A Graveyard of Pitches

By Chelsey Drysdale

In the past, I traditionally would write an essay before trying to publish it, rather than relying on a pitch. One reason was that my writing often morphed into work that didn’t fully resemble my original plan, so selling a “newsy concept” in a brief e-mail didn’t seem to make sense.

But after months—or years—of toiling over personal essays with the goal of building that infamous “platform,” so one day an editor will say “yes” to my memoir manuscript, which, at eleve...