Dear TMD Community -

In the past couple of years I have been writing Magic articles and participating in content creation. In that time I've had many people ask me about ways to get started as a Magic writer or content creator. I usually give folks the same basic advice that someone once gave me: "Just do it, I guess" was the exact phrase another writer told me. That's great advice, but it can still be hard to know exactly where to start.

Starting writing isn't necessarily about finding a website that will pay you for your content. First of all, most people that are going to pay you are going to want to see some sort of evidence that you have some talent as a writer. The real key is to find a place that will host your work with little or no questions asked.

TMD Members, you have the perfect place to start writing content. This very website is the PERFECT place for you to get started. If you have an article idea, you could basically just write it here as a post. Better yet, you could do a primer (like the fantastic Oath primer Evouga wrote). As far as I'm concerned, we need MORE material like this. Basic articles are fine, and I enjoy writing and reading them myself, but in my opinion there's no better resource for an aspiring Vintage player than an in-depth primer. My articles tend to have a shorter shelf-life, a good primer can be a resource for years to come!

So TMD community, I am challenging you to make this happen. Is there a deck that you know inside and out? Start a primer about it and teach all of us what you know. Evouga's primer is a great example. I am going to be linking to that Oath primer in an upcoming article because I like it so much, and if anyone else can make content like that for TMD I'll write about that one as well.

If you really want to be a writer, making this sort of in-depth material for TMD is a great idea. It will get you practice, and I will do my part to make sure as many people read it as I can. When the time comes that you want to try to write for a different website, you'll have something to show them.

I know that there are a ton of good content creators that use TMD. I love that, and I always try to read all of your work and I occasionally link to those articles in mine, because I like to reciprocate all of the support everyone has shown me. Let's all keep it up, because it's working - more and more people are finding out how great Vintage is.

Thanks for your time!

Islandswamp - Your friendly neighborhood Scrub

Adding to that, if you want to write about your local Vintage community, give a well reasoned shout out to someone improving the format, or explain how playing pushes you a better person, I would love to feature it on CardConfidants.

@Islandswamp I coach high school volleyball (4 straight Regional titles and 2 final fours in the Michigan state tourney) and have absolutely used principles that I first learned playing mtg on the court to good effect. (I also have a writing degree believe it or not. I hate doing that resume flouting, since a writing degree isn't really even a guarantee that someone can string two sentences together... but for what it's worth.) I'd be interested. I'm excited at the prospect of creating content for sure.

@Topical_Island Basically I'm saying that I would love to see all the major decks in Vintage get their own primers. I can't offer you money, but I sure as hell can tell a lot of people about it by spreading your work in my articles and on social media.

@darkr3x has connections to a content host as well, apparently. So perhaps that's an option too. But the main goals I have are that I want the new TMD to have a ton of cool primers (The Source has a primer on literally EVERY Legacy deck ever, that's what I want here). The second goal would be to continue the reciprocal promotion we have. I want everyone to succeed and be heard, I want people to see your hard work.

@Topical_Island Also I forgot to congratulate you on the Volleyball thing. I admire anyone who works with children, be it education or coaching (or anything else really). I did a little bit of work as a behavioral interventionist, I basically helped a juvenile client with developmental disabilities and behavior problems. Helping future generations is key to our success as a species.

@Islandswamp Yup. I'm the editor for a site whose motto is "Everday content for everyday players" and I mean that in nearly every way you can read that.

So while we do publish strategic content, set reviews, gameplay fundamentals, and so forth, I really want to hear from people for whom Magic (or gaming in general) has helped them deal with life shit, who've had to make the difficult decisions to balance the game and life, or how a silly idea became a deck that did work.

Magic is a hobby of passion, you don't spend car-sized money on something you don't love, and I believe that human element sometimes gets lost in all the metagame analysis, number crunching, and vehement arguments about optimal builds and lines of play.