What do you need?
Clue: It's not to do more or be more.
I’m writing this at my kitchen table at 8 pm on a Friday night having just wrestled my inbox from over 1,000 unread emails to NONE. I’d say the relief is astonishing but honestly I’m too tired to get excited about an empty inbox.
On that note, I’d say 1200 emails is a pretty standard week for me these days. This is what prompted me to tweet this week about how overwhelming it feels to have an inbox that’s never empty. (In the time it has taken me to type 5 lines about finally having an empty inbox, three more emails have already breached the barricade.)
I hate the thought of freelancers emailing me their best feature ideas and then feeling like they’re left dangling at the mercy of whether I can be bothered to reply. Truthfully, I’d reply to every single pitch I get if there were enough hours in the day.
Oh. There’s another email.
Anyway, this is meant to be a cheery pep talk, not a tale of woe from the commissioning side of the fence. Still, my point is that about 90% of the emails I get are PR pitches that bear little to no relevance whatsoever to what I write about.
And yet among the overwhelming virtual clutter, I found a few gems. Pitches from some of you for Psychologies. (I’m technically the Features Editor according to the magazine’s masthead but I’m not commissioning at the moment so please don’t… send me an email.)
(Side note: it never ceases to amaze me that no one has come up with a workable alternative to the craft-perfect-pitch-and-send-into-the-void / get-utterly-overwhelmed-with-emails-and-ignore-everyone approach that commissioning editors and freelance journalists rely upon as the basis of their relationship. Surely Muse Flash could do something about this? Can we collaboratively create, I don’t know, some sort of Tinder for Pitching? Oh no. Have we just started Another Thing?
ANYWAY (again).
It’s hard saying no to ideas that are brilliant and conveyed in ways that are basically a masterclass in how to pitch. It sucks to worry that my former freelance comrades now think of me as one of *those* editors who never reply.
And yet my point in all of this is that great pitches will always find the light of day. Eventually. At least two did this evening. From months ago. So if you’re feeling as disheartened as I am by the odd little digital dance that goes on between you and the people with the power to help you keep your lights on this month, let me say this.
Keep pitching. Please. It’s a terrible model but it works. Sort of.
Follow up. Always follow up.
Chase the ideas that you believe are worth chasing. (These days I don’t even fully consider an idea until I’m chased, by which point I’m already highly engaged because I feel so bad that you’ve had to chase me.)
I also want to mention that I *might* have cried a little bit in a meeting this week. (Like, ‘literally actually’ cried, as my daughter just said half a dozen times in disbelief.) It was no one’s fault and I felt prompted to apologise for losing my cool afterwards. I realised that the pressure to say ‘yes’ and to keep delivering in line with expectations had just suddenly spilled over into a tearful rush of overwhelm.
Expectations of me, I feared, were straying into the realm of unrealistic. And there’s nothing my freelancer’s heart struggles with more than the idea of an unachievable goal. It’s ingrained in me to overdeliver. That’s partly what made me a successful freelancer, I now realise as an editor.
But that’s not to say we should overdeliver. Sometimes it’s the right thing to push back. In my case, someone brilliant heard my frustration and gently asked me what was achievable. In coaching, we call that reframing. Shifting the focus so that the problem or challenge is no longer in the foreground and we’re able to see the more interesting elements of the picture. From there, we walked together back to a place of possibilities, away from the precipice of despair.
And what I realised, once I’d pulled myself together and found my sense of professionalism, is that I’ve been here before. I remember writing about it in an Instagram post not long ago so I scrolled through to find it and these words leapt back out at me.
‘I heard a voice shouting in a sort of high-pitched sob today in the middle of a hospital entrance… and realised it was my voice… long story… but instead of numbing the aftershock of that with booze or pizza as I might previously have done, instead I was super lucky enough to have a coaching class which brought forth (as it always does) one of those lightbulb moments that are so powerful you actually feel a bit like you need to sit down or you might fall over.’
‘It was this: unmet needs are powerful creatures and they will make themselves known, sometimes with high-pitched sobby crying that you suddenly hear and realise is your own voice if you don’t tune in and attend to them. From there, we unearthed about 40 years’ worth of coping mechanisms in about three minutes and I discovered that I can LET GO of the sh*t that isn’t serving me anymore, even if it had its place for little me once upon a time.’
Our unmet needs need our full attention if we’re to avoid sobbing loudly in hospital corridors or weeping in work meetings. But freelancers, I think, are practically trained to minimise their needs.
To sacrifice your evening plans for that exciting eleventh-hour commission.
To accept a setup where you send your best ideas into the ether and feel grateful if you get back so much as a reply.
To tolerate a late payment because making a fuss might blot your copybook.
(This is not a stance we support, by the way. Make a fuss and burn the bridge - it’s not a reliable bridge anyway and those are not safe to walk on.)
And here, at last, comes the moral of this meandering Museletter. If you do just one thing for yourself as a writer this month let it be this: meet your needs.
Acknowledge them. Make them welcome. Offer them a cup of tea and assure them that they’re not an inconvenience. Listen closely to your needs and resolve to do at least one thing to tend to them more closely.
Who knows what that might be?
A brave conversation.
A bold email. (Just please, not to me).
An Artist’s Date.
A day off.
A cry.
A dance.
A donut.
You’ll know what you need to do.
And then do me a favour. When you’ve done that one thing, send me an email and tell me all about it.
I’m serious. I’ve just realised that that’s…
EXACTLY
WHAT
I
NEED.
A piece of advice we valued…
On the sidelines of a youth football match recently, I heard the coach utter the immortal words ‘Kids, that was crap’. Once I’d recovered from the urge to deliver a swift kick to the back of his knees in defence of the youngsters, it occurred to me that frustration had caused him to slip out of coach mode and into the role of critic. How often do we listen to the frustrated mutterings of our own noisy inner critic instead of cheering ourselves on as a good sports coach would? Don’t do that.
A piece we loved writing…
Super cheesy but 18 things I know on my son’s 18th birthday was a fun one to write in my day job.
A piece we loved reading…
I found this Glamour article on maladaptive daydreaming utterly fascinating. Seems my daydream habits aren’t such a big deal after all.
A podcast we enjoyed…
I recently discovered The Freelancer’s Teabreak and think you might like this episode on Mental Health Tips for Freelancers. Readjusting your boundaries is a good tip for me.
Muse Flashers we’re especially proud of…
Based in Devon, Anna Turns is an environmental journalist and author of Go Toxic Free as well as a lecturer and radio presenter. We’ve loved watching her career take her to exciting places both figuratively and literally - she recently returned from a pretty amazing visit to Dubai!
Want more MuseFlash in your life? Here’s where you can find us…
MuseFlash: The Reboot
We’re running a very exciting new three-day online course later this month and have just a couple of spaces left. Tickets (£250) are on sale now and you can pay in three installments of just £83 if you prefer. Part pitching masterclass, part group coaching session, and part virtual knees-up, this will also help you work out what you need and fill you with the vim and vigour to go and get it. Come!
Poetry with Kate Fox - Wednesday 29th March 10.15am
The best £15 you’ll spend all year and arguably one of the best hours of your life. Press pause on life and join us and the brilliant poet, broadcaster, and comic Kate Fox for our next poetry workshop. You don’t have to read anything you write (but you’ll totally want to) and it doesn’t matter if you’ve never written a line of poetry in your life. Kate will bring forth wordy wondrousness from you and you’ll wonder if perhaps you should give up the day job and just become a best-selling poet.
Do email us (museflashtraining@gmail.com) with any questions or musings of your own… we always love hearing from you.
Love,
Heidi & Hazel
MuseFlash
www.museflash.academy