One minute things were motoring along nicely. You were finding your feet. Maybe even starting to feel comfy. Established. Secure. Ready – dare you admit it – to start thinking about your future. The next, you’re licking your wounds and wondering what the hell just happened. Where it all went wrong.

We’re talking about your freelance career, by the way, not The One That Got Away. Because that’s exactly what it might feel like to be a freelance journalist right now – as if everything you’ve worked your ass off has just come crashing down around your ears. Budgets have been cut, commissioning editors have gone quiet and no-one seems to have a Scooby about the future of our industry.

At times like this, we all know what to do. Binge-watch breakup films and live on Haagen Dazs for as long as it takes to quell the pain. (Yes, ice cream is an essential purchase in these particular circumstances, we’ve checked.)

Except what *really* helps when a relationship goes sour isn’t actually the obvious comfort stuff. Feeling sorry for yourself has its place, of course it does, but the turning point, in every heartbreak we’ve ever known, is when that feisty mate comes round unannounced and demands you let her in so that she can draw your curtains, force you into the shower and insist that you listen while she tells you how it really is.

He didn’t deserve you. She never liked him anyway. Her boyfriend’s brother’s desperate for your number, by the way. And had you ever noticed that he looked a bit like the ugly one from Westlife?

Look, we’re here to be that mate. This analogy is only going to go so far because we’re having to picture ourselves giving you the heartbreak pep-talk through your bedroom window at a safe social distance, but listen up.

You’ve come too freaking far to fall at this hurdle. True, a global pandemic is a pretty bloody good excuse for curling up into a ball and giving up on pitching altogether. But you’re better than this. We mean it. I’m thinking of each and every one of you as I write this – the scores of gloriously talented students we’ve had the pleasure of working with over the past five years who’ve made us laugh and cry; shared with us their woes and fears; and made our little hearts burst with bloody pride when you’ve celebrated your pitching wins and published pieces with us.

Heartbreak hurts like hell. You think you’ll never get over it but, with time, you look back on it with very different eyes. A lucky escape. Pain that helped you grow. A plot twist without which you’d never have the better and more beautiful life or relationship you’re so grateful for right now.

Yes, this feels like the end of days. We know it’s making you question absolutely everything, from whether your freelance career has simply run its course to whether you’ve got enough spirit left to send yet another sodding pitch into the void. We know that’s how you feel. Because we’ve felt it too.

Hell, we’ve contemplated shutting up shop altogether here at Muse Flash, popping a virtual ‘Closed’ sign on the door and declaring that we can no longer in good conscience persuade you that you CAN earn a decent living as a freelance writer, if only you’d listen to us and sort out your God-awful pitching.

Except that mate has been round to see us and she sorted us right out. We were at the equivalent of that stage where you’re terrified to leave the house in case you bump into your ex with their sickeningly hot new squeeze. She did the equivalent of forcing us into a revenge dress and dragging us to the pub when she knew he’d be there. Inside we were dying but on the outside, we were smokin’ and we definitely clocked a smidgen of regret on Former Lover’s stricken face.

Look, we’re not saying you have to keep at it right now. There’s a difference between giving an ex a little glimpse of what they’ve thrown away and trying to win them back. Don’t do that. Covid has rewritten the rules of everything, and what’s always worked till now just isn’t passing muster anymore. So lick your wounds, feel sorry for yourself, take Rishi’s money (if you can) and run.

Just don’t go down without a fight. Don’t slink into oblivion feeling like a freelance failure. Take whatever space you can to recover from the blows of recent weeks. Losing clients can have an enormous emotional impact. It’s ok if you’re reeling for a while, just come back swinging when you’re ready.

Because the one thing we know for certain about this pandemic is that this moment isn’t going to last forever, and these exceptional and (ACK) unprecedented circumstances do not define you – much like one ex ending a relationship doesn’t mean you’re not fit for being loved by anyone else. 

No way, not on our watch, we’re not letting you give up on your freelance fortunes in this moment. All out of faith in your future? Fine, we’ll have faith for you that this will pass, and new opportunities will come your way. Our industry is changing and that’s not the same as dying. “People will always need good words,” a wise man told me this week. “And never more so than when so much seems to make so little sense”.

Hold on, pitchers. Voice your fears, set fire to things, and have an ugly cry. But promise us this; as the anguish of these difficult days begins to pass and ice cream for breakfast starts to lose its appeal, look yourself in the mirror and give yourself the kind of talking to that you know we would if only we could pop round in person.

Remind yourself of all the brilliant things you’ve already accomplished. Resolve to keep using your voice, in whatever capacity that might be. And don’t, above all, let the uncertainty of our current circumstances persuade you that you’re not worthy of the career you hope for.

I read a coronavirus piece recently that said something about this being an awakening, not an apocalypse. That’s a hugely simplistic sentiment so let’s not get into its shortcomings in a wider context – I’m just sharing the idea because I think it’s true, if you let yourself think of it that way.

Better days are coming. Good things are ahead. You’ve still got so much more to give. When lockdown ends and the awakening gets underway, we hear there’ll be vacancies for writers. Until then, eat your ice cream. Just be ready when the moment comes. And don’t forget: we told you so.

Look, we’re lost right now. There’s no easy way to say that, but we are.

The first step to finding your way home in these circumstances? It’s to admit that you’re lost. Even if it makes you cry. It’s ok; shed some tears, feel the anxiety, and then take a deep breath and admit it. We’re lost, and we’ve got some work to do to find our way back.

To what? To normality. To financial stability. To reliable income streams. To pitches that get commissioned. To work that comes our way because editors know us and like us. To the land of plentiful work, where we thought freelancing was tough but actually it had nothing on this.

I left a voice note for one of my dearest students tonight – I owe her a few days of pitching coaching that got put on hold when COVID-19 upended everything for everyone. “I feel like a fraud,” I said, before offering her money back instead of agreeing to work with her this week. “I don’t know what’s going to work in this context. I’ve got no answers, I’m as lost as you are.”

It was hard to admit, because I’m used to having answers. I get paid to share those answers with people and our training business has taken off because those answers often turn out to be on the money, so people recommend us to their mates. I can’t always explain the answers, as you’ll know if you’ve ever had one of those Muse Flash emails that goes something like ‘I could be wrong, this is based on nothing more than a hunch, but if I were you I’d pitch this to….’ More often than not those hunches turn out to be pretty bloody good, and the results speak for themselves. The testimonials, the lovely online community of ex-students who stick around long after the course has finished, and the fact that we have to keep running courses cos people keep asking for them.

Except this is different. We don’t really know what to tell you about how to pitch in a pandemic. We don’t know if our industry is finally about to collapse or if the economy is going to recover any time soon. We don’t why so many editors have gone so quiet. We don’t know if making a living as a freelance writer is still something we can tell people is possible. We don’t know. We’re lost, and we thought there was a map in the glove box but it turns out it’s not there.

But here’s what we DO know.

1. We all fall back into bad pitching habits when we’re under pressure.
If you’ve done our Cracking Pitches course, it’s fair to say you’ve got some dodgy old pitching habits from your past that you THINK you’ve long since laid to rest. We know this is true because we remember those first few pitches you shared with us before we set you on the path to enlightenment. (Sorry.)

And the thing about bad pitching habits is that they tend to rear their ugly heads at the very moment that we really need to up our pitching game. Such as in the midst of a global pandemic when we’re pitching our socks off cos we’re afraid we won’t be able to eat next month if we don’t start landing some commissions.

Trust us, you are probably pitching really badly right now. It happens to us all; pressure stymies our creativity and makes us panic-pitch. That’s why it doesn’t really matter if you send 100 pitches this week or not. 100 weak pitches are still weak pitches, no matter how many times you count them.

The antidote to this is to STOP. Pause. Breathe. Assess the damage. If you’ve sent sixteen pitches to Red this week alone, now is not the time to send the seventeenth. It’s time to take stock, to have an Artist’s Date – you can go almost anywhere in the world right now for free without leaving your sofa, so make the most of it. It’s also the time to remind yourself of the principles of good pitching. Revisit our course notes, fling your pitch in our secret Facebook group for an appraisal if you’re an ex-student, or ask a mate with a decent pitching success rate to take a look and tell you where you might be going wrong. Hell, if you’re really stuck then send it to us and we’ll give it the once-over.

2. Now is not the time to stop doing what works.
Yeah, things feel scary at the moment. Yes, it feels like we might never work again. And yes, working out what editors need or want right now is as torturous as trying to tell whether the person you fancied when you were 13 even knew of your existence. The difference is, you have skills now that you didn’t have when you were 13. You do. The odds are that you’re a decent writer with some impressive clippings to your name. You probably know a thing or two about how to eke an income with your words, so this is NOT the moment to convince yourself that you’re a fraud or a no-hoper. For the love of God, this – more than any other moment in your pitching past – is the moment to dig deep for a bit of self-belief and to pitch as if your life depends on it.

Don’t flake out on us now. Save it for When This Is All Over. Schedule it for when commissioning budgets are unfrozen and you’ll be able to afford a duvet day. For today, tell your writing demons to STFU and just crack the hell on doing what you know works.

Dream up dazzling ideas that capture the zeitgeist and speak light to the fears that readers are grappling with. Mine your own experience for stories that will resonate with people who, until you write that piece, will feel like they’re the only person on the planet going through that particular thing. Write pitches that sing. Email your editors and clients to ask how they are and what they need and whether you can help. They can only say no. But they might say yes, and they’ll remember that you asked. Pitch new markets without going all timid about it. Be bold, be assertive and remember that you have as good a chance as anyone of getting commissioned right now. Why SHOULDN’T it be you? Remind yourself what works, and do it doggedly.

3. When nothing is certain, everything is possible.
That’s it really. I can’t explain this much beyond telling you that I live in a house that backs onto a rugged golf course that sweeps down to a beach on the northernmost tip of Northern Ireland. It feels like the edge of the world and the safest place to be in a pandemic. Right now, living here feels like the most unimaginable gift and privilege.

And yet we live here because we ended up homeless in the most spectacularly unexpected way almost three years ago, right around the time that our main income vanished overnight in similarly WTAF fashion. And if we hadn’t lived through those dark days, punctuated with daily panic attacks and wakeful nights full of what-ifs, we would never have been in a position to leap when this incredible house came up for rent in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. From some of the most dreadful and difficult days of my life came a plot twist that I thank my lucky stars for every single evening – especially when I get to watch the sun dip behind that coastline from the cosy comfort of my sofa.

I’m not saying there are silver linings to the horror that we’re all going through right now. I’m just saying that when nothing is certain, everything is possible. And when that’s the case, even experiences that feel like an unmitigated disaster can, in time, turn out to be something very different from what we feared they were.

Hold tight, pitchers. We’re lost, but we’ll find our way through.

Soz. We’re PROBABLY not going to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams so if you’re after that six-figure passive income, you’ve come to the wrong place. 

We can’t offer you this because, duh, we’re not rich either. There’s a reason we’re able to answer your emails at midnight and relate to your tales of sending pitches in the car while your kids are at swimming. Because we’re doing the same. 

We don’t know about you but there’s something particularly soul-sucking – not to mention highly dubious – about reading about how many thousands Mrs Shoulderpads has earned while eating her granola. “Why aren’t *I* earning megabucks while watching Friends??” we cry, “Where’s MY secret passive income??” “I must be a massive failure”. 

We’ll let you into a little secret. Anyone who can be arsed to write a blog post about earning a six-figure income probably isn’t earning a six-figure income. I mean, if you really were earning that much you’d be too busy rolling around naked in pound notes (they still make them, right?) and inhaling Cristal to want to commit to a daily noon webinar wouldn’t you? If we were earning that much, you lot could, frankly, fuck off. Webinars would be the LAST thing we’d want to do. We find telephone interviews hard enough work, for goodness’ sake. 

What we’re saying is that we take these things very much with a pinch of salt and you should too. Yes we know some highly successful businesspeople and most of them have worked bloody hard for it. And, guess what? They’re still working, not twatting about trying to get you to sign up to yet another soul-destroying, unattainable, envy-based dream. 

We’ve worked for years at the coalface of journalism and copywriting and we’re actually proud that we still do. We both still need to pitch regularly and we both know what it’s like to pull all-nighters to get features written or to send multiple invoice reminders while also hoping that shit payer employs you again. 

But we love what we do and this is why our courses work. They aren’t going to buy you a house in Outpost Estates (guess where Hazel spends most of her online downtime) but they are going to give you the skills you need to make a viable, sensible-figured living. Now, who fancies rolling around in some Greggs sausage rolls? 

What’s so great about their course? Has it brought you extra work?

That’s what someone posted on Facebook this week in response to one of our students recommending Cracking Pitches, our online course in how to land more freelance writing work and keep editors happy. 

In my head, I high-fived that person. Because her question – has it brought you extra work – gets right to the heart of why we created Muse Flash, and why we’re still running courses five years on. 

Our goal – nay our dream, because there’s a touch of wonderment to the fact that we get to do something this fun and still call it work – is to help freelance writers achieve satisfying, sustainable careers doing what they love.

Why? What motivates us? Two things. One; we’ve never quite got over how bloody brilliant it is to pay the bills with our words and work for ourselves. Having established working lives that mean we never have that dreaded Sunday night sinking feeling – even after more than a decade of doing this – we can’t help but want to share that with other people, especially folks who find themselves wondering if writing for a living is a pipe-dream. ‘It’s not!’, we want to shout from the rooftops. (But that’s not very practical or profitable, so we settled on running an online course instead…)

Two; we’re still a bit cheesed off at all the people we who told us that no-one makes a living as a freelance writer anymore. Print is dead, rates are appalling, no-one pays on time. Blah blah blah. True, perhaps, but none of that means journalists are extinct; it just means we need to adapt our skills to fit all the new emerging opportunities to get paid to write. (More on our diversification course coming soon… drop us an email if you’d like to know more.) 

Look, we’ve got more than 20 years’ combined experience as freelance journalists and we’ve never yet had a month where we couldn’t pay the mortgage. We take holidays, run cars (albeit old bangers) and buy expensive oat milk lattes on a regular basis. We’re not ‘rich’ by any means but we truly think we’ve got the best jobs in the world. No boring bits we dread (except maybe tax returns), no horrible bosses whose unreasonable ways must be tolerated at all costs, and no crappy office politics to endure. No soul-sapping commute. We can work in our pyjamas or from our beds. We take days off at the drop of a hat, we spend time with our kids or family members when they need us without answering to anyone, and we have long baths at midday whenever the mood takes us. (Which is often.) We get to speak to wildly fascinating people week in and week out; we’ve amassed some fabulous freebies in the course of doing our jobs; and we’ve been sent on epic travel assignments from shopping in Italy (driven everywhere by Porsche) to sailing around Barcelona on the world’s biggest cruise ship.

In other words, we LOVE OUR JOBS, and we know what a huge freaking privilege that is these days.

So yes, we’re a bit annoyed that so many people poo-poo this profession and seemingly try to put other people off it. Having found career happiness – nirvana, even – we’re determined to share what we’ve learned with anyone else who really just wants to get paid to write, but who fears starving in the process.

So to come back to that question – has their course brought you extra work? We couldn’t live with ourselves if it didn’t. What would be the point of running an online course that didn’t help you actually get more writing gigs or break into better paying markets? We’re not interested in profiting off the back of other people’s unfulfilled dreams. We’re interested in seeing people break through their limitations, self-imposed or otherwise, to achieve a freelance writing career that puts food on the table and a song in your heart. Or something.

In the early days of running our courses, our greatest hope was that our students might land new writing gigs off the back of our advice. That was never the be-all and end-all of the course – it’s as much about boosting your confidence and changing the way you think about pitching so that fear of rejection stops holding you back. But these days, after five years of honing the content and delving more deeply into our own patchy pitching pasts, it’s pretty much the norm for students to earn back their course fee before we part company. Honestly, the buzz that gives us is indescribable. When it happens, it validates everything for us. 

So if you’re wondering if Cracking Pitches is really all it’s cracked up to be, the answer is yes. But don’t take our word for it. Here’s how our student answered that question:

“I did this course as a refresher a few years ago and it was what I needed to get my mojo back. I still find it useful today and often go over my course notes just to keep myself on track. I think if you are starting out or if, like me, you’ve lost confidence in yourself, the help and support within the course are excellent. For health reasons I am on a break from pitching (and have been for over a year now - I do actually miss it) but I enjoyed this course so much I thought I would share. And, of course, Hazel and Heidi and simply the best.”

And then, before we’d even really recovered from that lovely little praise fest, someone posted this in our secret Facebook group that’s exclusively for Muse Flash students:

‘Sorry to do this but you guys are the only ones who will get it. I JUST GOT A COMMISSION FROM A MAGAZINE I HAVE WANTED TO WRITE FOR FOR AGES. Remember all those years ago when I did the course and I told you I wanted to write for them? Yessssss!’

I dug back through her emails and she’s right. When she did our course she told us what she really wanted to do was be a food writer. She’d convinced herself, prior to the course, that this was too lofty an ambition.

“Until I read your notes and the section about narrowing your focus,” she wrote to us at the time. “Then it occurred to me that I should stop trying to be a jack-of-all-trades and focus on what I really want to do, and that was reinforced in your homework exercise, because when I went into the newsagent to pick some titles, as instructed, the ones I walked out with were all food mags. For the most part, it's become clear to me that I want to specialise in food writing and get better at it, even though it's competitive.”

One of the titles she picked up that very day as part of her homework for us is the mag that commissioned her this week. Granted, it’s taken years to get to this point but has she starved in the process? Nope. Is she glad she stuck at it and pursued the dream that she’d once written off as too lofty? Hell, yes.

What’s so great about our course? THAT.

Online courses are a minefield, aren’t they? 

You feel like you’ve got a bit of a skills gap and a course might help. You Google a few, and find something that sounds pretty good. Or maybe you’ve heard recommendations and wonder if it’s time to try the training that all those people speak so highly of. 

You check out all the details. You won’t need to sell a kidney. The testimonials intrigue you.  Did they make them up? Is it really THAT good? All those people who say they earned their course fee back before they’d even finished it – are they for real? And how realistic is that? Are they an exception to the rule, or could that happen for you, too?

We know exactly how you feel. We’ve taken a few online courses in our time. The one I paid £40 for in some bargain basement sale to celebrate the course creator’s 40th birthday. Never even downloaded the first module. Wouldn’t even know how to log into it now. It’s probably expired anyway. Then there’s the course I very nearly didn’t buy due to cold feet, but which actually made a really significant impact on my working life. I went back and bought a second follow-up course for three times the price, in fact.

Thing is, we know you’re loath to part with your cash on a course unless you’re sure it’s going to be worth it. We know you’re worried that we won’t teach you anything you don’t already know. We know your hard-earned is exactly that; hard-earned, and that unless an online course actually helps you achieve your goals, it’s a waste of time and money.

We also hate some of the gimmicky marketing stuff that’s out there trying to sell you a dream. The coaching programme that leaves you feeling like a mug for signing up to something that promised the earth but left you underwhelmed. The webinar that lured you in with the promise of teaching you the secrets of earning a six-figure income, but which locks you into a barrage of emails that you don’t have time to unsubscribe from. That’s not our style. (We’re more likely to sign you up to a monthly newsletter and then never get round to writing the second one…)

If it helps, we started our course by accident. I interviewed someone for an article I was writing (this one) and she commented that I was living her dream life: she wanted to write for a living. She’d been such a brilliant interviewee that I jokingly offered to teach her everything I knew. She held me to it, and fleshed out a course outline of all the things she wanted to know about how to break into freelance writing.

I ran that first course in January 2015 for her and a handful of fellow freelance journalists who’d also asked my advice on pitching – I’m one of those annoying people who LOVES pitching ideas to editors and the incomparable buzz of getting a commission, then feels a bit deflated when I realise I have to write the sodding piece.

Since then, we’ve run our course for around 120 students. We’re not natural boasters, but the results our students get are pretty phenomenal. It’s standard for journalists to crack new markets and earn back their course fee with a juicy commission before we’ve even parted company, and we’ve helped lots of newbies achieve their first national byline and start making a living with their words. We’re talking dream publications, too. Glossy mags and national newspapers. (Check out our testimonials for more on that. We promise we didn’t make them up.)

We’ve also got a lively little Facebook community of past students who cheer each other on and make us laugh every day, which you get access to when you sign up for one of our courses. (And that student we started the course for? She became a successful freelance writer and – although we can’t take any credit for this bit – she’s now a successful novelist with two books to her name. So she’s living my dream life and I might ask her to teach me everything she knows…)

So, if you’re thinking of signing up for February’s Muse Flash: Cracking Pitches course but have the kind of reservations we’ve mentioned above, ping us an email. We’re more than happy to answer any questions you might have, and we can even put you in touch with past students who’ll give you an honest appraisal of whether it’ll really work for you. We won’t even blackmail them.

Above all, though, don’t let your doubts hold you back from taking your pitching to the next level. If you invest your cash and your time with us, we won’t take it lightly. 

We promise we’ll make it worth your while.

Here’s the thing about our course. It works. Our students are forever telling us it’s boosted their confidence and made an enormo difference to their pitching success rate. It’s even fairly standard for people to earn back their course fee in a juicy commission as a direct result of our input, long before we part company. 

What we love most about teaching Cracking Pitches is connecting with our students. Hanging out with them – and enjoying very silly banter – in our secret Facebook group. Spending the final two weeks – in which they get priority in our inboxes and unlimited feedback on their pitches – really getting to know them. And on that getting-to-know-you score, my fave bit of student feedback from this year went like this…

NO FEAR OF FORGETTING YOU GUYS… EMBARRASSINGLY, MY BOYFRIEND ASKED AFTER THE PAIR OF YOU YESTERDAY, AS THOUGH WE WERE ALL AT UNI TOGETHER. HADN’T REALISED I HAD BEEN TALKING ABOUT YOU BOTH AND THE COURSE *QUITE* SO MUCH.

Where was I? Oh yes, why we’ve kept our course small and intimate. Because we think the one-to-one exchange is what makes our course especially kickass. That part alone is probably worth way more than we charge for it. But we’re kind of ok with that, because you can’t put a price on the satisfaction we get when a student gets in touch to tell us they’ve landed a freelance commission of their dreams thanks to us. Here’s how one of our current mentoring students put it just yesterday:

“Working with you this week has given me an invaluable boost – and I actually slept past 3.20am today for the first time in weeks. That's thanks to your boundless positive reassurance.”

Another student from our most recent summer course expressed a similar sentiment like this: “One of the most invaluable things I’ve got out of this course is becoming part of a little community. Freelancing can be so lonely and I’d forgotten how much I need camaraderie and contact with other people in the same line of work.”

All of which is to say that our next Cracking Pitches course kicks off on Friday 4th October, which is less than three weeks away. It’s our last course of the year, and we’re not too sure where we’ll take things after that. There’s talk of a Christmas meet-up for Muse Flash alumni, and we reckon 2020 just might be the year we make the Muse Flash Cracking Pitches residential an actual thing. Campfires, whiskey and fabulous food will feature prominently. That’s one boat you don’t want to miss.

But if your name’s not down (or you haven’t done a course with us…) then you’re not coming in. Bookings are open now for October’s course, and we’re capping this one at 12 students, so be quick if you want to bag a seat at the table. A deposit of £100 secures your place. 

Who’s in?

I know journalists who celebrate every commission, boast about every byline and shamelessly self-promote every single piece they ever write. But I also know journalists who prefer to fly under the radar. You might stumble across their name on a piece in a magazine, yet they won’t have breathed a word about that gig to anyone.

We fall into both camps. Come to think of it, one of my first encounters with Hazel was when I tagged her in a social media post congratulating her on a brilliant piece of hers I’d just read in the paper. She nearly died of mortification, and demanded that I delete the post or suffer the eternal consequences. And so began a beautiful relationship…

So, should you tell other people about your work? If print is dying and the future of our industry is digital, it obviously makes sense to do all you can to increase the traffic to every piece you write. To that end, I’ve heard of editors actively encouraging writers to promote their published pieces online, and I’ve been asked by one publication to join a Facebook group and interact with readers (in my own time) on a piece I wrote. It stands to reason that a writer who has a Twitter account and isn’t afraid to use it is going to be an appealing prospect to an editor who is counting clicks.

But for some, that approach feels showy. We share our stuff reluctantly, couching it with caveats – I didn’t write the headline! – and underplaying our game. It’s self-deprecation, yes, but it’s also taking the piss out of ourselves before anyone else gets there first. It’s irrational – journalism is the wrong career for someone who doesn’t like to stick their head above the parapet – but sharing your work essentially invites scrutiny, and that can feel uncomfortable. With good reason; we all know writers who’ve been trolled on Twitter, and you only have to spend a few minutes ‘below the line’ to understand why ‘never read the comments’ is a mantra among many newspaper journalists.

It’s not just that we fear criticism. We’re hardly shrinking violets. We know how to handle ourselves if someone takes issue with an idea we’ve expressed, and we’re far from afraid to stand up for ourselves. What makes me sometimes want to hide my work is a niggling voice that says ‘Who do you think you are?’

Case in point: I recently wrote a tabloid piece that earned me ten times the rate I was paid for the previous piece I’d written. A no-brainer in commercial terms – that fee made me feel I could take the rest of the month off. I was proud of the piece and the work that went into it – writing something on edition in a few hours and having it make print is an achievement I’m not ashamed to feel good about. And yet I found myself going out of my way to keep the piece from my nearest and dearest. For no good reason that I could think of.

In the end, my husband boasted on my behalf. And I’m glad he did. Sharing the piece with people who were only too happy to celebrate the achievement for me was a lovely boost. Riding out the scrutiny and discovering that people rated my piece and didn’t think I was a dick for writing it felt so much better than shuffling from foot to foot whilst frantically trying to hide every single copy of the paper in my local Co-op.

As someone else put it recently; there are enough people out there all too eager to cut you down to size, why do it for them? Why play small?

Or, what Marianne Williamson says.

“There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.”

I still don’t recommend you ever heap public praise on Hazel for her work, though. Not if you value your life.

Yes. Next question. More FAQs here.

There’s no magic timescale. Chase it up. Don’t apologise. More FAQs here.

Cry. Stamp feet. Eat ice cream for dinner. Pitch your ass off. More FAQs here.