Hi friends,
Do you remember the show “The Good Wife,” where the incomparable Julianna Margulies divorced Mr. Big, a Chicago politician-turned-white-collar-crime-boss? It’s been a minute, so I’m fuzzy on the details, but it was my favorite show to binge when I was super pregnant with my first kid and scribbling my way through the last pages of my dissertation.
In the last season, Julianna Margulies gets elected States Attorney in Chicago, and all of these people start showing up to call in favors. And she just starts telling them all, in this very high-minded way, to fuck off, infuriating all of these really influential, shady people, until her handler pulls her aside and offers her this mantra: “Thank you for your advice, all options are open to me, I plan to decide in the next 48 hours.”
I think of this scene a lot when I’m coaching writers. People schedule calls with me all the time to chat through what feel like intractable dilemmas and—almost always—they already know the answer should be no. You can usually talk yourself into yes, but giving yourself permission to say no is a lot harder.
Similarly, running a business is weird because it’s a N of one, so I’m always making things up as I go along. I try really hard to look into the future, make a provisional decision, and then sit with it a long time before I go public with it (“all options are open to me, I plan to decide within the next year.”). But that doesn’t always work—I stop listening to my friends and my own sense of internal calibration, and then I make weird decisions.
Today I thought I’d write about one of those silly decisions, what happened when I walked it back, and how I think this should give you permission to say no all the time in your life. And I’ll give you a few mantras!
Silly decisions: An object lesson
What’s the story? About a month ago, a new organization came to me with a project. It seemed cool! But…It had a bananas timeline. Lots of reactive stuff was happening that was very rushed and last minute, and I knew it needed a few more layers of intervention before it was ready to be edited. I suggested that they revise their project plan, and they resisted, but basically told me I could name my price as long as I could edit it in a week.
My calculus: Now. These are not the circumstances I work under. I have a schedule! I know my cadence! BUT. Cool project! Nice people! And…money! (Cue anxious brain: “What if all of my work dries up in the fall and I regret turning down this lucrative opportunity and this organization never wants to work with me again and I have to become an adjunct…in the suburbs?”)
What would I have advised my clients to do? To text their no committee! To say something like “What a cool opportunity! Let me think about this, and I can give you an answer in 48 hours.” And to sleep on it, feel out what each decision would mean, and then make a relaxed choice.
What did I do? Tell them yes immediately. In that call! And then text my husband and told him I’d be working all Sunday (which I never do) so he needed to figure out what to do with the kids. More boundaries, gone.
How did it go? I felt shitty about it. I didn’t think I’d do my best work, which matters a lot to me. I don’t like having money drive decision making. I don’t like getting talked into things. I don’t like giving up family time because of conditions other people set.
Even though it wasn’t going to be a super big deal, it was only a week, my brain was instantly like “Oh no! Precarity! Do we need to say yes to other things? What do we need to do to keep ourselves in good shape? Should we cancel vacation/start offering 24-hour, on-demand proofing services? Maybe we should move back to Nebraska!” If you too are the owner of an anxious brain, you know. So this one decision threw off my inner calibration, and threatened to start spiraling. My lizard brain, in charge of protecting me, decided we needed to make decisions from a feeling of scarcity not abundance.
SO THEN: They tried to change the rules of the game—a wonkier timeline, more moving parts, more rounds of back-and-forth with random folks. So I just said no. I finished (and billed for) the parts that were already in front of me, told them about my fall availability, and wished them well in the meantime. I told them it was a great project and I was having a lot of fun on it, but I totally got if they needed someone with more flexibility on their team.
Here’s the amazing part: Instead of feeling anxious about doing that I felt…calm. The universe immediately showed me it was gonna be fine. Within twenty-four hours, a buddy doing God’s work organizing in Texas asked me if I could do some trainings for her organization based on my book this summer, and I was able to say yes, because I’d have the time. A few hours later, a group doing great education work in NYC needed some publishing advice, and I was able to spend an hour on that because I wasn’t emergency editing.
And while I was on that call, someone I love working with emailed saying that they had some funds expiring at the end of the fiscal year, and asking if they could pay me now for an article they’d send me in the late fall (the answer to that question is always yes—if you have PD funds you’re about to lose, let’s chat!).
Saying a kind-of-scary no immediately translated into resources and meaningful work that I could do at a pace I felt good about. It was a good reminder about abundance (this isn’t magic, those people would have emailed me anyway, but if I was still freaking out about the other project I would have felt a HUGE time scarcity and said no, or said yes and started this whole thing over again. Instead, I felt grateful).
Why this (could) matter to you.
You may remember the most consequential scene from the timeless classic Elf, where the boss of Buddy the Elf’s father threatens to fire him on Christmas Eve (“If you wanna keep your job, Hobbs, you will pitch me this book right now!”) There’s a dramatic pause, and then Buddy’s dad says (to the delight of my ten-year-old son) “well, up yours!” and walks out, losing his job but saving Christmas. Heroes, they walk among us.
Friends, if that organization had been mean to me (“if you don’t edit this by sundown, you’ll never work in this field again!”) I would have happily said “well, up yours,” and stormed out (of the Zoom call). But they were NICE. And they NEEDED me. And so that goes somewhere else in your brain. Guilt/anxiety/misplaced obligations all lie to us, and we make silly decisions because we accept the premise of those lies. Most of the time—here’s the shitty part—it’s internal, not external, pressure that is harder to resist.
Two mantras. This summer, I give you two mantras: Instead of saying yes (or no) to something, try this: “Thank you for your advice (this opportunity), all options are open to me, I plan to decide in the next 48 hours.” this gives your lizard brain a chance to keep basking in the sun while you make the decision that’s most rational for you. And if the other person, or your brain, won’t give you that time, deploy mantra two: “Well, up yours.”
We’re going on vacation! I’ll be back in your inboxes in mid-July—until then, say no to some stuff, read a bad mystery novel, and write some things that spark joy, and I’ll do the same.
Kelly
Ways we can work together
Sign up now for fall Writers’ Circles! This fall, join the greatest writing circle on the internet—a group of smart, empowered folks getting work done. Details are here, and folks who register by August 1 get a discount on the cost of registration. As always, I’m happy to answer any questions via email or by hopping on a Zoom call.
Write with me! - If you feel like you’d benefit from a writing community during the semester, consider joining the “So You Want to Write a Book” workshop this August.
Academic publicity services: As I wrote about recently, we now offer academic publicity services. Let us design a publicity strategy that will get your book in front of readers, so you don’t have to!
Editing/coaching - We have no more coaching or editing spots for the summer. If you’d like to work together in the fall, now is a good time to reach out!
As always, I feel so lucky to have all of you as part of my community—thanks for doing what you do!