I’ve always enjoyed being in the paper. My first photo appeared in the Ludington Daily News when I was in the third grade – they posed my sisters and I in a local drug store for a back-to-school blurb. After that day I made it my goal to get in the news as often as possible.

When I decided to start writing, I wanted to be in the paper for a different reason – I wanted a by-line.

B is for By-line

I’ll be honest – before I started writing, I never paid any attention to by-lines. I didn’t really care who wrote what, and I never really noticed a difference between articles. A story was a story was a story.
When I decided I wanted to write a novel, however, by-lines became a big deal. Any time a writer queries a publication (be it a newspaper, magazine, or book publisher), she needs to include a few things: a summary of the article/story, details about it (length, comparatives, etc.), and experience (i.e. by-lines).
Right away that told me I needed to do some more writing if I wanted to get a book published. It wouldn’t be enough to tell people that I can write – I have to prove it. The best way to prove it, of course, is to present examples of published materials. Hmmm…that can get a little tricky. You need to have experience to get the gigs – how does that work?
I can’t speak on that, but I can give you a great tip for getting by-lines: start small.

I’m sure there are other ways to make a start, but this is what worked for me. I started by accepting an on-line writing gig. I found it via Freelance Writing Jobs. Someone gave me a chance and let me write 500-1000 word articles for the astounding payment of $10/article. 
They published my first one, which I used to help get me another gig writing for a small local, weekly paper. They didn’t pay much more ($10-25/article, depending on length), but I took whatever jobs they offered. There was another free weekly paper in the area, bigger than the first, but still not huge. I took advantage of a story that I thought fit into both paper’s readerships and pitched it to the new paper. They liked it, and agreed to let me start writing for them.
I still don’t get paid a lot of money, but I’ve been regularly contributing to four local papers for two years, and I’ve now had almost 250 articles published. The money isn’t great, but I’m not worrying about that right now. My focus, for now, is to build my resume – get some by-lines. 
When I do, finally, submit a manuscript to a book publisher, I want them to know that I can work for an editor. I can meet deadlines, word counts, and periodical expectations. It’ll be larger scale in the book publishing industry, but the principles are the same. I hope that my years of freelance writing experience will translate well into the novel world.
QUESTION: Where was your first by-line? How did you get the gig?