilarating, challenging, and exhausting. I felt like a grad student all over again, reading novel after novel and writing many book reports on all of them. I initially reached out to the books editor at the Atlantic in September to see if they would want me to review Haruki Murakami's nonfiction book, Novelist as Vocation. The publisher had sent me an advanced copy, and I felt pretty confident about my ability to write a nuanced report. The Pitch: Hi [Editor], Thank you for taking the time to consider my previous pitches. I completely understand, and it's helpful to know about those broad themes. I've come up with another pitch for bundled reviews which I think will fit better with what the Atlantic is looking for. 8 books where the architecture of the house is integral to the story I feel like a lot of my friends have been hooked on HGTV, and my social media feed is infested with influencers showing off house remodels. Especially after the pandemic forced us to spend much of our time in our homes, my awareness of a home's design and decor has definitely amplified compared to pre-pandemic times. Maybe it's because of all of this that I'm noticing these details in literary books, too, where the writer makes deliberate use of an attic, Victorian flourishes, hidden security cameras, or the messy process of remodeling a home to one's perfectionist liking. The books on the list would include: [A list that went through several revisions in subsequent emails] Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you. Best, Yurina
They quickly wrote back (within days) that there was already another writer assigned to cover this particular title, but to keep the mind for other pitches. I followed up with a few other pitches: "Eight Books on Incarcerated Japanese-Americans During WWII," and "Four Micro-Memoirs About Parenthood." I had already read the books I would include on these lists, and I was trying to touch on themes that could be incorporated into an event, like the Day of Remembrance on February 19 or Mother's Day all the way out in May. The editor passed on these, nudging me to consider broad themes, rather than tying them to specific anniversaries. That's when I came up with the pitch, originally titled "Eight Books Where the Architecture of the House is Integral to the Story." The editor loved the idea, but we needed to rework the title and the selections, as my initial list wasn't diverse enough. The pitch that was finally greenlit was "Seven Fictional Books Featuring Houses that Shape or Shelter Our Lives." By the time it went through copyedits and fact-checking, we revised the title again to "Seven Books About How Homes Shape Our Life." Original pitch sent: 9/17/2022 Response received: 9/20/2022 with a rejection Revised pitch sent: 11/2/2022 Response received: 11/4/2022 Draft of piece delivered: 11/14/2022 Edits requested: 11/28/2022 Edits returned: 12/2/2022 Published: 1/13/2023 Pay: $500.00
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