Procrastination comes before the fall
Are you procrastinating right now? Maybe you shouldn't be...
This week’s Failing Publicly is another guest post, this time from freelance journalist, Hannah Shewan Stevens. Hannah looks back on a time when a story of her got killed, why it happened, and what she learnt from the process. Take it away, Hannah!
Failing with grace has never been my forte. Although I rarely feel competitive with my peers, I possess an insatiable need to compete with myself.
Every time I achieve a goal, I immediately look to the next one and deny myself any celebration of the achievement. My focus is always on what I need to do next to meet my constantly changing standards for success.
It is exhausting and it takes a concerted effort to force myself to chill out, celebrate my wins and commiserate over my losses.
When I was in full-time employment, I rarely fell victim to this impossible need to succeed every single time. My assignments always had strict deadlines and the job became so familiar that I could do most of it without thinking particularly hard.
Plus, my editors were lovely and understanding people who I had spent nearly three years building a relationship with, so asking for a little extra time on a project never felt scary.
But going freelance was a whole different – and utterly terrifying – ballgame. The intense pressure of being held solely responsible for my success reawakened my ravenous appetite for constant competition (with myself!)
Every time you do not get a commission is another day that you wonder how the rent is going to get paid and, even when you do get commissions, you are terrified of messing it up.
Failing freelance was not an option. So, when I got an amazing commission that would explore an important topic I am passionate about, the only option was success.
Naturally, it blew up in my face.
I had less than a week to write the piece and I procrastinated for several days before blasting out my first draft without a second thought. Over the next couple of days, I tore it apart and rebuilt it over and over again but it never felt quite right.
Then, the night before the piece was due, I rewrote the entire thing in less than an hour because I finally felt like I was going in the right direction.
Although there was still hope for the piece, it was nowhere near publishable.
Yet, I was too scared to ask for more time. Plus, I was so stressed out by the idea of missing a deadline that I could not see how far away from the original brief I had strayed. Oh, the power of hindsight!
I spent half the night editing and rewriting and finally submitted it first thing in the morning.
The reaction was blunt and to the point, something along the lines of, "this is not what we discussed and we can’t go ahead with it".
They killed the piece outright and I was a wreck. I felt as though this failure would define the rest of my career.
I believed that the editor would never commission me again and that they would laugh about my ineptitude to all of their editor friends.
(Yes, I do excel at obsessing over worst-case scenarios, can you tell?)
Despite this embarrassing faux pas, and my intense self-doubt, this failure was not the end of my career – far from it.
I have since successfully worked with the same editor many times and I have never made the mistake of submitting copy that was not ready again.
After my initial dramatic reaction, I analysed my own work and could clearly see where I had gone wrong.
I even rewrote the piece to remind myself that I am not wasting my time in journalism. I genuinely believe it’s a great article now and one day it will see the light!
Following their email, and after taking a few days to cool off, I wrote down every step that I should have taken to prevent the story from being killed.
Firstly, I should have asked for an extension so that I could refine the piece until it was actually ready to submit.
Secondly, the piece would have been massively improved by writing with my initial pitch in a second window to refer back to, which is something I always do when editing my articles now.
Lastly, if I had spent more time carefully editing, instead of panic typing, I would have figured out where the piece was going wrong long before it was due.
These fixes are so obvious, it’s a little painful to realise how easily I could have saved this story. However, when you’re working independently it is easy to get swept up in the pressure of sticking to deadlines, which is exactly what I did.
I allowed my focus to drift from the task at hand and I failed. It was embarrassing and a shock to the system but I learned so much from it.
Since this little writing face-plant, I am stricter than ever when proofreading articles . I also try to avoid any procrastinating when I have a deadline, so that I have as much time as possible to complete the assignment.
Most importantly though, I learned that I can fail publicly and pick myself back up again.
Since then, I’ve failed many times in many different ways but I do it without falling to pieces now!
It's taken nearly 27 years but I am proud to say that I've finally learned how to fail with a little more grace and a lot less soul-crushing self-doubt.
Huge thank you to Hannah for sharing this story! Her honest and frank Freelancing Fail remind me that, not only should I stop procrastinating so much, but also that editors and clients are people too. When in doubt, reach out to people. Communication always goes down better than delivering flawed work - and as Hannah proves here, messing up once won’t mean they never want to work with you again!
My biggest aim for this newsletter is for people to get more comfortable with sharing their mistakes and realising that being imperfect is part of being human.
If you’ve got a past Freelancing Fail that you would also like to share, this is your opportunity to share it with the group. You can either write your story as a guest post or simply submit the information to be shared.
It can be anonymous if you prefer and it certainly does not have to have a shining lesson of redemption. Sometimes, we just do stupid things - and that’s okay!
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