You have to have strategies as a freelancers. Ways to make some of the inevitable parts of a difficult job easier on the psyche. I have one call “fire and forget”. I mean I suspect we all do it but giving it a name has helped me deal with it. It’s basically about sending out emails to editors or prospective publishers.
Cold emailing is hard.
Just getting the courage up to sit up and type up something to send to someone you don’t know where your brain is going “come on dude, you’re not good enough for this!” but if you manage to get over that hurdle, then you’re on the spiral of waiting for a response and putting everything you have not the expectation of that response.
So, Fire and Forget are a kind of missile control system used on fighter planes (I found out via the game F16 Multirole Fighter which came out in 1998) you lock on to a target and fire your missile and move right on to the next target. Your original missile in the meantime just tracks and eventually destroys the enemy.
And that’s how you should treat cold emails, not that you’re going to destroy the enemy, but rather send them off and move on to the next thing. Keep moving. Keep looking for targets. Don’t worry about it. If you get a response? Great! Wasn’t expecting that, follow it up – and then … forget about it. Until another and another and a relationship builds and you’re on to doing something.
But fire and forget really helps prevent that sort of confidence spiral, I mean a big part of it is that the people you’re emailing aren’t your goals, it’s been much easier, for example, with Terran Omega to know my plan is to do a kickstarter, if it finds a publisher before hand? amazing – but if it doesn’t? No matter, I was always going to self publish anyway.
I’ve three missiles out there, the first missed its target. Two more still to find it. Let’s see.
Wipeout
I mostly took yesterday off. Recovering a bit from IBS, just wasn’t feeling up to much. Though I did a bit of writing (a new thing, I think it’s a great core idea but lacks a story and the follow up to terran omega). I also did a bit of colouring on page 23 of Terran Omega. Will upload that to patreon for paying subscribers over at my patreon.
Yesterday In Social Media
I love The Detectorists, by Mackenzie Cook – I’ve written essays on its cinematography (annoyingly, those essays are long since lost to twitter)
His follow up, Wurzel Gummidge, was a too-short absolute delightfully charming magical show.
And his new show – Small Prophets, looks fantastic too.
Here’s an interview with him from the Guardian – I do think him and Stephen Merchant are the best things to come out of The Office.
Actually, speaking of the BBC (which I was because all of the shows above are ALL BBC shows, which is why I’m largely in favour of it)… today (Saturday) there’s a bunch of good TV on, including:
Ignoring Rick Stein for a moment, any one of those would make a great Bank Holiday viewing party, so why they’re all on on Saturday is a baffler, still, they’ll all now be on the iPlayer. And the Man Who Would be King is fantastic.
Look at those goofy giants, aren’t they fantastic. It makes me want to break out some modelling clay, get frustrated and put it back in the box vowing to never try it again (until the Shiflet brothers post something else)
Also, this is the sort of stuff I see now and my brain things, oh wow, imagine Terran Omega encountering those guys (or guys very much like them) giant dumb humanoids, what would their story be?
The Flip Side Of Dominic Hyde
I saw this in 1980 in b&w aged 10, while the threat of nuclear war was ever present and Belfast was in the throws of the troubles, and somehow it’s stuck with me. It was a time travel tale (and with the fairly obvious trope of “he’s his own grandad”) but I dunno, just the idea of their being a future beyond that present, maybe? It stuck.
Anyway, hence the expression… See you on the Flip Side.
