The Six Month Thing
Here's how to get your freelance writing career through the next six months
When ‘lockdown the first’ happened six months ago, I had one instinct. (I mean besides opening the gin, obviously.) I had this absolute urge to be around other freelance journalists who were feeling the same things as me.
As the enormity of what was ahead sunk in and I started contemplating the implications for my 12-year career as a freelance journalist, I wanted to talk to other people who got what was racing through my head.
People who understood that asking me to nail jelly to a tree would have been infinitely easier – and more satisfying – than asking me to homeschool three kids whilst keeping on track a freelance writing career that I’d literally built around their school hours.
I needed to compare notes with folks who, like me, felt pretty certain that several of their clients wouldn’t survive this economic plot twist. (It’s true, they didn’t. I lost my biggest client and with it the lion’s share of my family’s income.) I wanted to be around fellow freelance journalists who shared the fear that a pandemic would upend our industry and thereby our careers in ways we’d never, ever thought to worry about before.
So we did exactly that – we threw a Zoom call together and gathered our little community of freelance journalists for no other purpose than to be together in a squeaky bum moment. We already waste a lot of time – I mean HANG OUT WITH THEM – on an almost daily basis in a ‘secret’ Faceboook group that we started when we first launched our online pitching courses for journalists back in 2015.
It’s not a big gang, but that’s partly what makes it so wonderful. It’s less like walking into a terrifying professional networking event full of people you begrudgingly admire and fear in equal measure, and more like laughing with your mates at the back of the maths class when you’re supposed to be working in silence. Normally we cringe at the thought of showing off about this stuff, but barely a month goes by where one of our community doesn’t mention that this little Facebook group is their favourite corner of the internet or, indeed, one of the only reasons they’re still on Facebook. Aw.
Anyway, all of that is to say that over the last six months, we’ve had fairly regular online gatherings with our community – and oh, how they have saved us. We’ve laughed, we’ve accidentally got tipsy together, and we’ve railed against things like terrible freelance contracts and the absolute horror of the government’s support for self-employed people leaving so many people high and dry.
In other words, we’ve pulled each other through a difficult time when it’s easy to feel alone in whatever you’re going through. We’ve shown up for each other online as colleagues and mates, despite the fact that most of us have yet to meet in ‘real’ life. (That Muse Flash retreat is going to be sooo good when it eventually happens…)
As disappointments and losses have given way to green shoots and new commissions, we’ve cheered one another on. We’ve celebrated each other’s successes and let them fuel our faith in our own freelance futures. (When I recently landed a new client that replaced the one I lost, I didn’t feel I couldn’t tell these guys for fear they’d think I was boasting. I knew they’d take it as a reason to believe in good things ahead for themselves.)
Last week, one of our former students reminded us of something we’d said in that first Zoom session. We’d talked about the months ahead being a long game and how our goal, as freelance writers, was simply to still be pitching in six months’ time. All our former goals had gone out the window the day lockdown was announced. But with every bit of bad news that came from the media and publishing worlds as the weeks dragged by, we just set our minds to that intention again and again. Keep pitching. Keep doing what works. Be one of the ones still full of ideas and dogged pitching determination in six months’ time. And here we all are.
That was our student’s point: she was still standing six months on. She had achieved her goal. And – bonus – work had slowly started picking up again, just like everyone told her it would. Like the rest of us, she’d lost clients and had bleak days but by narrowing her focus for a season and continuing to pitch, she felt her career had pulled through.
KEEP PITCHING
And all of THAT is to say that our best advice for navigating the next few months is simply this: keep pitching. Don’t expect everything you pitch to get commissioned. It doesn’t work like that at the best of times, never mind in a pandemic. Anticipate some silence and brace for the rejections but don’t let them throw you off course. They don’t (necessarily) mean you’re doing it wrong. They’re just how this business works. So resource yourself to keep pitching even though you might find yourself daydreaming about a new career as a jewellery designer (despite never having made an item of jewellery in your life...) or as a maker of luxury artisan granola. (Just me? Ok, never mind.) If you want the commissions, you need to keep pitching.
DON’T GET LAZY
We’ve said this a thousand times before but, ironically, it’s when the crap hits the fan that we all tend to slip into lazy pitching habits. Don’t make that mistake. Now is not the time to send half-baked ideas to editors in the hope that they’ll do the work for you and see the fabulous feature you couldn’t be bothered to mine from the rubble of your idea. They really won’t.
If you’ve done our courses, revisit the tips that helped sharpen up your pitches. Apply them. If you haven’t and you feel totally lost, ping us an email and we’ll give you three things you can do right now to improve your pitching technique. For free. Cos we’re good like that.
Better still, sign up for our Cracking Pitches course, which will teach you everything we know about pitching AND includes a week of mentoring and unlimited feedback on your own pitches. Or book onto our next Pitching Frenzy course if you know how to pitch but just need a week of us ripping holes in your half-baked ideas and putting you through the paces of good pitching practice to get you back on track.
PHONE A FRIEND
And finally, get some mates around you. Preferably fellow freelance journos who get the peculiar challenges of this moment in time for those of us who write for a living. I can’t tell you how much those Zoom sessions have buoyed me up. It lifts the sodding spirits to have a bit of banter with other freelance writers when things seem bleak –and to hear that it’s not all book deals and celebrating viral Reels in their world either.
On that note, we’re opening up our next Pitching SOS Zoom session to make it available to all freelance journalists, not just those who’ve done our pitching courses. It’s THIS WEDNESDAY at 11 am and it’s only a tenner! But there are plenty of other ways to get some moral support. All we’re saying is avail of those opportunities. It can be hard to face another Zoom call or connect with people when you feel like hiding but you’ll be so glad you did. Why sit at home refreshing your inbox and scrolling through Insta feeds of irritatingly successful creatives, when you could be indulging in the virtual equivalent of piling down the pub after work with your well-connected journo mates, before such things were health risks/illegal?
A piece of advice we valued: Dr Aisha Ahmad’s thread on how to keep going and why the six-month mark in any sustained crisis is difficult. It’s just so good.
A piece we loved writing: I penned this smug mum piece about how I was finding the school run lovely. We’re back to lost PE kits and running late now, of course.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education-and-careers/2020/09/07/uniforms-ready-lunches-packed-pencil-cases-point-school-run/
A piece we loved reading: A former Muse Flash student writes a brilliant newsletter about ethical and sustainable ways of living and the latest issue landed with me pretty powerfully – well worth a moment of your time.
A podcast we enjoyed: We’re big fans of Emma Gannon’s podcast Ctrl Alt Delete and we loved this episode on self-sabotage. Emma’s written a book on the very same topic, too.
Students we’re especially proud of: We got two lovely emails last week which might have messed up our mascara:
‘So remember yonks ago when I first did your course I said I would give it a year and a bit and hope that by the time my youngest started school I would hope to have found my groove? Well, he’s now at school (thank God for school, please let them stay...) and this week *prestigious publication* asked me to write two pieces and *even more prestigious publication* just commissioned me to write a piece. No pitching involved but I have been close to commissions before and they know me and came to me. I’m so chuffed/busy/drinking wine/knackered. So perseverance is the key and I’m just rolling with it for now. Crazy times. I know lots of people are having an almighty shitty time but wanted to say thank you for your belief in me and all the encouragement.’
‘I just landed my dream commission! Thanks so much, you guys. Thanks for all your support as ALWAYS. I wanted to let you know about this one as it was one we discussed in the recent mentoring week I did with you. It’s wonderful to know, in this lonely game, that there are people rooting for you.’
Dates for your diary: We’re launching something totally new for October. It’s for freelance journalists who don’t feel they need an entire pitching course but do need a fuel injection of focus and inspiration. We’ll help you set a goal, polish up your pitching technique so it’s not letting you down, and generally get you firing on all pitching cylinders. Whether you want to crack a dream publication, get better at working out where to pitch, or just re-energise your approach to coming up with ideas and turning them into juicy commissions, we’re here for that. It’s £249 and places are *strictly* limited but we’re offering a discount of £50 for Museletter subscribers – drop us an email if you’d like to be among the first to know when we open bookings for this one and bag your place for £199.
Until next month, pitchers…
Heidi & Hazel