Now that I’m mentoring other writers and helping them ramp up their careers and get better paid, I’m making some interesting discoveries about why I’ve been able to carve out a good living from writing while many others have not.

One reason: My attitude.

It can be summed up this way: I’m unstoppable.

Again and again, when I talk to my mentees, I hear something like this: “I found this magazine I’d like to write for, but it didn’t have a masthead. So I didn’t know how to contact the editor. So I gave up.”

And right there is the difference between writers who are going to make good money from their words, and those who aren’t.

I said, “You gave up????” Then I solved the problem in less than five minutes. How?

I did a Google search on the phrase “Editor of X Magazine.” I looked at the magazine online to see if they had an online masthead. When that didn’t work, I searched on LinkedIn for the name of the magazine. And there was the name of the editor.

It took about five minutes, tops, for me to find this editor, and a way to contact them. I was a little surprised that such an easy stumbling block had stopped this writer from moving forward with her plan to pitch this market.

Writers should assume that many roadblocks stand in the way of them and the good living they want to earn from their craft. When you reach one, just start thinking about how you’re going to overcome it.

If the above hadn’t worked for finding the editor, I would have moved on to the next strategy, and the next, and the next.

Besides a few online and social-media searches, other ideas I had for finding this person included:

* Searching for and/or tweeting about the publication on Twitter to see if I could locate the editor there.

* Using Lexis-Nexis or maybe PR Newswire to search for press releases released by the magazine to try to turn up a quote by the editor or their email.

* Networking within writer forums I belong to and visit, such as FreelanceWritingGigs, About Freelance Writing, and locally for me my Digital Eve chapter and Women in Digital Journalism, to see if anyone in the group had dealt with the publication and knew the editor.

* There are also Web sites that collect information about magazines such as this one…maybe one of their databases might have something.

When you hit a roadblock, remember that the answer you need is out there. Reach out. And be unstoppable. Works for me.