By Jillian Kramer

I returned home from SPJ's annual conference this month in Atlanta -- and landed my first freelance assignment!

The conference offered two sessions on freelancing. So what did we learn? During the first session on freelance magazine writing journalists met with two established freelancers, Kathy Ehrich Dowd and Hope Winsborough, and Smithsonian Senior Science Editor Laura Helmuth. We learned about how to take a freelance story idea from inception to publication.

Helmuth recommended looking for charismatic characters with surprising or timeless stories at a local level. When you pitch, however, Helmuth said that you need to give local stories a national twist. She warned freelancers against relying on online material to determine what's appeared in a magazine.

Part of a freelancer's job is to anticipate editors' questions before they ask them, Dowd said. "Think of yourself as a lawyer," she said. She recommended including rebuttals for editor's questions in your query letter. Dowd also encouraged freelancers to write what they're passionate about.

Winsborough broke magazines into two categories: service (like Self, Health, Martha Stewart Living) and aspirational (like Vogue and Glamour). She told freelancers that each kind of magazine has a formula and said it's our job to figure it out. Oh -- and there's nothing wrong with going to cocktail parties to schmooze with editors. (Check for parties in your area at www.mediabistro.com.)

The conference also offered a half-day workshop on the business of freelancing. Freelancers Michael Fitzgerald, Julie Kay and Kristin Harmel discussed the changing market, how to perfect a pitch letter and how to balance a full-time job with a freelance career on the side.

Allow me to hit a few highlights:

Harmel told freelancers to start small, whether that means writing for a local newspaper, regional magazine or attempting front of book pieces for large magazines. And when you land those FOBs, even if it's a 100-word story on foot cream for Glamour, Harmel said you shouldn't hesitate to say, "I write for Glamour."

If you're a full-time reporter who's freelancing on the side, make sure you get your editor's permission first, Kay said. Your company may prohibit you from freelancing.

And Fitzgerald encouraged freelancers to not just be "text people." In this changing industry, Fitzgerald said even freelancers have to think about blogs, podcasts and videos. "Technology means that everyone can be a writer," he said. 

Beyond freelancing workshops, the convention offered classes that addressed pesky sources, narrative writing techniques, building character in profiles, understanding alternative story forms (ASFs), crunching crime numbers, changing FOI laws, evaluating politicians with public records and the changes facing our industry.

Freelancers and beat reporters alike can learn from these lessons:

• You cannot write powerfully if you cannot write clearly, said Thomas Oliver, Atlanta Journal Constitution enterprise editor. He challenged reporters to keep their ledes to fewer than 20 words and their sentences averaging just 17. How do you do that? Choose just one idea per sentence and stick to it. Keep your subject at the beginning of the sentence and the correlating verb as close to it as possible. Use simple language. Hold the adjectives (as in, close proximity, complete monopoly. These adjectives are unnecessary and repetitive). And don't invent excitement in your story. (Did prices really "soar," or did they simply rise?)

• "The future belongs to the storytellers," said Richard Boehne, president of the E.W. Scripps Company. And Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tom Hallman, of the Oregonian, agreed. He said that reporters have to stop merely transcribing daily events and start "looking behind the facts. What we call a story is not a story. It's a run-down of the news. If we're going to make it in this business, we have to remind people what it is to be human ... how what we report affects our community.

• Lane DeGregory, a staff reporter with the St. Petersburg Times, encouraged reporters to look past the obvious when profiling someone. Be nosy. Look inside someone's fridge. Follow them throughout their day. Flip through their photo albums. Watch their family movies. And pick through their garage. Talk to friends and coworkers. Read their letters and journals if they allow you. And use all five of your senses as you take notes.

Want to find out more? Visit http://www.spj.org/c-recap08.asp to read additional recaps of the convention.

Jillian Kramer is a freelance writer and full-time reporter at Mobile's Press-Register. Her Web site is at www.jilliankramer.com. Her first freelance assignment is about the best free gadgets and Web sites available to photographers.