Last month I took my 18-year-old to a two-day freshman orientation at the university he’ll be attending in just a few weeks. While he registered for courses, met fellow classmates and checked out the residence halls, I sat through a series of presentations for parents on the realities of college life circa 2011.

Sometime during the second day it occurred to me that a lot had changed since we sent our oldest off to school four years ago. It also got me thinking  about the things parents sending a kid off to college for the first time should know but won’t get from a presentation or brochure, for example, that if your student gets sick, the campus health center won’t bill your insurance company.

The Anatomy of a Story Idea

Flash forward to the following week. I’m back in the office and getting ready to send ideas for blog posts to my editor at SecondAct, Entrepreneur Media’s website for people over 40. I considered including a pitch for a post about what parents need to know when sending a freshman off to college. But I’m not sure she’ll like it, so I don’t put it on the list. But at the last minute I tack it onto the end.

Turns out she loved the idea. I wrote this post within the week and it got good amount of tweets and comments.

Good Idea Goes Viral

That was in mid-August. A couple weeks later, I discovered that MSNBC.com, which is a SecondAct content partner, re-ran the post with a new headline and deck – you can read the updated version here. It racked up even more page views, comments, tweets and shares on other social networks.

The Washington Post‘s personal finance blogger, Michelle Singletary, spotted the post on MSNBC.com and used it as the basis for this Aug. 25 post; her post reiterates a lot of my original points, with some of her own comments.

Late last week, I found out the original post was the third highest trafficked story on SecondAct in August.

And to think, I almost didn’t pitch it.

All of this is a great example of why it pays to trust your gut. If you think you’ve got an idea that would make a great story you’re probably right. Granted, you have to know which story is right for which publication, and how to cast a story to fit a particular publication’s readership and mission. But if you write for the same publications on a regular basis, you’re probably good at that already. (That’s another reason why I’ve always advocated cultivating ongoing relationships with a handful of publications over writing for dozens).

That’s my story, but what about you: have you trusted your gut about a story and had things work out even better than expected? Share your experience by leaving a comment.

I got dumped recently for the first time in a while, and looking back on the experience I should have known better. I sent what I thought was a carefully crafted pitch to an editor whose name had been forwarded to me by a colleague. The editor liked the pitch enough to call me, but wanted a slightly different angle that required me to do more research. Four lengthy interviews later, I emailed my revised pitch, then waited. When the editor finally got back to me it was to say, sorry, it’s still not exactly what we’re looking for.

I moped, then did what I should have done in the first place – asked the editor for a short phone conference. The next week he spent 15 minutes explaining to me in explicit detail the types of stories he’s looking for and the audience the publication is trying to hook. Will I sell my next pitch? I can’t say for sure, but at least I have a better idea of what to shoot for.

Ron Kovach, senior editor of The Writer, has some great information on this very topic in a new article called “Why queries get rejected,” on the magazine’s Website.

According to Kovach, pitches for stories that aren’t a perfect fit – like mine – are one reason queries get rejected. Others:

• The publication has already run a number of stories on the topic and is giving it a rest for a while.
• The pitch is good but the writer has relatively weak credentials compared to other freelancers the magazine usually works with.
• The writer pitched 10 stories in one letter, which is about eight stories too many.

Read the whole story here.