Monday Mantra: Start

Hello all. I'm back again, and thrilled to be. Perhaps another time, I'll give reasons for my absence. But for now, let's get centered for our week.

Monday's Mantra: Start, Don't Finish.

I know what you're thinking: What? Isn't this blog about getting things done? Well, not precisely. This blog is about staying serene despite what's happening in your business. While getting things done can contribute to serenity, an obsession with getting things done often has the opposite effect: It makes us rigid and harsh, focused on the thing we can't control (when we finish an article, an edit, when someone will call us back, etc.) rather than what we can (scheduling the next interview, spending 30 minutes on writing).

The fact is, the finishing will take care of itself. It's the starting (or continuing) that's hard. I know this personally. This week I have two rewrites, a long reported feature to write, a fellowship to apply for, pitches to send, and four stories to set up and do interviews for. It's enough to make me throw up my hands and decide my bed--and those books on my Kindle--really need my attention.

This was driven home to me recently by a coaching session with an energetic and prolific client. Like everyone else, she's had her go-around the ring with procrastination. We were talking about the problem and I noticed the way she was talking about it:

"I was supposed to write this story yesterday, but then I wasted two hours paying a bill."


"Then I was going to do it today, but this other thing came up and I let it get in the way."


"And tomorrow I have five interviews, and I'm just going to have to make time for it."

Wasted. Let it get in the way. Forcing it. Pressure. Stress. They create an urgency to finish something--anything--even if it's not the thing we're worried about in the back of our minds. So, not surprisingly, we focus on the things we can get done, not the things we need to do. The bills get paid. The email gets responded to. And the article (or edits, rewrites, interviews, drafts) go undone. Rinse. Repeat.

Now, time management is an issue for all of us, and we could always probably be more efficient. And let's be honest: Starting to write a story can feel like clawing yourself out of a pit. But it's this kind of pressure that stops us in our tracks. Because every day we put it off, every day we excoriate ourselves for delaying and delaying, we hunker into a stance of having to make it up to ourselves. We imagine our clients standing there and tapping their toes in impatience. We tell ourselves over and over again that we are letting ourselves down. We dread work. We get that sick feeling of just wanting it to be over with.

And finishing becomes more important than ever.

What we forget--and what my client and I discussed--is that amid all this chatter about get-it-done and make-it-up-to-me, we forget to get started. Because getting started is insufficient. But it's also the only thing that will bring us back to our center and give us the priceless sense of serenity.

So here's what I intend to do this week: Rather than focusing on the deadlines bearing down on me, I am going to remember just to start. Just make a list and do the first thing on it. When I begin to feel that keening impatience and that feeling of inadequacy attempts to pull me under, I will start again. I will just set the timer for 30 minutes and write. I will set the timer for 30 minutes and contact sources. I will set the timer and spend a few minutes working on the revisions. I will just do the next right thing.

As E.L. Doctorow says, "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night: You can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

So get started today. Pick up the phone. Open a Word document. Read a few paragraphs in a book. Believe it or not, persistence will get you all the way there, if you just keep starting again and again.

And, when you do finish, you may just find that you've arrived with your serenity in tact.

"Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success."
--Napoleon Hill

Getting Over Outsiderism

One of the things I loved about Jacqui Banaszynski's recent guest posts on this blog is how frank she was about the challenges of looking like you know what you're doing and feeling the opposite. In the post on fear of seeming rude when you do the kind of persistence that leads to great stories, she said:

[T]he discomfort with self-promotion is very familiar. The same mother who taught me to hold my own in a sibling tussle also taught me that it’s bad manners to go bragging on yourself. And yes, she taught me to mind my own business, not be nosy, not pry into others’ affairs, etc.

Quite the dilemma for journalists, yes?

I’ve known a lot of journalists in my time who are flat-out hustlers, and I say that with admiration — perhaps even envy. They can charm, schmooze or bully their way into almost any situation and come out with the goods.

Not me. I’ve always believed — sometimes naively — that good work will get you noticed; and if not, good work should be its own reward. I also tend to lean more towards doing what works for the bigger group than for my own “score.” (Studies indicate that may be, in part, a gender-based tendency.)

I bring this up in particular because a coaching client of mine recently admitted that part of her hesitance to query had to do with feeling like she should be at a different point in her career by now. She described her main newspaper job as being with a crappy paper. She's been a full-time mom for several years now. How can she compete, she seemed to be asking, with people like me, who went to journalism school, worked at lots of papers, and is established?

What I told her is similar to what Banaszynski intimates above: Guess what? We all feel like we don't belong.

To illustrate, I told a story:

I went to Columbia Journalism School. Fancy, right? The best journalism school in the country. You'd think we'd all be walking around possessed of a level of confidence not experienced by mere hacks. We were the chosen ones, those who, the school's administrators constantly reminded us, would Save Journalism For The Next Generation.

You'd think that, and you'd be wrong.

Instead, there was a joke in the school: In our yearbook (because, in addition to being journalism nerds we were regular nerds as well), writer and former stand-up comic Barry Lank wrote a humor piece about how he didn't deserve to be at the school: Some guy named Bernie Link, or something, was out there somewhere, wrongly denied his spot at the illustrious school.

It was like the whole school had a case of impostor syndrome.

And it's not isolated just to students. Recently, on a professional freelancers board I frequent, someone posted a question with the title: "Do You Ever Feel Like You Just Don't Know What You're Doing?" The question got 13 responses, often with the reply, "All the time."

So if you're struggling with your right to be part of the group that calls itself full-time freelance writers, I'll tell you a secret. Feeling insecure is almost one of the requirements for admission. Just know that everyone is trying to find the next assignment, the next gig, the next piece of work that's going to make her career path make sense.

We do this job despite the fear, not because we're free of it. Maybe there's some level at which that fear is removed, but I haven't found it yet. I'd be willing to wager that the writer you most envy has his or her bouts with the same insecurities. There's always someone more honored out there to which we can compare ourselves.

So let's apply the serenity principle to this: If serenity comes from letting go of what you can't control and focusing on what you can, then feeling like you don't measure up definitely falls into the former category. It's antidote?
Get into the groove.

Finding and working on a query and a story you love--getting out of your brain and into your subjects' lives will--remind you that, though you may feel like you don't belong, you are exactly where you're supposed to be. The job will start making sense. You'll see that maybe you have something to contribute after all.

It's the thinking about it that bogs us down. So don't think. Do. Whatever's next on your to-do list, just do it. Get excited about your job. As Richard St. John said in one of the TED Talks I posted yesterday, passion and getting into the flow is key to success. Enjoy it.

Photo by TimWilson.

Five Ways to Overcome Persistence Resistance

This week, we're getting a wealth of guidance from Jacqui Banaszynski about the art, craft and grit of reporting and writing. After yesterday's q&a, I had another question for her, based on some past posts to this blog:

What do you say, what advice do you offer, to writers who find the marketing and interviewing persistence you describe to go against everything they've been taught about politeness, respect and, for some, proper, ladylike behavior?

Here's her response. As a reminder, Banaszynski is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who now holds the Knight Chair in Editing at the Missouri School of Journalism and an Editing Fellow at the Poynter Institute. She worked in newsrooms for more than 30 years, and now leads workshops for journalists around the world.

First, if I may indulge in a LOL moment. I grew up with four (large) brothers, raised by a mother who insisted I learn how to hold my own. The notion of “proper, ladylike behavior” didn’t exactly translate to the basketball court or baseball field in the way I think it’s suggested here. At the same time, I never saw a conflict between being competitive, intelligent and ambitious and being proper and feminine and attractive.

So the question itself, embedded in the notion of gender or femininity, is a bit of a puzzler to me. But the discomfort with self-promotion is very familiar. The same mother who taught me to hold my own in a sibling tussle also taught me that it’s bad manners to go bragging on yourself. And yes, she taught me to mind my own business, not be nosy, not pry into others’ affairs, etc.

Quite the dilemma for journalists, yes?

I’ve known a lot of journalists in my time who are flat-out hustlers, and I say that with admiration — perhaps even envy. They can charm, schmooze or bully their way into almost any situation and come out with the goods.

Not me. I’ve always believed — sometimes naively — that good work will get you noticed; and if not, good work should be its own reward. I also tend to lean more towards doing what works for the bigger group than for my own “score.” (Studies indicate that may be, in part, a gender-based tendency.)

So how do you “sell” yourself or your story, to either a story subject or an editor?

A few things to think about:

Step 1. Believe in what you’re doing.

If you’re trying to get an intimate interview, on deadline, with someone caught in a horrible tragedy, you have to believe that interview has value to the person and to the world, and that you will conduct the interview with as much respect as possible.

If you’re trying to convince an editor that you should travel to France to be fitted for a $600 couture bra and then write about it (I have a friend who did this), you have to believe that there are women— a lot of them — who are deeply curious about what it takes to find a perfect bra for their imperfect bodies.

At some level, you have to really find value in what you’re pitching, whether that value is in the idea or the experience you’ll get writing about it or the contacts you’ll make. Then you’re really not selling or self-promoting; rather, you’re relaying your passion, curiosity, sense of wonder, sense of fun, sense of outrage, desire to educate, belief in fairness, desire to try, etc.

Step 2. Do your homework.

There’s a story you’re dying to do? Make sure the publication you’re pitching it to does that kind of story, or you know enough about the publication to shape your pitch accordingly.

You want to interview someone hard to reach? Find people who can work as intermediaries to make a case for you.

Figure out how to make your idea of interest, use, value, fun not just for readers, but for the story subject.

You want more money for a story? Learn what the market rate is, by region, publication and author.

Step 3. Let go of a bit of self-protective ego.

This is going to sound counter-intuitive, because most people who don’t like to self-promote believe that only egotists do. But sometimes the failure to make your case — to get a difficult interview or defend your story to an editor — is really because you feel awkward or uncomfortable or defensive or shy. In other words, you make it about you, rather than about the story or the other person. If you shift the focus away from yourself, you’ll have a better chance of communicating your interest. And if you accept that momentary discomfort comes with the job, you’ll find that nothing bad really happens.

I can’t stress this enough. Time and again, I see reporters who won’t ask a difficult question or call a reluctant subject back because they think they are being polite — they’re protecting the feelings of the other person. But it’s the usually the reporter who is protecting himself when he doesn’t take that uncomfortable step.

Let’s say you’re interviewing parents who lost a son in Iraq. Do you really think asking them about their son is going to make their pain worse? Or do you think it could give them a chance to honor their son by letting the world know why he was special? (This is why writing obituaries is such a good experience; you discover that almost everyone wants to talk. And you learn how to ask for that conversation at a very sensitive time.) I’m a huge believer in letting other people (adults) make their own choices. Anything else is disrespectful.

So don’t pre-determine whether they want to talk by not asking them, or by editing your questions down to the most pallid. Don’t pre-determine an editor’s response to a story pitch by refusing to articulate — cogently and passionately — why you believe in the story.

Step 4. Learn not to take the first no as final.

People can change their minds with time. One skill to learn is to ask questions that give people a reason to say yes.

• If someone doesn’t want to talk to you, maybe they don’t want to talk to you right now; ask if you could call back in a few days.
• If someone is resistant to cooperating on a story, ask if you could come by and introduce yourself in person to explain your interest, or talk to them first on background to identify their concerns.
• If an editor isn’t interested in your story pitch, ask if there are elements of the idea that work for her, or if she has other stories needing to be done or if you could submit the story on spec.

I can’t count the number of stories that bore fruit because I returned to a subject after the first no. And interviews are always more productive in the second round; you now have an individual-to-individual relationship with a subject (rather than a subject-reporter relationship), and the subject has had time to think about the topic a bit more deeply.

Step 5. Finally, rehearse.

I’m serious.Whether it’s preparing for an interview you are nervous about or a pitch to an editor, it helps enormously to rehearse the conversation with a trusted colleague or friend. It’s similar to an athlete who envisions a game or race in advance: She can envision challenges, work out solutions and then see the route to success.

The same holds true of the kind of conversations that may feel awkward because they may feel pushy. If you rehearse the conversation, with someone playing the other role or at least listening very hard to your side of the conversation and giving you feedback, you will have to figure out how you’re going to make your case. You’ll have a chance to work on phrasing and tone of voice — things that might trip you up, especially if you’re nervous. And you’ll have to think about how the other person might react — what does the story subject or editor need to know that makes them interested in your proposal?

Is this pushy self-promotion? I think that’s more a matter of style than anything else. And a pushy style — not the sell itself — is what might seem unladylike. If you believe in what you are proposing, then your job is to communicate that to others. You are really just telling another story, to an audience, and you have to do the same things you do when you write: You have to think about that audience, think about what your story is really about and why someone should read it, and then make that very clear in an engaging and honest way.

Motivation, Storytelling and Mid-Career: A Q&A with Jacqui Banaszynski

Yesterday Jacqui Banaszynski shared how persistence landed her three big stories. Today, she talks about the persistence of storytelling, finding the right motivation to stay persistent and how persistence might look different in mid-career than when you're just starting out. Banaszynski is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who now holds the Knight Chair in Editing at the Missouri School of Journalism and an Editing Fellow at the Poynter Institute. She worked in newsrooms for more than 30 years, and now leads workshops for journalists around the world.

Tomorrow, one more post from Jacqui about persistence vs. politeness.

What role does persistence play in storytelling? Do the two go together at all?

I’m tempted to say there is no storytelling without persistence. Sure, there are the rare right-place, right-time cases of a great story landing in a writer’s notebook. But even then, the writer has to be alert to the value of the story and has to pursue it to the end.

Pursuit takes persistence. Lots of it. Persistence and follow-through often mark the difference between the successful, published writer and the frustrated wanna-be, perhaps even more than talent.

A writer has to be persistent in developing and pitching an idea; she has to be open to shaping and reshaping it to sell, while retaining her belief in it even when others don’t see the potential.

A writer has to be persistent in gaining access to the right subjects and sources, and in getting those people to grant both time and honesty.

A writer has to be persistent in staying focused on the point and purpose of a story, resisting the inevitable distractions and detours that come with reporting. At some level, that means even working to stay interested in the topic, or to get interested in the topic in the first place, or to work through enough interview questions to find the subject’s passion for the topic.

Most writers have to exercise discipline that goes beyond mere persistence when they finally sit down to write. And rewrite. And rewrite again. Too many great stories fail because writers lost patience or energy at the keyboard.

And finally, a writer has to be persistent in getting a story published. That means everything from (politely) hounding editors to working with photographers and designers to reading final proofs (if allowed) to make sure all the pieces of a story package are in place and accurate. Hitting the send button is not the end of journalistic writing.

You told a story at the conference of a student who wanted to do a story on a girl with an eating disorder. You set the bar high, assuming she'd give up. But she didn't and it sounds like she came up with a great story. How do high standards and persistence play off each other to create a better writer? Or do they?

Different people respond to different challenges. Some are “I’ll show you” types who thrive in the face of an impossible challenge. Others fold under pressure, so need constant validation and encouragement.

As an editor and teacher, part of my job is to figure out what best motivates a writer. But if you’re a freelancer working on your own or with multiple editors, you need to take control of your own motivation, and take responsibility for the quality of your work and for your own growth and development. If you can’t rely on someone else to push, prod or pull you, what can you do to push, prod and pull yourself? That takes both persistence and self-awareness. It means keeping yourself engaged, managing your time and refusing to get discouraged when you get little or negative feedback.

I believe in the theory that most people will rise (or fall) to the expectations set for them by people they value. So can you set expectations for yourself — tangible goals you want to reach or bars you want to clear — and then work day-by-day to get there?

Even if your work is “good enough” for publication or other editors, is it good enough for you?

Years ago, I made a sort of bet with myself to see if I could be directly involved with at least one award-winning piece of journalism a year. It wasn’t the awards themselves that mattered as much as using them as a benchmark. It reminds me to pay attention to the work I’m involved in, and make sure I’m giving extra effort to projects that have the most potential.

For mid-career journalists, is the issue of persistence in their craft different than those just out of college, in your experience?

See the answer just above. The key is to take responsibility for your own development, to know yourself and to find ways to motivate yourself.

Early in life, in school and at home, most institutions and relationships exist to help a young person grow and learn and achieve. It’s almost taken for granted that a young person will get constantly better, and that there will be people all around them to help them. That can be true very early in careers, too, when young hires have mentors or bosses invested in their success.

But after a few years on the job, that responsibility shifts and individuals have to take ownership of their own growth. One of the hard adjustments to adulthood is to realize that learning doesn’t come in a steady rise, but often in short steps up after frustrating long plateaus. And taking those short steps up sometimes doesn’t happen unless you make it happen yourself. So you have to start setting goals and routes to achieve them. You have to reach out and ask for help or for opportunities rather than have then given to you. You have to want to keep learning, and find ways to do so.

Are you constantly reading about the craft, or finding courses to take — perhaps joining a writer’s group or taking some online courses through NewsU or at a local community college? Are you inviting a publication's editor for coffee and asking her to evaluate your work? Are you finding writers who you admire, studying their work and perhaps interviewing them about their struggles and techniques?

And, most important, are you paying attention to how much your work grows and improves over time by reading past work?

Writing is a lot like running a marathon, or going on a long, arduous backpacking trip. You will cruise sometimes and stumble at others. You can’t get anywhere except one step at a time. So you need to set your sights on small markers along the way to the finish line, and celebrate when you cross one of those markers.

Then you need to start moving towards the next, one step at a time.

What do you tell mid-career journalists about their craft--improving it, etc?

Again, see the answer above. Improving the craft (and art) of reporting and writing and editing means constantly reporting and writing and editing — and reading. It means being in the world, talking to people, asking questions, paying attention, constantly keeping your curiosity on high and looking for stories.

It means reading with a writer’s mind, and at some level studying how good writers write. It also means getting back in touch with grade school grammar and gaining a better understanding of the habits you have in use of language, and of the effects specific language use (and grammar, punctuation, etc.) have on an overall piece.

It means writing, a lot, and then re-reading your work (out loud) with a reader’s mind:

• What’s clear?
• What’s fuzzy?
• What images stand out?
• What background can be condensed?
• What words or passages are self-indulgent and decorative rather than telling and descriptive?

It means trying something new and taking a few risks, as a reporter, a writer and a reader.

Anything else I didn't ask that you want to add or think is important to say on persistence for journalists?

Journalism is work worth doing. No matter what is happening in the news industry economically, the work of storytellers is work essential to society. It feeds community in both knowledge and spirit.

My parents taught me than any work worth doing is worth doing as well as you can do it. That’s how I feel about journalism.

Three Stories that Persistence Made Possible for Jacqui Banaszynski (Now with more Pulitzers)

We should all be so lucky as to spend some time talking to and working with an editor as ingenious, dogged and passionate as Jacqui Banaszynski. Banaszynski is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who now holds the Knight Chair in Editing at the Missouri School of Journalism and an Editing Fellow at the Poynter Institute. She worked in newsrooms for more than 30 years, and now leads workshops for journalists around the world.

I was lucky enough to attend a writing workshop she conducted at Health Journalism 2009, and I knew I had to ask her to comment for this blog. Happily, she agreed and the next two days, you'll get two great posts from her. Today, she shares three stories that persistence made possible for her. Tomorrow, she'll answer a bunch of other questions. Stay tuned.

There are so many examples of how persistence paid off in (saved) my stories that it’s hard to know where to begin. It is no exaggeration to say that persistence — hard work, follow through, patience, a bit (OK, more than a bit) of stubbornness —had much more to do with any success I’ve had than native intelligence, writing talent or even training. There’s an old saw that reporters make their own luck, and a lot of that luck is sheer stick-to-itiveness.

The best examples from in my reporting:

Not Letting the Story Die
When a natural gas pipeline in suburban St. Paul ruptured and exploded, killing a young mother and her daughter, it was big news. Every news outlet in the region wanted an interview with the husband/father, who had survived the blast with his other daughter. But he made it clear he wasn’t talking, and after a few days, most other journalists gave up.

I continued to work the story each day, gently but constantly reaching out to other sources to try to get to the husband while respecting his privacy boundaries. Finally, about 10 days after the explosion, the husband called me. It took a little more intense work to get him to understand why I wanted to talk to him, and to agree. The interview produced one of the most compelling emotional narratives I’ve ever been privileged to do.

Reporting as a Form of Persistence
A popular young priest in Minnesota was fired by his bishop in the midst of the AIDS/gay rights battles of the late 1980s. Religion and moral/social issues were hot-button topics in Minnesota at the time, and the priest had written an article criticizing the Catholic church’s attitudes toward disenfranchised groups, especially gays.

Everyone wanted an interview with the priest to determine his motivation: Was he making a principled sacrifice on behalf of others? Or was he gay himself, and living a double life? The priest adamantly refused to talk after making an initial, brief public statement. I kept after the story, peeling off five or six related pieces over the next three or four weeks, and using each of them as an excuse to call the priest for comment. Over time, he realized I was both professional and determined; I wouldn’t give up but I wouldn’t burn him.

At the same time, I learned more about church issues, and about the priest himself. He ultimately agreed to an interview, in which he revealed that he was faithful to his vows — and that he was gay and could no longer live with the internal conflict. The resulting profile was one of the first pieces hinting at what became a major and complex national issue about homosexuality and mainstream churches.

The Importance of Support
As the AIDS crisis worsened in the mid-1980s, my editor suggested I do a death-to-diagnosis narrative of someone dying of the disease. It took a full year, talking to dozens of sources and following dozens of leads, to find the right subject for that story and to negotiate access. The result was “AIDS in the Heartland,” a four-part series that won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. And in that case, my “persistence” was helped immeasurably by photographer Jean Pieri, my partner on the project. When one of us flagged, the other pushed. Jean met our story subjects first, and paved the way for everything to come. In the same way I often needed a running partner when I was marathoning, it can help for a writer to have a partner or buddy to keep them going.

What It Means

But persistence was key in all aspects of my work — from developing trust with sources, to staying with a story over a long course of time, to calling back sources multiple times to ensure accuracy, to simply showing up for work day after day, year after year, to write paragraph after paragraph until I gained some sense of journalistic mastery and creative voice.

Too many journalists think good writing is either the result of raw talent or magic. Or they were good at it in high school so think it should be a snap to succeed professionally. They then grow frustrated when they don’t win big freelance contracts or big awards overnight. The hard truth is that writing is like music or sports: It takes years of practice, coaching (feedback) and attention — writing and then writing and then writing some more —to get good and stay good.

Writing the Dream Query for the Dream Job

Recently, the fabulous Renegade Writer Blog posted a q&a with former New Yorker writer Dan Baum, and he shares both an interesting approach to freelancing and a whole treasure-trove of detailed queries. Some of those landed assignments at The New Yorker.

I point this out because it's interesting to see the amount of detail and the work he's put into his queries. One query I read, which landed him an assignment writing about the "jake leg" for The New Yorker, was so compelling I couldn't stop reading. No surprise it landed the assignment. It taught me a couple things about long-form narrative non-fiction pitches:

• Write like you've got the assignment. Duh, right? But I know I've queried the New Yorker with far less narrative pitches, and I can see why his pitch sold and mine didn't. It's a case of show-don't-tell.
• Details, details. The pitch is like a short article--fully researched, sourced and well-crafted.
• Open access. All good queries should do tell the editor about access, but his do a good job of showing the editor that he's thought out how much background he'll need and where he'll need to go to get it. It makes the job easier on the editor and builds trust.

He also has a great quote about how he pursues his sources for his queries. It fits with the persistence theme, but also gives a window into another freelancer's world (emphasis mine):

[To make it,] I think it takes relentlessness. When I’m starting to work on a story, I’ll start reading about something, and I’ll just follow every link, and as I’m doing it I’ll make a list in a Word document of the people that I need to find.

I start calling them immediately, and talking to them and taking notes on my computer. The expression I use with Margaret is “I had a red dog day today,” which means I had my nose down on the ground and I was going after everything today. Just hoovering in enormous amounts of information. And when I start a proposal, I try to have a series of red dog days where I am just relentless, going after everybody, and as soon as I encounter somebody’s name I pick up the phone and I call. When I finish the interview I say, Who else should I talk to? Then I call those people.

I don’t put it off — I don’t say these are people I’m going to call later — I do it right then. Man, there are times when in one day I can get enough information to write a proposal that will get me a $12,000 magazine assignment.

If you're a freelancer interested in long-form narrative, check out his archive and try an exercise:

• Take one of the queries
• Take a story you've written that you thought had narrative potential
• Start playing with your notes and research and practice making a narrative query from those notes and that research.

See how it works. Is there more research you need to do? What's missing? Do you know how to find the missing piece, or do you need to talk to someone about it?

It's fun. Try it and tell me how it works, and I'll do the same.

"Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time." Marabel Morgan

Photo by bobster855.

Pitching Pebbles and Choosing Persistence

Take a few minutes today to listen to this short podcast:

Choosing Persistence by Essential Communications.

If you feel anxious about rejection of your marketing efforts and if you ever find yourself psyching yourself out by how anxious you are about querying, this is for you. I especially love the following visualization, which is great for all of us and our, well, pitching:

I imagined standing at the edge of a big pond. At my feet was a pile of pebbles. My task was to pick up one pebble at a time at pitch it into the center of the pond. The goal was to throw enough pebbles to the exact same spot so they would pile up under water until one would finally break the surface. I never knew how deep the pond was or how big the pile was under the water. My job was just to keep pitching. Any pebble that broke the surface of the water was a job I landed.

In my imagination, every pebble had possibility of being the one. I never knew beforehand which would break surface, so I had to clear mind and bring all my technique to bear on whatever stone was at hand. I couldn't be distracted by the previous stones already throne or the ones still to come. And I couldn't worry about what would happen if it didn't break the surface of the water, and I couldn't get seduced into thinking about the rewards I'd get if it did break the surface. Every stone was its own event and I had to attend to each one with care.

I also had to believe that every stone made a difference. I had to believe that every stone really was piling up under water even though I couldn't see them. I had to trust that I was doing the right thing in the right way, even when I had no feedback to prove that was true. It was so easy to fall into doubt: doubt that the task was too difficult, that it was too tiresome, too hopeless, too unfair, too whatever. But my belief was a choice, and I had to keep choosing my positive belief over and over.

Photo by petervanallen.

Persistence at the Wrong Thing

Recently there's been a lot of discussion on a freelancers' board I frequent about bidding sites such as elance and Suite101. A new freelancer asks whether they were worthwhile.

This got me thinking about persistence. As in: What if you apply all the tools in your toolkit, and follow all the suggestions on this blog--but to the wrong thing?

What if you persist and persist and persist at work you hate, or in job markets, like elance, that will never pay you enough to live on?

Goal Confusion

They always say, "Keep your eyes on the prize" when they (whoever they are) want us to keep focused and keep going despite obstacles.

The problem, it seems to me, comes when you identify your goals too narrowly. Sure, elance might keep you busy. But will it keep you solvent? Will it keep you contented in your work? If your goal is to be busy, then mazel tov--you've done it. But I'd like to suggest that your goal deserves to be bigger than that--and that you can learn how to be capable of such goals.

Any market or editor or freelance bidding site is the object onto which you unleash your persistence: You query them monthly for years, ever refining your queries until you find one that works. You show up every day and do the work, with faith that inevitably, if you keep querying you'll get more work.

But that's not the goal. That's a step in the process to reaching your goal. At least for me.

The goal, it seems to me, is to support yourself doing the kind of journalism you love. Or maybe it's to reach a specific level in your career. Whoever you're querying has to fit into that goal. The step is not the goal.

Changing the Prize

That's the problem, it seems to me, with places like elance and Suite101: They encourage you to confuse busy-work with accomplishing goals and working like a dog with supporting yourself as a freelancer. As I've said before, in order to achieve any level of serenity in your work life, your job has to be sustainable.

Hoping to be the lowest bidder on a job is insane if your goal is to support yourself as a freelancer. Spending time writing SEO articles is crazy if you really want to write for The New Yorker or The Atlantic.

So we can spend good persistence technique after bad goals if we confuse the method (I'll query this market or that) with the motive (I want to be a high-paid freelance writer who writes narrative nonfiction).

Keep Going, but Change the Road

The good news is that persistence is such a valuable skill that once you turn it in the right direction, you'll get much further, much faster. It helps in this case to have a business plan. That way you know what you want to earn, and how you'll get there.

The fact is that places like elance are sites for people who want to be a freelance writer but don't want to step outside their comfort level enough to start querying individual magazines with individual stories. There's something to be said for steady work, but not when it goes against your financial and professional goals.

It may sound like I'm coming from a place of privilege, but I'm not. What I'm doing is acting on faith:

I believe there's enough work out there for me to have steady client that pay well. I believe in my story ideas enough to keep working on them and sending them out. I believe that my goals are attainable.

And I believe that anything that's set up to have us bid against each other automatically puts us at a disadvantage. With the time you spend creating proposals and hoping (!) to be the lowest bidder, you could build a Web site, create a LinkedIn account, start sending letters of introduction and meeting editors face-to-face.

All of those will yield more work, longer term, than elance or Suite101. Those sites feed off insecurities, sure, but they also feed off that mistaken belief that marketing is a shameful activity that should be done with as quickly as possible. I hate that. Have more faith in your skills and your unique approach to your work. Get excited about what you do and share it with editors who might need a writer like you.

Photo by borman818.

Developing and Maintaining Marketing Momentum: Q&A with Rachel Weingarten

Today is Guest Post Day in the 2nd annual WordCount Blogathon, so give a big Serenity for the Self-Employed welcome to Rachel C. Weingarten, a New York City freelancer, president of Octagon Strategy Group and author of the fabulous Career and Corporate Cool (which is sitting on my bookshelf as I type).You can read her blog at RachelcW.com or follow her on Twitter @rachelcw. Rachel mentioned on Twitter that she was trudging through some long client proposals, and I asked her a few questions about how she created the persistence to keep at it. Here are her answers.

First, tell me your approach to querying: How often do you do it, and how do you schedule it/ensure that you get to it?

I wish that I could say that I was incredibly organized with my queries and pitches. I'm not- initially. To give you a really corny metaphor, I tend to see it as planting seeds (bearing in mind that as a NYC resident I'm more of an avid window sill gardener so my metaphor probably won't work for agricultural professionals): I sprinkle some carefully chosen seeds in my little patch of land, as they start to sprout and grow, I pay more attention to the fastest growers while continuing to nurture the other seedlings.

I then lavish my attention on the plants that seem to have the most promise and generally will ignore if not repurpose the ones with no growth at all. In other words, I care for my prospects consistently, but don't really worry or waste my time on the ones that seem to offer no promise. Instead, I will tweak or work much harder on the elements that can provide the greatest long term payoff. That said, and to take the gardening metaphor one step further (what can I say? it's spring) much like perennials, there are some prospects that seem to have withered on the vine but magically come back to life after an extended period of time.

I'd advise people to be open to renewing relationships that once held promise. Too many people become annoyed when a prospect doesn't immediately pan out and can risk building a renewed relationship because of residual impatience. For me at least, it's crucial to keep a long term approach to all prospecting. I recently snagged a new client when he wrote to me in response to an announcement e-mail I'd sent in 2004. I kid you not.

You mentioned on Twitter that you do long proposals. What do they usually consist of?

You know, I've been told by my business mentors, advisers and colleagues that I should consider charging for my proposals since in the past I offered way too much information and long term brand building approach. Before I work with a company I like to do as much research as possible to ensure that I'm the right person for the job and that my skill set matches their needs.

I'll then usually offer them a breakdown of the problems that they face as I see them and the ways in which my company and I can help them. Unfortunately, sometimes I'm too good at offering potential solutions because there are companies who think that they can tackle these issues on their own. Most of the time though, their approach to doing it on their own doesn't quite work, either because they don't have the necessary skills, contacts, intellectual prowess or connections or because they lack the imagination to actually bring these elements to life in a viable and engaging way. For those reasons, I've streamlined my proposal process to offer carefully tailored suggestions on marketing, branding, promotion, corporate communications or reputation management among other things and also have started charging for consultations since even my most casual suggestions or recommendations add so much value to a company.

You say that momentum is important for your persistence with querying. What do you mean by that, and what does that look like in your work life?

I like to use Newton's Law of Inertia to inspire me: An object in motion stays in motion/an object at rest stays at rest. When I'm tired or worn out it can feel like nothing is happening or changing. Conversely, when I'm energized and in the midst of a great project or am close to landing a new gig, I find that I will have more energy and excitement about pushing forward and getting that deal. The hardest part is getting started.

If you're a creative person or an analytical one you can use every query as a building block to get you to the next point. I never consider a proposal that's been rejected as a failure, even if I'm crushed at the time because I always learn from my mistakes, which is a form of persistence in and of itself. I can also use the elements in future projects or simply open myself up the the possibility of continued pitching which becomes less painful when done in volume. Too many people become dejected or give up when facing a wall; I simply find another way to scale it, walk around it or knock it down--if and when it's appropriate of course!

How long did it take you to figure out the momentum thing with querying? Do you remember how you learned it? Was there a moment, or a series of events that drove it home?

You know, initially I would have answered that I'm still learning it, because the economy is so depressing that it can be easy to give up. I did have an a-ha moment, though:

I was asked to pitch for a project that I was incredibly excited about at the time. To be honest, I don't even remember what that project was, but it was for an industry I'd never worked with, but the timing and elements made me believe it would be a great fit. It was a nightmare to work through the proposal elements, as I customize each and every one. I finally finished it, submitted it and was promptly rejected with no explanations or apology. I was crushed. Literally within days a colleague sent a prospect my way. It was for the exact same industry I was now so well versed in. I was able to go to an in-person meeting and really own the subject and present them with options that weren't nebulous, but perfectly matched for their demographic and needs. Had I not been willing to really work to understand the topic on the first go round, I'd never have been able to take that knowledge forward to the next prospect. And yes, I did get a long term engagement from that one!

For readers trying to develop the momentum you have, how would you advise them to cultivate it?

Start.
Continue.
Keep Going.
Ignore the naysayers.
Learn from your mistakes and successes.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
And repeat, and repeat--and then some.

You will not achieve success on every go round. You will not even achieve acknowledgment half the time. What you will do, though, is toughen yourself to rejection and also work to develop a rhythm of trying, refining and defining the personal or professional brand elements that will help you to get more business moving forward. The only time you truly fail is when you just stop trying.

Thanks, Rachel. This is just what I needed to read today!--Heather

30-Day Persistence Challenge: Wrap up--and wait, there's more!

Well, it's been 30 days of the challenge, and so now is the time to draw this to a close. But I'm having so much fun with it, that I'm stopping it in name only. The posts will continue, for the time being, to cover persistence and all related topics. But I reserve the right to change topics later. And do suggest something new you'd like to read about related to writing, business and serenity.

And now, to sum up the challenge:

Starting Now! What we'll cover. Did we get to all of them? Nope. But we will.
Querying new markets: Is the economy and the doom and gloom about publications shuttering hampering your querying persistence? Four steps to getting your querying mojo back.
Happy Tax Day: I didn't think I'd be able to pay my taxes in full, but I did. Here's how persistence and luck married to help me avoid debt.
Motivating yourself to move forward: The first key to finding the motivation to move forward.
Help with the hardest tasks: The second key to finding motivation and getting your persistence going again.
Automating the hard stuff: The third way to make persistence routine.
Motivating yourself into persistence: The three feelings to cultivate to get persistent.
Faith for the job hunt: The role faith plays in persistence, even when you don't believe in the guy in the clowds.
Cultivating great writing: Tom Hallman Jr. and how to become a great writer.
Going from good to great: Ira Glass on the taste-talent gap, and how to bridge it.
Getting support: And a drink. Meetup for San Francisco freelancers, including me.
Passion + persistence = success: People seem to use the terms interchangeably, but they're different. Here's how they boost one another.
Finding the fun in querying: You don't have to hate querying. What you have to do is change the way you think of sales.
Persevering with this blog, even: To keep it going, I'm doing a 30-day blogathon. Check out who's in it with me.
Calvin Coolidge on persistence: One of the best quotes I've read on the subject.
Dogged organization: Guest blogger and friend of the blog professional organizer June Bell shares the important role persistence plays in keeping yourself organized.
Yogananda's take: Make the effort. That's all anyone is asking of you today.
Speaking of organization (taxes, part 2): How to organize your receipts and stick to your system so tax prep isn't (as) painful.
How persistence created MySpace: Lessons from some of the world's big hitters on persistence.
Persistence in book publishing, part 1: Guest blogger and author Cheryl Alkon shares how she kept at her book idea despite discouragement, infertility and doubt.
Persistence in book publishing, part 2: Cheryl shares how she sold her book, despite repeated rejections (hint: The blog's old favorite, support, came into play).
Run Fatboy Run: What a quirky British comedy tells us about breaking through the wall of resistance.

"Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time." Marabel Morgan

30-Day Persistence Challenge: Run Fatboy Run

This clip may not look like it has anything to do with persistence, but trust me, the film does. Not only does it use the analogy of running to discuss how one copes with those moments--in running, in love and, I'd add, in writing--when one hits the wall, but there's a great scene in which the main character, Dennis, tells his son the following:

Dennis: As you get older, you're going to realize there are a lot of things that you don't like, OK? Things much worse than this. And when those things happen you can't just run away.

Son: Why not?

Dennis: Because it doesn't solve the problem. When you stop running, the problem's still there. You've got to stick at it and then figure out some way to solve the problem. Even if it's really, really hard.

If that doesn't sum up writer's block, I don't know what does. It also sums up the problem of not having enough work, or not enough higher paying work or not enough of the work you really love. Persistence isn't just about solving the problem in front of you now, it's about developing a means to solve every problem you face. It's about creating a system that makes problems solvable, even if the system is just to take a break and keep coming back to it enough times that the problem cracks.

And rent the movie, because it's hilarious.

Money grows on the tree of persistence.
--Japanese proverb
















Photo by Guwashi999.

30-Day Persistence Challenge: Persistence in book proposals, part 2

Today, part two of Cheryl Alkon's persistence profile on how her dogged persistence eventually yielded a book contract. Yesterday, Cheryl shared how she continued to pursue her book idea and pregnancy despite lots of road blocks. Today, she'll share how she kept sending her book proposal out despite rejections. Cheryl is the author of the forthcoming Balancing Pregnancy with Pre-Existing Diabetes: Healthy Mom, Healthy Baby and the author of Managing the Sweetness Within, her blog on type 1 diabetes, pregnancy, and infertility. Other writing, research and editing work is online at CherylAlkon.com


I’d heard two opinions about what to do with my book proposal now that it was complete:

* Send it directly to potential publishers, or
* Send it to literary agents who would consider taking it on and would send it to publishers on my behalf.

Since the book was such a niche topic, the idea of sending it directly to a publisher who focused on diabetes made some sense. Typically, publishers don’t even bother to consider manuscripts that aren't attached to an agent, but since this would be a small project with a small advance, it was worth a try. Through Publisher’s Marketplace, a subscription newsletter that tracked book deals and industry news, I found an email address for someone at a house that published diabetes titles sold as patient guides through mainstream bookstores and sent a query to the editorial director.

He wrote back right away, telling me he might be interested in my project, but that he suspected the audience might be too small for his company to take it on. In February 2008, I emailed him the proposal, and included the numbers I had for the book's potential readership.

An assistant wrote to say it could take up to two months to hear back. After two months and four days, I followed up, politely, and was told to keep waiting.

When I mentioned this to a friend who’s written several nonfiction books, she told me it was time to start finding an agent. “You’ve given this guy a two-month exclusive, and that’s plenty of time. Move on.”

A fellow blogger was writing her own book about infertility and generously emailed me the list of potential agents she’d compiled: Sixty of them, all interested in women’s health. It was invaluable. Since the list was more than a year old, I began to confirm, person by person, which agents handled women’s health books like mine. I found AgentQuery and AbsoluteWrite to be particularly helpful in learning:

• What agents are looking for;
• Their track records;
• If they were open to new clients;
• Specifics, like whether they preferred emailed or snail mailed queries first; or
• Whether they wanted to see the entire book proposal first.

I also contacted agents who represented or knew people I knew.

In April, I began to send out the proposal. I kept a detailed spreadsheet of exactly when, to whom, and why I sent the proposal and how each responded. Some replies were instant—most said my proposal was well written, and had passion, but the market was just too small. Or else the topic just didn’t appeal.

I’d sent out more than 20 queries or proposals to different agents when one responded—11 hours later. She loved my query and wanted to see the full proposal. Agent A was the head of a boutique firm who had worked in publishing for years and seemed cool. A few days later, she called me and told me how excited she was about the project.

“So you’re interested in representing me?”

She was. I was thrilled. However, I’d also been waiting to hear back from a bunch of other agents, including one, Agent B, who had specifically requested my proposal and wanted me to let her know if I got another offer first.

I told agent A I had to follow up with Agent B and could I have a day or two to see what happened. She said fine.

Contacting Agent B, along with any agent I hadn’t heard from yet, was one of the highlights of the whole experience. I emailed about 10 others and explained I’d gotten an offer, but wanted to hear back if they were also interested.

Immediately, I heard back from most agents, several of whom asked for extra time to look at the proposal again, or else declined but congratulated me.

I emailed more questions to Agent A, asking specifically about a fiction project I wanted to pursue after the pregnancy book. She wrote back quickly, assuring me she had handled clients with both fiction and non-fiction projects, though she was clear that not every non fiction writer found success as a fiction writer.

However, the next day, Agent A emailed with disappointing news: She thought with my “diverse writing aspirations… you would probably do better with a ‘newer’ agent, one with the space in his or her list and time to explore the author-in-full you wish to become. I’m not in the habit of offering and then withdrawing the offer of representation, but I really feel that in this instance, it’s better to get that ‘right relationship’ from the start than be uncomfortable or disappointed soon thereafter.”

Without a solid offer from anyone else yet, I wondered if I’d been too pushy to ask about other book ideas I’d had. But since all the advice I’d heard about selecting an agent said to let an agent know that you have ideas about future projects, I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. Agent A signed off saying that “I think you are a terrific writer and I am sure the perfect agent awaits” and wished me the best of luck.

Great.

I held out hope for the rest of the agents, and in time, five others were interested in representing the project. This was exciting, but after talking to all, I knew I wanted someone who wanted to keep the voice as is. One agent told me the writing needed work—a minority opinion among the rest of the agents I’d heard from. Others wanted me to redo the entire proposal and include large new sections for type 2 and gestational women, which didn’t appeal to me at all. I also talked to an editor friend of a friend who had worked with all these agents and gave me her opinions on each.

After much consideration, I signed with my agent in July. She recognized the book for what it was: A niche topic, written in a distinctive, insider, non-medical voice, with lots of quotes from other women. She was also young, hungry, and eager to work with me throughout my career on both nonfiction and fiction work. I took the rest of the summer and a month or so to polish a few parts of the proposal, to build a website for my writing, and to give my blog a facelift.

And then the economy collapsed.

Publishing houses were dropping staff, the stock market was plummeting, and people were scared. Ironically, I was raring to go. I’d spent so much time working on this project, landed an agent, and I couldn’t believe that the damn economy was holding me back. My agent told me she wanted to hold off sending the proposal until things calmed down in the new year.

Once again, as I did while I tried to get pregnant, I found myself waiting for things to happen.

December passed into January. In early February, my agent told me she was ready to send out the proposal to a list of 19 publishers. I’d heard of most of them, but at this point, I felt like all I could do was sit back and let my agent do her job and wait to see how things shook out.

Of the 19 publishers, most said no. One was interested, but thought the voice was too casual. Others liked it only if I’d rewrite it to include type 2s and gestationals. One publishing house made an offer by email only only to never respond to my agent’s phone calls. And one, Demos Health, a division of Demos Medical Publishing, was very excited about both the voice and scope and thought the title would be a good fit with their existing list. On my editor’s request, I agreed to include some type 2 women, but the original outline remains mostly the same.

I signed the contract in March. I’m now in the midst of writing Balancing Pregnancy with Pre-Existing Diabetes: Healthy Mom, Healthy Baby and the manuscript is due in August. Demos will publish the book in January 2010.

It took me two years to have a healthy pregnancy with diabetes and a healthy baby, another year to finish the proposal, and another year to land an agent and sell the project. All told, it will be nearly five years from concept to publication. Persistence has kept this project moving forward and thus far, it has paid off.

30-Day Persistence Challenge: Persistence in book proposals, part 1

Four years.

That's how long it took to go from story idea to book sale for freelance writer Cheryl Alkon. Cheryl is the author of the forthcoming Balancing Pregnancy with Pre-Existing Diabetes: Healthy Mom, Healthy Baby and the author of Managing the Sweetness Within, her blog on type 1 diabetes, pregnancy, and infertility. Other writing, research and editing work is online at CherylAlkon.com.

In those four years, she researched the market, starting blogging on the subject, and very slowly wrote the book proposal, all while trying to get pregnant and, later, giving birth to her son. She sent the proposal to about 40 agents, most of whom said the writing and idea--on pregnancy for women with diabetes--were great, but the market was too small.

But her persistence paid off: Ultimately, Cheryl had her pick of agents and two publishing houses were interested in publishing it. So how did she find the time and energy to keep pursuing it? She shares her story below. In a follow-up post, she'll explain how she kept at it despite agent rejections.


I have always wanted to write books. At 17, my last words to my first boyfriend--who had the nerve to break up with me--were simply, “Buy my books when you see them in the bookstore, and goodbye.”

But I had no idea that my first book concept would take three years of research and work--and considerable personal struggle--before I would even submit the idea to a publisher. Here's how it happened.

The Dawning of an Idea

I am a longtime type 1 diabetic, which means my pancreas has stopped producing insulin. Since childhood, I have taken insulin through daily injections, and currently wear an insulin pump, which I program to give myself the insulin I need each day. I also test my blood sugar levels multiple times a day, and carefully watch what I eat to ensure that my insulin doses match my food intake and keep my blood sugars within healthy ranges.

At 34 and recently married, I knew I couldn't ignore the potential realities of infertility. Also, pregnancy for women with type 1 diabetes isn't easy: Combine pregnancy planning with type 1 diabetes, throw in advanced maternal age, which begins at 35, and you have a recipe for a high-risk pregnancy. Because of these concerns, my husband and I had a preconception consult with an obstetrician who specialized in patients like me. He was blunt and clinical about what could go wrong.

Among other things, a diabetic pregnancy isn’t as simple as just going off birth control and going wild. With uncontrolled blood sugars, the chances of a woman having a baby with birth defects, or having a problem-filled pregnancy, increase significantly. But keeping blood sugars within a tight range, comparable to women without diabetes, requires extremevigilance and knowledge about all aspects of life with diabetes. It wouldn’t be easy, and the doctor made it sound like it was nearly impossible for anyone to ever have a healthy baby. And, oh yeah, I was “old,” and that came with its own set of genetic issues and possibilities.

I had a few diabetic friends my age who’d had healthy pregnancies and children, so I knew it was possible. But I wanted to know more about how people did it. I looked everywhere to find books about what it was like being pregnant with diabetes, and I was disappointed with what I found.

The few books devoted to the subject (as opposed to the paragraph or two about diabetes in mainstream pregnancy guides) were written by health care professionals. They often talked about gestational diabetes (which develops during pregnancy and is more common than preexisting diabetes in pregnancy) and were dry, simplistic, and straightforward. Later on, I found a book about parenting with diabetes, written by a fellow type 1 woman, which helped somewhat. But I wanted more details about getting and staying pregnant. Where was the insider’s guide to pregnancy with preexisting diabetes, particularly one written by a savvy longtime diabetic like me?

It didn’t exist. And that’s when I decided I’d have to write the book myself.

Crafting the Proposal

Writing nonfiction means you need a book proposal--essentially a business plan for a book. It includes an introduction, a bio, an analysis of competing titles, a marketing/promotion plan, a table of contents, and a sample chapter. A few friends had already written books, and I reached out to them for advice. One sent me her book proposal, and I used it as a model for what my proposal should include.

Another told me to find out why my kind of book didn’t exist already. The answer soon became clear: The number of pregnant women with type 1 diabetes in America wasn't readily available. I called U.S. diabetes associations and got nowhere. I reached out to similar associations in English speaking countries like Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, and still found no solid numbers. I emailed researchers who did statistical studies about diabetic populations and consulting firms who marketed to diabetics, and got estimates on how many potential readers I might be able to sell a book to. The numbers were pretty low.

But I still pushed on.

Building My Platform

The next step, it seemed, was to create a platform--essentially anything to show you have an audience of willing book buyers. What I settled on was blogging, even though at the time--2005--blogging was a relatively new concept. When I first heard about it, I thought, “Why write for free?” It turned out to be the smartest way to find people interested in my niche topic of type 1 diabetes and pregnancy but it wasn't business savvy that got me blogging. It was envy.

I found an online community of bloggers with diabetes and one woman in particular who was blogging about being newly diagnosed with type 1 and newly pregnant. I panicked a little. “What if this woman ends up writing a fascinating blog and gets a book deal out of it?” I worried.

I set up Managing the Sweetness Within the next day--a blog about living with type 1 diabetes, trying to have a baby and what it was like to do both of them right. It was all about navigating tight blood sugar control, and how to successfully gestate a healthy and happy baby.

I wrote under a pen name so I could be honest and not worry about hurt feelings when I bitched about friends who got pregnant effortlessly or who didn’t understand the intricacies I went through just to, say, eat an apple. I still had a staff job then, and, as another blogger told me, “It’s not like your boss needs to know about your vagina.”

I blogged about once a week, and occasionally more when something interesting happened. It was easy to blog about frustrations about high blood sugars and the wait to find out if I was pregnant.

A Bump in the Road

As months went on, it was clear that we’d need to talk to infertility doctors. As I learned more about what that entailed, I became a part of a whole new community of infertility bloggers, equally as active as the diabetic community, and the number of page views and people who subscribed to my blog grew, bolstering my platform.

When you need assistance to get pregnant, you end up waiting a lot. This gave me plenty of time to blog and work on the book proposal. However, progress was slow. I worried that I'd have a tougher time selling a book about diabetes and pregnancy if I didn't get pregnant myself. I'll admit it--I wasn’t driven to finish the proposal. Plus, I worried about doing all the work of a proposal, setting up and maintaining a blog--and what if the book idea didn’t go anywhere?

Finding Persistence Anyway

At one point, I just decided to push forward and see what happened. If the book didn’t sell, I’d at least developed a well-read blog, and I’d know how to write a book proposal for my next book idea.

There were many times, particularly in the beginning, when people told me again and again that the audience for this book would be too small to interest a publisher. But whenever I mentioned the idea on my blog, or found other online communities of people with diabetes who happened to discuss pregnancy, it was clear that a resource like this was needed and would be gratefully purchased. This is what kept me going as I wrote the proposal and blogged and tried my damnedest to get pregnant: If this book ever saw the light of day, it might not make millions, but it would serve an audience hungry for the information and willing to pay retail prices to get it.

Sweet Success

I finally got pregnant through IVF; our happy and healthy son arrived in April 2007. By this time, I’d written a sample chapter (about trying to conceive while maintaining tight blood sugar control) and had rounded out the marketing plan. The demands of caring for an infant eased up after about six months, and I promised myself I would finish up the book proposal by the end of 2007, which I did by completing the table of contents. Having lived through a pregnancy with diabetes was key in knowing exactly what to focus on in my table of contents and what details to keep and what to omit.

After I finished the proposal, I asked for feedback from three friends who had written books. They had simple tweaks, and I had the manuscript professionally copy edited. This was nearly three years after I first came up with the book idea. At this point, it was 45 pages long and I thought it was awesome—some of the best writing I’d ever done.

Would anyone else agree? It was time to send the thing out and see what happened.

Photo by mujitra (´･ω･)

30-Day Persistence Challenge: How persistence created MySpace.com

Now, I'll admit that MySpace completely missed me. I went from LiveJournal to Facebook and Twitter. But any startup (read: us) takes lots of different attempts to get it right before you hit on the magic combination of great idea, right time, right business approach and good marketing. During all that practice, you learn the best way to present yourself, you hone your business sense. For us, the way we do that is by experiencing the ups and downs of querying and writing. We learn that this approach works with this kind of editor, that that structure works with this particular kind of query. We learn how to follow up and to meet editors and generally how to be in business. The fact that some stories fail to catch on with the markets we imagine doesn't mean we're failing. It means we're learning.

Sure, I like to think that our businesses are more respectable than spam or Asian porn, but they're still businesses. Tell me what you think.