the first foreword: an introduction
by Savannah Roberts @savannahsocials @wordsbysavannah
Welcome to the first article here on the foreword. A site where we hope you gain your first byline and find your next favourite artist, musician, writer, poet, filmmaker – you get the gist. the foreword was made by creatives for creatives, we want to make it easier to cut through the noise and platform your work. Whether you have a piece of art to promote or you’re dying to write about someone else’s, we want to hear about it.
Over the years, I have written many articles for different media publications. Some were features I’d slaved over, others were easy SEO-wins, and more often than not my pieces were short-shelf-life news reports. For one brand in particular I surpassed 2000 published articles, which felt like a milestone but also a clear indication that it was likely time to change the gears. Somewhere along the way on the student-to-worker pipeline, I began to lose sight of why I wanted to be a writer in the first place. Why did I love writing about music, pop culture and film? I started to become unsure, it started to feel monotonous. I wasn’t pushing any kind of boundary in my creative work and forever being behind a laptop made it hard to connect with others in the industry.
When meeting quotas, delivering to business priorities, partaking in the eternal SEO dance with google, ideas that truly excite you begin to run dry. Publishing a news article that 3,792 other publications beat you to punch in, wasn’t necessarily what I had in mind when 13 Going on 30 and The Devil Wears Prada sold me this dream. Maybe you want a gear change, maybe personal essays or opinion pieces are your poison. Poem or film reviews. A niche deep dive or an interview with a valuable voice. If you want to freely write about what aligns with you, then we’re on the same page.
All of this to say, it’s not an easy industry to crack into. It’s not easy to get a pitch you’re desperate to write accepted, or a project you’ve put everything into promoted. I’m still only a few years into my career but I want to connect, collaborate and continue to pay it forward. We hope that the foreword will become a reliable springboard for you to platform your words, creativity and more.
If you want to get involved, you can pitch your idea via our contact form linked below.