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Great clients are everywhere, trailblazing women in media & copy resource of the week
Kimberly Houston
August 25, 2024
Hey, hi, howdy, and welcome to Issue #24 of The Subhead, a bi-weekly newsletter about copywriting, marketing & media, and a look at some of the women who make it great.
In today’s edition:
✨ This week in freelancing
✨ Great clients are everywhere
✨ Trailblazing Women in Media: Ann Friedman
✨ Copy Resource of the Week: Retire These Phrases ASAP
✨ Just for Fun
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This week in freelancing …
I recently finished an article for a client that everything in me wanted to turn down, the first of four in a series of similar articles. (This client kindly asks, when sharing a list of topics she needs articles on, “Would you be interested in writing any of these?”)
It’s a straightforward set of articles, but there are lots of parts and pieces to each one, including things I usually don’t do – screenshots, comparison tables, etc. – and each is more than twice as long as those I usually write for this client.
As I started working on the first piece in the series, I felt oddly anxious.
Which might seem silly for someone who has written for clients for well over two decades, and for this particular client for over six years.
But the truth is, I still feel anxious sometimes when I’m working on a project that requires me to do things I haven’t done at least several dozen times before.
On the plus side, it’s been nearly a week since I submitted the first article, and the client did not reply with, “This is trash. Please rewrite.” 😊
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Great clients are everywhere (organic networking for the win)
As a deeply committed introvert, I’m not the most skilled networker.
Yet, back in the day, I used to go to 2-4 networking events a month. I don’t recall getting many clients at those things, probably owing to my awkwardness and discomfort at striking up conversations with strangers.
There were some wins, though. I met my current accountant at one of those networking events. We became friends, in addition to being service provider / client, and remain friends to this day.
That said, I've found the best networking comes by talking about what you do organically, in a natural setting.
I got one of my all-time best clients that way, one Friday night at a wine bar.
(If you have any networking tips for introverts, help a fellow introvert out and go share them on the post. 😊)
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Trailblazing Women in Media: Ann Friedman
Former magazine editor and one of the first women to hold an executive editor position at an online magazine, Ann Friedman is a journalist, essayist, author and podcaster. I’ve been subscribed to her wonderful newsletter, AF Weekly, for a bit over three years now, and I look forward to reading it each Friday with gleeful anticipation, such is my nerdiness.
Friedman co-wrote the best-selling book, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close with her friend Aminatou Sow, with whom she also co-hosted the podcast, Call Your Girlfriend, which ran from 2014 – 2022. Though the podcast isn’t around anymore, there’s a backlog of over 350 episodes.
Her next book, not yet titled, about the “strange and mundane phenomena that define modern adulthood” will be published by Viking Books in 2025.
Friedman’s writing has appeared in Elle, The Atlantic, The Cut, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, among other outlets. She’s also a contributing editor to The Gentlewoman, a publication featuring profiles of inspirational women.
Favorite Friedman quote:
“I have a dream of retreating to a #spinstercabin for a few weeks of respite from the Internet. In the meantime, I make a point of occasionally leaving my house without my phone. Or I drink enough whiskey that I am unable to operate it.”
You can learn more about Friedman at the inline links above, and / or check out:
The AF Weekly newsletter archive, to get a feel for her excellent newsletter.
Her Muck Rack journalist profile, which features 839 articles, as of this writing.
This is a talk Friedman gave at Boston University in April 2013, in which she talks about the origins of her career, among other things. Though 10+ years old, there are some interesting nuggets here about journalism and writing online that still hold true.
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Copy Resource of the Week: Retire These Phrases ASAP
Every industry has its overused phrases. Clichés repeated so often they’ve become nearly meaningless, conveying nothing.
I recently read a delightful article about such phrases, and found it to be good advice for those of us DIY-ing our own copy or content, or doing any kind of writing, really.
It’s especially useful copywriting guidance.
I give you Jason Cohen, four-time entrepreneur, bootstrapped and VC-funded, resulting in two exits and two unicorns, on …
“Authentic” is dead. And so is “dead.”
It’s lazy writing. It’s boring and undifferentiated. Say something meaningful, specific, evocative, so your website wins, and you can be proud of it.
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Just for Fun
If you’ve seen the delightful 2009 movie Julie & Julia, about Julia Childs and Julie Powell (I have, about 12 times, ha ha), then you may know who Judith Jones is.
Jones was senior editor and vice president of Alfred A. Knopf for 57 years, and is best known for “rescuing Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl from the so-called ‘slush pile’ of unpublished manuscripts in the early 1950s, and for ‘discovering’ and publishing Julia Child.”
I loved this article, written by Sara Franklin, about the meals, cooking and conversation she shared with Judith Jones over the years.
Lessons learned at the kitchen counter with the editor of Julia Child, Edna Lewis, M. F. K. Fisher, and James Beard.
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That’s it for this week, my friend.
As always, thanks for reading, I appreciate you!
Be well. Stay curious. See you again in two weeks, on September 8.
Warmly,
Kimberly