The pitching process

What’s worse not knowing what you want or knowing what you want and not being able to get it?

Yesterday morning, a friend of mine observed, “It must be weird to feel that you have the most to get accomplished on your days off.”  It is.  I’m generally very excited about the challenge of spending my days off balancing writing, visiting with friends and family and trying to catch up on errands.  However, it can also make for a very discouraging Wednesday back at work. Everyone systematically asks how my days off were and what I did, and I systematically tell them, “I caught up on some errands, hung out with so-and-so and did some writing.”

That generally initiates the question, “Well, what did you write?”  “What did I write?” I think.  Often it’s not even that I physically wrote so much.  I mean, obviously, this blog is getting me writing more words, literally, each day, but most of the time, I spend my time trying to better market myself and pitch stories.  This means countless hours scouring LinkedIn, updating my resume, googling publications and dissecting their “contact us” pages, etc.  This takes up time and patience.  Patience is not a quality I posses, as MUCH as I long to.  I want to, it’s just extremely difficult to have to wait for something you want so badly.

My happy place.

The part I love the most about writing is hanging up the phone from an interview.  I’ve just furiously typed everything my subject has to say in a word document that only I can decipher.  I have this crazy level of energy from the thrill of not missing any good quote.  My hands are shaking from too much caffeine and nerves. I vaguely remember the good quotes that I typed while the interviewee was talking and start freaking out trying to find them in the hundreds of jumbled words I just typed.  I can feel good ideas forming based on those quotes and I can hardly contain my excitement to start typing them down.  I open another word document and start hacking away at the quotes and intertwining them with my own words.  That’s the part I love.  The part that I want to be able to spend my every day doing. Sitting in my writing chair, sipping tea, tapping my feet to Lucero radio and pounding my little fingertips away on my MacBook Pro (which is covered in childish stickers) – in this space, I am sufficiently satisfied.

Trying to become a freelancer with no actual connections is NOT what I love doing.  Even a little bit.  But, I’m starting to realize as I grow up that sometimes we have to do what we don’t love in order to get what we do love. I know, ma, you’ve been telling me this since age 5.  Most people learn this very basic lesson of life early on, I have just always been very stubborn and spoiled.  Due to my lack of making connections I’m constantly trying to catch up.  I feel as an almost-25-year-old I should have been a little better at it.  Maybe because I didn’t want it BAD enough before?

Anyway, now that I do, I find it’s hard to actually DO something about it when some days all I want to do is throw a temper tantrum. I have the story ideas and they are good. I know I can write good stories from them.  But everyone thinks that about their ideas.  How do you get an editor to believe you?  To give you a chance at publication?  I currently have three stories I’m working on and have been pitching them at various local and even national levels.  I’ve had a few leads but nothing promising.  No more then a “this is a great idea I’ll forward it to my friend” emails, with no response when I follow up.

Why is it that editors don’t write “sorry we’re not interested” emails?  That literally took me 3 seconds to type.  I know, I know how could anyone expect editors to do that for every pitch they get?  They’ve never done it before they aren’t going to start now.  That’s something I have to accept.  It does not help to harp on the tactics and lack of courtesy of editors either.  What I need to be focusing on is how to market myself so that someone else believes in my ideas as much as I do.  Brainstorming session beginning…now.