by Writing Workshops Staff
A day ago
Most writers approach publication backwards. They write an essay, polish it until it gleams, then go looking for a home—scrolling through submission guidelines, querying editors cold, blasting the same piece to a dozen inboxes. When rejections pile up, they assume the problem is their writing. Usually, it isn’t. The problem is their targeting.
The writers who consistently land bylines at major publications—The New York Times, The Cut, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, The Atlantic—aren’t necessarily better writers than the ones collecting rejections. They’ve learned to reverse-engineer what editors actually want. And the single most reliable way to do that? Write for columns.
Columns are the secret door into major publications. Unlike open submissions, which pit your work against thousands of unvetted pitches, columns operate within defined parameters—a specific theme, a recognizable format, a known editorial appetite. That specificity is your advantage. When you understand what a column is really asking for, you can write directly to its needs instead of guessing. The result is a dramatically higher acceptance rate and, often, a relationship with an editor who will come back to you for more.
What Makes Column Writing Different from Open Submissions
Think of the difference this way. An open call for essays is like walking into a restaurant and asking the chef to cook whatever they feel like. A column submission is like ordering from a menu. The chef has already decided what ingredients they’re working with, what flavors they’re building toward, what the final plate should look and taste like. Your job as a writer isn’t to reinvent the restaurant—it’s to bring an ingredient the chef hasn’t seen before, one that fits perfectly into a dish they’re already making.
Every recurring column at a major publication has what I think of as its editorial DNA—a set of implicit rules about subject matter, structure, emotional register, and the relationship between the writer and the reader. Some of these rules are spelled out in submission guidelines. Most are not. The writers who land bylines are the ones who can read between the lines.
Consider how different the editorial DNA is across just three well-known columns. The New York Times’ “Modern Love” asks for deeply personal essays about contemporary relationships, but the key word there is contemporary—the best pieces hinge on some element of modern life (dating apps, co-parenting across political divides, navigating intimacy after a public health crisis) that wouldn’t have existed a generation ago. The emotional register is vulnerable, self-aware, and ultimately redemptive. Column editor Daniel Jones has said that his favorite endings aren’t happy per se, but involve the writer understanding something they didn’t understand before.
Now compare that to the LA Times’ “L.A. Affairs,” which covers similar romantic territory but with a distinctly West Coast sensibility—sunnier, more wry, deeply rooted in the specific geography and culture of Los Angeles. Or look at The Cut’s personal essays, which tend toward longer, juicier narratives with a sharper edge and more willingness to sit in moral ambiguity. Same broad genre (personal essay about relationships and identity), three completely different editorial appetites.
How to Reverse-Engineer a Column’s Editorial DNA
Before you write a single word for any column, you need to do the reading. Not a quick skim of two or three pieces—a genuine immersion in the column’s recent archive. I recommend reading at least ten to fifteen installments published within the last year, and as you read, you should be asking yourself a specific set of diagnostic questions.
The Five Questions That Decode Any Column
What is the column’s central tension? Every good column is built around a recurring tension that each installment explores from a new angle. For “Modern Love,” it’s the gap between what we expect from love and what love actually delivers. For the Washington Post’s “Inspired Life” section, it’s the tension between struggle and resilience. Identify the tension, and you’ve identified the engine of the column.
Who is the “I” in the column’s essays? Some columns want the writer to be an everywoman or everyman—relatable, ordinary, someone the reader sees themselves in. Others want the writer to have a specific, unusual vantage point (a niche career, an uncommon living arrangement, an extraordinary experience). The New York Times’ “Tiny Love Stories” feature, for instance, works precisely because the brevity (100 words or fewer) strips away credentials and biography, leaving only the emotional core. In contrast, many of the personal essays published by Cosmopolitan or Business Insider lean on the writer’s specific identity or circumstance as the hook.
What is the emotional arc? Pay close attention to where each essay begins emotionally and where it ends. Does the column favor arcs of transformation (I was lost, now I’m found)? Discovery (I thought I understood this, but then I learned something unexpected)? Defiance (the world told me one thing, and I chose another path)? The emotional arc is often the single most important factor in whether your essay fits.
What structural patterns repeat? Some columns favor a chronological narrative that unfolds over weeks or months. Others prefer essays that begin in a single scene, spiral outward into reflection, then return to the present. Still others work best as braided essays that toggle between two timelines or two threads of experience. Notice, too, the typical length—a column that runs 1,200 to 1,500 words is asking for something very different than one that runs 3,000.
What has the column published recently? This is the question most writers skip, and it costs them. If “Modern Love” ran an essay about long-distance relationships last month, they’re unlikely to run another one this month regardless of how good yours is. If The Cut just published three first-person pieces about motherhood, your motherhood essay needs a radically different angle—or a different home. The column’s recent history tells you which lanes are open and which are congested.
“Notice that you’re noticing. If you find yourself saying, ‘What’s the deal with X?’ in a Seinfeldian sort of way, that’s probably fodder for an essay.”
— Courtney Kocak, quoting advice from journalist Taffy Brodesser-Akner
That advice from Brodesser-Akner illuminates something essential about column writing: the best column essays don’t start with a grand theme. They start with a small, specific observation—something the writer noticed about their own life that, when examined closely, opens onto a larger cultural or emotional truth. Your job in the reverse-engineering phase is to develop a matching instinct: noticing which of your observations fit the specific container a given column provides.
Ready to develop a strategy for landing bylines at top publications? Learn directly from a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, LA Times, and more.
Explore the Column Writing Seminar →A Craft Lesson in Miniature: The Art of the Column Pitch
Once you’ve decoded a column’s editorial DNA and identified an idea that fits, you still need to pitch it—and the pitch itself is a piece of writing that rewards craft. Many writers treat pitches as administrative chores, dashing off a few sentences that summarize their essay idea. The best pitches do something more: they demonstrate, in miniature, that the writer understands the column’s voice and can deliver on its promise.
A strong column pitch has three components. First, it names the specific column or section you’re targeting. This signals that you’ve done your homework rather than sending a generic blast. Second, it articulates your essay’s premise in one or two sentences that are vivid and specific enough to make the editor curious. Vivian Gornick, whose craft book The Situation and the Story is essential reading for any essayist, makes a useful distinction between a situation (the raw events of your life) and a story (the insight or meaning you’ve drawn from those events). Your pitch should convey both—the situation that will hook the editor’s curiosity and a glimpse of the story that will give the essay its depth.
Third, and this is where many writers stumble, your pitch should include a single sentence about why you are the right person to write this particular piece. Not a full bio—just a quick note about what gives you access or authority. If you’re pitching an essay about navigating IVF as a single person, mention that you’re currently going through it. If you’re pitching a piece about the economics of rural restaurants, mention that you own one. Editors want to know that the essay will have the texture of lived experience, not just the polish of good writing.
What about the essay itself? Some columns, like “Modern Love,” only accept completed essays—no pitches, no queries, just the finished piece submitted for consideration. Others, particularly at magazines like Cosmopolitan, Slate, or InsideHook, prefer pitches first and will commission the piece if the idea is right. Knowing which approach a column takes is part of your reverse-engineering homework, and getting it wrong wastes everyone’s time, including yours.
When Rejection Is Actually Intelligence
Even writers with impressive publication histories get rejected from columns regularly. The acceptance rate at “Modern Love” hovers around one percent. But rejection from a column is more useful than rejection from an open submission precisely because the column’s constraints are known. If your essay was rejected, you can usually diagnose why: the topic was too recently covered, the emotional arc didn’t match, the structure was wrong for the format, the premise wasn’t contemporary enough. Each rejection, if you’re paying attention, sharpens your understanding of what the column actually wants.
This is the hidden value of column writing as a publishing strategy. You’re not just submitting work—you’re training your editorial instincts. Over time, you develop the ability to look at any publication and quickly assess whether you have something that fits. That skill is worth more than any single byline.
Building a Column-Writing Practice: From One Byline to a Portfolio
The most effective column writers don’t target a single publication in isolation. They build what amounts to a portfolio strategy—identifying five to ten columns across different publications and tiers of prestige, then generating ideas tailored to each. This approach has several advantages beyond just increasing your odds of acceptance.
First, it forces you to become a more versatile writer. The voice and structure demanded by The New York Times is very different from what works at HuffPost Personal or McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Writing across these registers stretches your craft in ways that working on a single long project cannot. Second, it creates a visible publication record that compounds over time. A byline at a mid-tier outlet makes editors at top-tier outlets more likely to open your pitch. And third—this is the part that surprises many writers—columns frequently lead to larger opportunities. Book deals, speaking invitations, podcast appearances, and staff writing positions have all grown from single column placements.
Essayist and journalist Amy Sutherland, whose piece in “Modern Love” about applying animal-training techniques to her marriage became one of the column’s most-read installments, has spoken about how that single essay led directly to a book deal and a decade of follow-on writing opportunities. Her experience isn’t unusual. The column format, because it reaches a curated, loyal audience, has an outsized ability to launch careers.
“Use your romantic story as a jumping-off point or an example to explore universal ideas that allow you to connect to the reader, so that the essay isn’t just navel gazing. Find the humor. It can still be a sad story. But funny makes the sad sadder, the romance more romantic, the heartbreak more heartbreaking.”
— Advice from published Modern Love contributors
That principle—start with the personal, but make it universal—is the governing law of column writing across every publication, not just “Modern Love.” Whether you’re writing about career change for Business Insider, body image for Allure, or small-town life for The Guardian, the essays that get accepted are the ones that use a specific, embodied experience to illuminate something the reader recognizes in their own life. The specificity is what makes it universal, not the other way around.
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Explore IndieMFA Programs →An Exercise: Map Your Ideas to Three Columns
Here is a concrete exercise you can do today to begin building your column-writing practice. Set a timer for twenty minutes and work through the following steps.
First, choose three columns or recurring essay sections at publications you admire. They don’t all need to be at the same prestige level—in fact, mixing tiers is smart strategy. You might choose “Modern Love” at The New York Times, the first-person essays at HuffPost Personal, and a niche column at a trade or interest-based publication in your area of expertise (food, parenting, technology, outdoor recreation, whatever you know from the inside).
Second, read the three most recent installments in each of your chosen columns. As you read, jot down one sentence answering each of the five diagnostic questions outlined above: central tension, the nature of the “I,” emotional arc, structural pattern, and recent coverage.
Third, brainstorm three essay ideas for each column—nine total. The key constraint is that each idea must be tailored to the specific column it’s intended for. An idea that works for “Modern Love” probably doesn’t work for HuffPost Personal without significant rethinking. Resist the urge to write one essay and send it everywhere. That’s the old approach, and it’s why your inbox is full of rejections.
By the end of this exercise, you’ll have nine column-specific ideas, a much deeper understanding of three editorial appetites, and a clear sense of which ideas excite you enough to draft first. That’s not just a writing exercise—it’s the beginning of a publishing strategy.
Why Columns Are the Best Starting Point for Emerging Writers
There is a persistent myth in the writing world that you need to start small and work your way up—publish in tiny literary journals first, then mid-tier magazines, then eventually the big names. Column writing disrupts that narrative because many major columns are explicitly open to first-time writers. Daniel Jones at “Modern Love” has said repeatedly that he evaluates submissions solely on the writing, not the writer’s publication history. HuffPost Personal’s editorial model is built around amplifying voices that haven’t been heard before. The Cut, Business Insider, and numerous other outlets regularly publish debut essayists.
This doesn’t mean getting in is easy. It means the barrier is craft and fit, not credentials—which is exactly the barrier that the reverse-engineering method equips you to overcome. If you can write well and you understand what a specific column is looking for, you have a legitimate shot at a major byline even if you’ve never published before. That’s a far more encouraging equation than the traditional slush pile, where your work competes against everything from undergraduate experiments to seasoned professionals, with no editorial filter narrowing the field.
The writers I know who have built thriving freelance careers almost all point to a single early column placement as the moment things shifted. Not because that one essay paid well (most columns pay modestly, in the $300 to $500 range) but because it gave them proof of concept—evidence that they could decode what an editor wanted and deliver it. Once you’ve done that once, you can do it again. And again. And what starts as a strategy for landing a single byline becomes the foundation of a sustainable writing life.
Instructor Courtney Kocak's bylines include The New York Times, The Washington Post, LA Times, Cosmopolitan, Slate, HuffPost, Business Insider, and InsideHook. She's a writer, podcaster, comedian, and memoirist whose debut, Girl Gone Wild, is forthcoming from Trio House Press. She teaches the "Land Big Bylines by Writing for Columns" seminar at WritingWorkshops.com.
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