Lovely Girl   +  querying

Dust Off Those Story Ideas

I was browsing the magazine racks in Barnes and Noble the other day when it occurred to me that it might be time to resurrect some old story ideas. I originally concieved one of them as an article showing teens how to deal with a certain rite of passage, and I'd shopped it around to almost every teen magazine in the US (and one in Canada). Editors confirmed that it was a good idea, but for various reasons no one wanted to assign it. Then I picked up a parenting magazine and realized that, with a few tweaks, it could become a parenting article on "Helping Your Teen Cope With X." Bingo!Of course, there are a million variations on the theme of reslanting articles: you could take that dating article that wasn't quite right for a women's mag and submit it to a men's magazine instead (with different examples, of course). You might rework a piece that was originally intended to be national in scope and localize it for a regional magazine. A how-to article on gardening might get a new life as a personal essay about how you've found solace working in your garden. Any other ideas? How have you reslanted an article?