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.

Serenity Tip: Keep doing what works

Richard St. John gave two great talks at TED about success. The first is about the keys to success. You may recognize one I've talked about often:



Then, this year, St. John talks about how success can lead to failure and how to avoid it (with his personal story). It's a great message for mid-career journalists who feel stuck in a rut, who've been doing the same thing for a long time and have lost passion. Consider these keys to success and see which need a boost:

30-Day Economic Stability Challenge: How I increased my income in nine months

It wasn't that long ago that I was working nights and weekends and still not earning enough to live on. But it doesn't have to be that way. Over a period of nine months, I went to work to change the kind of work I was doing to increase my pay, decrease my work hours and make freelancing sustainable for me.

Since we've been talking about the scary parts of finance so far--the savings, the mindset, and all the things you should have in place before you start freelancing, etc., I want to spend today talking about the good stuff: What happens when all your work pays off.

But it was work. To wit:

Meet with a consistent group.
I met monthly for a year with the same two self-employed people who constantly were urging me to move away from the movie reviews that paid me $50 a pop and the articles that paid 15 cents a word on publication. They did it gently, and kept at it until I was frustrated enough and bleary-eyed enough to listen. Then we talked about how to do it.

You don't have to have a group in place, but the key is to look for a mentor or two and set up regular meetings with the understanding that you're there to get help.

"Don't think about next month, think about November."
This was the best single piece of advice I got during that time, and it was my guiding mantra. Every time I worried about decreased income from not doing as many movie reviews, or spending time querying instead of time watching movies to review, I focused on bringing my income up in six or nine months instead of how I was going to get through next month's bills.


Focus your marketing.
I didn't have a specific income goal. The goal was simply "more than I'm earning now," which was what I needed. But I knew how I wanted to get there: I identified that I wanted to write for publications that paid $1/word on acceptance or more. Sure, it was easier to keep querying the low-paying markets that I knew were desperate for writers (guess why they were so desperate...). But I couldn't cling to them if I wanted to really make this my career. So I queried higher paying markets. I looked eagle-eyed for job ads and applied for every one I could find.

And when I got the assignment, I had to be willing to say no or negotiate if the pay was too low.

Take a class.
It was around this time that I took Erik Sherman's Planning Your Writing Business class. It taught me how to create an hourly rate. It taught me how many queries I should send a month, and how much I needed to make a day, a week and a month to support myself, including taxes. I also learned what my hourly rate needed to be.

Ask for help.
During those nine months, I often felt like I was coming out of my skin. I wasn't earning enough. I was selling old clothes and shoes and books online to make end's meet, and sometimes they still didn't. When an eroneous charge was made to my checking account, I'd call my friend in tears, because I didn't have those extra $10 to spare. But my friend always said the same thing: You will get through this. Focus on November. I know you feel like you're going to be homeless, but you won't. You will make it through.

And I did. It was amazing and a serious faith-building exercise.

Take good care of yourself.
Those serenity practices I told you about the other day? Yeah. I did those in spades. I took the advice of a dear friend who said, "You should meditate once a day, unless you're really stressed. Then, meditate twice a day." I poured my nervous self into downward dog and into my journal and into the ears of some very kind friends. And I didn't use a credit card to relieve the pressure. I just worked hard and kept forcused on November.

The outcome
I won't lie: That kind of hard work isn't for the faint of heart. I had to keep doing the low-paying work long enough to keep supporting myself--barely--but also do the additional work of seeking out and doing higher-paying assignments. I was stressed, I was scared and I wasn't convinced it would work. It might have been the hardest I'd ever worked in my life.

But when November rolled around, my income for that month was double what it had been the February before. And it kept coming up. When I'd go to my business meeting with my mentors, I often had a look of incredulity on my face. I couldn't believe it. It worked. I could take a little pressure off. I could maybe go on a vacation and I could trust that my rent would clear and I could be the one to treat my sweetie to a meal for once.

I won't say that it's been an even course. It certainly hasn't. But that focus taught me both that I never want to go back to working the way I used to, and that I had the capacity to work hard and earn a decent income. There's a saying I've heard that goes, "You can act your way into right thinking but you can't think your way into right acting." This experience proved it. I was doing low-paying work because I didn't have the confidence to do more. But by doing the hard work, I earned that confidence.

What's the hard work you need to do today?

Photo by CamponeZ.

30-Day Biz Planning Challenge: Some New Modules for 2009

I've laid out a lot of modules for you. I know it can be overwhelming. Please don't feel like you have to do all of them. But as I read other's methods of planning and as I think about the blind spots in my own business, I've created a few new modules I'm thinking of adding to this year's plan.

They're mostly fun stuff.

Consider these:

Monthly/Quarterly Accomplishments
It's been brought to my attention this year that I tend to move the bar on myself: I accomplish something and then my mind clicks over and asks, "You achieved this. So why haven't you achieved that? Clearly, you're a slacker." Most of my colleagues and editors would disagree with that characterization. And while I believe that most successful people are always looking for the next mountain to climb, there's a limit. And there's a difference between ambition and not letting yourself savor your successes.

So taking a cue from Katrina's more laid back approach to planning, I want to add a module that's all about those accomplishments. It would look something like the balance sheet I described in the self-care challenge--only this one would live in an ongoing business planning document I update monthly. I plan to include anything I consider an accomplishment:

• Meeting an income goal.
• Adding a new client.
• Getting better at workflow, cashflow or time management.
• Attending networking events.
• Sending X queries.
• Staying on my marketing goals.

The list goes on, but the point is to create a list and then put it all together at the end of the year for me to examine and--let's face it--bask a little bit.

Fellowships
Who wouldn't want a stipend or a paid trip to learn more about your field. This fits into my goal of advancing my craft--but every time one of these deadlines rolled around this year, I found myself miles deep in files, deadlines and day-to-day minutea. This module will allow me to put together a list of fellowships I want to apply for, their deadlines (or, if they aren't yet announced, when they were due the year before) and what they require.

The next step, then, would be to put them on my calendar with a reminder a month or a few weeks before the deadline so I can put them together.

Awards
This fits in with the first module. Accomplishments. Let's celebrate them. But first we have to take time to corral the clip, copy it, address it and figure out when it's due and to whom. So I'd like to spend some quality time with Lovely Lady Google and find the awards I want to track, add them into my calendar, record the address to which they are to be sent and maybe set up a special file on my desk organizer in which to store award-worthy stories until they're due.

How will you plan in your rewards for 2009?