Thursday, September 13, 2007

Reverse Engineering

Besides reading, homeschooling my daughters, and watching re-runs of Law and Order, I spend my free time playing a new high-tech game called geocaching. Players use handheld GPS devices to find hidden treasure boxes all over the world.

The location of the boxes is usually posted on the geocaching.com web site; but some require seekers to solve a puzzle to obtain the location.

Although one puzzle was beyond my ability to solve, I noticed that someone who had found the box had posted a photo of themselves with the treasure in hand. I printed the photo and hiked up a nearby mountain. When I found the spot on the trail that matched the photo's background I started poking around in the chaparral. After a few probes I was rewarded by the sound of my hiking stick hitting the metal box. Sweet success!

In the same way I reverse engineered the location of the geocache, successful writers reverse engineer the types of articles that a magazine editor will jump to publish. In my course Write Magazine Articles That Sell! we'll investigate methods you can use to dissect and analyse the magazine you'd like to write for -- methods that will dramatically increase your chances to see your article in print.

Carol Thomas -- Write Magazine Articles That Sell!

1 comment:

Anita C. Lee said...

Carol, my husband and son-in-law love to go geocaching here in New Mexico. What a great analogy of reverse engineering a magazine article.
Anita C. Lee
Instructor for "Your Life, Your Story"