Hi Katie4,

Thanks for your openness.

I notice that your client stress keys on lateness.

Can I start with getting focused on getting something in/confident feelings/ as doing this will keep the money flowing till you learn to work with your anxiety, not against it.

It is a learning zone, for sure, to appreciate being the artist and the person evaluating the work before releasing to the client. The key is to bring evaluation (I call it my Inner Critic) to the right place and time in the process so that you have work done to evaluate (privately before sending to client)!

Once, In Boston, I took a Sunday walk to buy the paper. The vendor and I began to talk, and he said, “Can I offer you some advice?”

Me: sure.

He: Before I do, do you mind if I sketch you? [Which he did really quickly on a blank part of one of the newspapers pages.]

Me: That’s really good. (trailing off implying, “And why are you here selling papers?”) [wish I’d kept that sketcn!]

He: I wasn’t fast enough. I was a perfectionist working in advertising. I was always under pressure because my material was later than my peers. What they did wasn’t what I would call perfect, but it was in on time. They go promoted, I got canned. I learned the hard way, set your goal for “good enough” and get it in on time!

That’s a very vivid lesson in my life and something I re applied you might notice in my dialogue about writing my school papers.

To spotlight my turning point: I realized that if I can move my mental focus away from “great” to “I’ve done what I can, I’ve applied to it the rules for grammar, etc. then I’ll have to let it go to my readers (or clients). It doesn’t feel 100% because I haven’t certified to myself it’s greatness. So be it. I leave that decision to my committee members.”

When I turn in something good enough am I confident the client will think it’s adequate to great? Often, no. I turn it over anyway and keep my performance anxiety in check. Very often the reader/client comes back and says, this is brilliant.

In fact, I just shared one of my grad school timeline with a friend and he wrote: Your writing is pure gold!

Most of the content for blogs etc. are about frequency (like a daily paper) and less about brilliance. The brilliance accumulates over time as subscribers and others select which ones have value. So, you, as the content starter, are two steps removed from really knowing what’s ‘great.’

Think of columnist and journalists who re-print collections of their work. They don’t reprint every one, most of the time. Some they ground out after too late a night of partying and under intense deadline pressure. While those were the work-a-day pieces, they probably keeping drop files of other ideas, clipping articles and other pieces, and picking up ideas for conversations, plays, movies, etc. Those slower pieces might come together a bit now, a bit later. Meanwhile they still make their daily deadline. When the slower ones are ready they enter the queue and get published like the other ones.

The reprinted pieces either they especially liked, their editor liked, or it became popular and well known due to readers’ reactions.

Journalists have editors and the ferocious pace of daily deadlines. And you said if you can be accountable to someone …

Well, here we are at PC.

Tell us how much of your private drafting (not for client eyes, poor or shi#y first drafts) you will get done soon and then check back in. If it helps, PM that to me.

I’ll unpack more of my Inner Critic work in other posts.

Revu2