Before You Hit Publish: The Writing Decision That Can Open (or Close) Future Opportunities
Many writers focus on improving their craft, but few realize that where they publish first can shape the opportunities available to them for years to come.
In this conversation, writer, ghostwriter, and publishing coach Krissi Driver shares the often-overlooked world of first publishing rights, why publishing on your own platform may limit future opportunities, and how to think strategically about where your work belongs before you click "publish."
We explore the difference between self-publishing and traditional publication, how writers can leverage short-form publishing to build credibility, the art of pitching mainstream publications, and why persistence matters more than talent when it comes to getting published.
Krissi also introduces the Gateless Writing Method—a powerful approach designed to help writers overcome perfectionism, unlock creativity, and share their work with greater confidence.
In this episode you'll discover:
- Why first publishing rights matter
- How writers accidentally close doors to future opportunities
- The advantages of short-form publishing
- What editors are really looking for in a pitch
- Why follow-up is often the difference between rejection and acceptance
- How mainstream publications can help entrepreneurs build authority
- The Gateless Writing Method and overcoming perfectionism
- Practical steps to decide where your writing should live first
If you've ever wondered whether your work belongs on Substack, Medium, your own website, or in a major publication, this conversation will help you make that decision strategically.
Connect with Krissi:
https://thebylineblueprint.substack.com/
99 Writing Prompts
What is the URL for that resource
https://www.krissidriver.com/prompts
The Write Hustle Writing Group
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Transcript
WEBVTT
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Writers spend years learning how to write better.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yet, one publishing decision can have a bigger impact on their future opportunities than the words on the page. Today, we're unpacking the publishing rule almost nobody talks about until it's too late.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: First, publishing rights. You'll discover why where you publish first matters, how writers accidentally close doors to magazines and literary journals, and what to do instead if you want every piece of writing to create more opportunities, not fewer.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hi, and welcome to the You World Order Showcase Podcast, where we feature life health transformational coaches and spiritual entrepreneurs stepping up to be the change they seek in the world.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm your host, Jill Hart, the Coach's Alchemist, on a mission to empower coaches and entrepreneurs to amplify their voice, monetize their mission, and get visible. If you're ready to start attracting premium clients without chasing algorithms or hunting people down like a banshee on a mission, head on over to coachesalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit. It's the first step to building a business where your clients seek you out, rather than you having to hunt them down.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Today, we are chatting with Chrissy Driver. Chrissy is a ghostwriter, creative writing coach, and pitch coach who helps writers and entrepreneurs write more effectively, get published, and build meaningful publishing careers. Through her work, she teaches writers how to navigate short-form publishing.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Pitch mainstream publications, submit to literary journals, and use the gateless writing method to develop stronger creative work. She is also the creator of resources that help writers move from idea to publication with greater clarity and confidence. Welcome to the show, Chrissy. It's great to have you with us, and…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: just fair warning to everyone, I've been chatting with Christy for a while, or Chrissy for a while, because she's been on the Monetize Your Mission Mastermind, which we'll also link to when we drop this episode.
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::Krissi Driver: Good morning. I should say good afternoon to you. It's morning for me, but thank you so much for having me, Jill. I'm so excited.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And tomorrow.
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::Krissi Driver: Tomorrow, yes, it is… it is tomorrow. I'm speaking from the future. Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We're a woo kind of show. It's all good.
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah, excellent!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So let me ask you the big question. What's the most significant thing, in your opinion, as individuals, we can do to make an impact on how the world is going?
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::Krissi Driver: I think the most significant thing is to share one's writing, and I've been thinking about this question a lot, being prepared for this episode, and…
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::Krissi Driver: I, you know, all of your guests have such interesting answers, and I don't think any of us are wrong, but I do think, you know, there's something about the written word, and it is the way we have communicated as humans for tens of thousands of years. It was the first
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::Krissi Driver: form of communication that we had, besides, obviously, speaking to one another. And there is so much power in that, and we all have something to say.
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::Krissi Driver: Whether it's truly important, or entertaining, or informational, or whatever its purpose may be.
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::Krissi Driver: words are important, and sharing that work with the world is important, and I think we just need to do more of that. It's a very vulnerable thing to share your work.
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::Krissi Driver: It, it makes us…
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::Krissi Driver: feel uncomfortable, and we don't want to be criticized, which is what the gateless Method is all about. It's zero criticism, and…
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah, I just… I think if I could encourage anyone to do anything today, right now, it would be to find a place to share your writing.
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::Krissi Driver: That's my… I love that. …my answer.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: How to be immortal?
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::Krissi Driver: Yes, that's a great way to think about it. It's… your words outlast you, and it's… particularly if they're recorded in some way, right? So, it… there is something really immortal about writing down your thoughts and feelings and leaving them for, you know, the next generation, or whomever happens to pick them up. It is kind of a good way to think about it, yeah, for sure.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We don't write letters a lot anymore, but I know my grandmother was an avid letter writer, and she'd written my dad a letter, and he kept a lot of the letters. My dad's 90 now, so, I mean.
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::Krissi Driver: Oh, wow.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Way back. And so… I can still read the letters.
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Oh, and, you know, we lived overseas a lot when I was growing up, so…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it was back in the 70s, 60s and 70s.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know, there wasn't… like, you couldn't call somebody.
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::Krissi Driver: Right. Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Not to write low.
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::Krissi Driver: It would have been expensive to do that, too. I mean, if you… if you tried, yeah.
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::Krissi Driver: Absolutely. That's… that's really beautiful, and I think…
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::Krissi Driver: I recently joined a school community that is a pen pal club, and so I've actually been handwriting letters to women around the world, and I have pen pals in Canada now, and Australia, and the Netherlands, and Singapore, which is… it's just so cool.
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::Krissi Driver: To sit down and… and pause, because we're so busy in life, and when I write a lot, but…
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::Krissi Driver: I write on my laptop, because I… I have ADHD, I feel like my brain can't keep up with my… my hand often, and so I much prefer to type, because I can type faster than I can write by hand.
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::Krissi Driver: But it's just been such a beautiful thing to sit down and write… handwrite, with an actual pen and paper.
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::Krissi Driver: these letters to these wonderful women, and I've so enjoyed that. My grandmother also was a prolific, letter writer, and we used to get letters, all of my cousins and I would get letters from her occasionally, and I still have some of those, and they're precious. You know, she's passed away now, and
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::Krissi Driver: that's just this one small piece of her that I still have with me, and it's just, it's a very meaningful thing, having that kind of thing in your possession. And even if it's not physical, like you said before, you know, it immortalizes us.
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::Krissi Driver: In a… in a way that…
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::Krissi Driver: other recordings just can't quite do. I suppose if you're a singer and you're recording your music or something like that, it probably does the same way. But as a writer, I feel like that is…
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::Krissi Driver: the ultimate.
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::Krissi Driver: Ultimates.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Reservation.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes.
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::Krissi Driver: letter is…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: so intimate. Not… music doesn't do it the same way, or, you know, even the.
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::Krissi Driver: podcast episode.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: episodes when I'm gone.
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::Krissi Driver: Mmm.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: There's literally hundreds of episodes of me talking.
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::Krissi Driver: to people.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And so my family can go back and listen to them, but it's not the same as if I wrote them a personal letter.
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::Krissi Driver: Right, yes, yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::Krissi Driver: It's that personalization, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is just the… Just, like, behind closed doors. In the envelope!
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::Krissi Driver: Yes.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes, yes.
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::Krissi Driver: Good way to think about it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So most writers think getting published means getting a book deal.
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::Krissi Driver: Thank you, bud.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Short form publishing is often the smarter first step.
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::Krissi Driver: Well, I think a lot of people… for one thing, writing a book is daunting. It takes a long time. I, myself, am trying to write a novel right now. I've been working on it for a year.
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::Krissi Driver: I'm still not done. It is a long slog, and an acquaintance of mine, Terry Trespassio, she often says, I hate when people say.
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::Krissi Driver: I want to write a book someday. No, if you want to write a book, then write it. Don't talk about it, write it. Well, writing a book is… is a difficult thing to do. Don't put it on your life list, as Terry says, because
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::Krissi Driver: it's not meant for everybody, but short form is much easier to get into, and when I say short form, what I'm talking about is personal essays or short fiction that might be somewhere between, you know, 500 to 10,000 words, which is still a lot.
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::Krissi Driver: Or, poetry, you could also write, what, flash, which is, like, shorter fiction, 100 to 500 words. So there's a lot of different things that constitute short-form writing.
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::Krissi Driver: And it's just… it's easier to get into, it's a lot less intimidating to… to sit down and work on some of those things.
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::Krissi Driver: And there are just as many places to have that kind of work published.
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::Krissi Driver: As there are, you know, publishing houses, probably more, than, you know, your typical big-name publishing houses or self-publishing on a place like Amazon or something like that.
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::Krissi Driver: And the beauty of it is they will, like a traditional publishing house, if you publish with somebody else, you get a little bit of help in getting your work into the hands of other people you might otherwise not know.
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::Krissi Driver: And so, there's just… there's a thousand reasons, I feel like I could get into about why I would recommend somebody try to work on… on publishing
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::Krissi Driver: short form first, as opposed to just diving right in and trying to write a book right away. And not to mention, I will say this.
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::Krissi Driver: if you have things published short-form elsewhere, it can help you when you get ready to publish your book, because you've already got a track record, regardless of how short it was. There's a track record there. You're a paid, published writer at that point.
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::Krissi Driver: And that makes people sit up and listen a little bit more.
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::Krissi Driver: So there's a lot of good reasons for getting into short form first, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think it's interesting in the old days when riders were getting
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: getting started, people like Charles Dickens, they wrote in the newspaper, and it was serialized, so it was actually short content.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Over a long period of time, they used to do that in the 50s and 60s with cartoons.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They would have the feature, or they would have the… The cereal thing…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: episode, and there was always a cliffhanger, so you had to come back next week and pay your nickel to get… to watch…
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::Krissi Driver: Yay!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: next episode. But that's the same sort of thing that you can do still today.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But then, you need to think about where you're publishing versus just, you know, throwing it up anywhere. So, let's talk about the different options people have for where they're going to publish and why they need to think about that, because
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Really, you're the first person I've come across, it's, like…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Don't just throw your work up anywhere.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes, so I love that you bring up serialized work, because that… that is harder to place when you're not self-publishing, because most places are… are looking for a one-and-done kind of situation, a single essay, a single story.
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::Krissi Driver: I… I have not personally heard of places that are looking specifically for serialized work week after week.
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::Krissi Driver: I've heard of places that are looking for novel excerpts, or, you know, longer.
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::Krissi Driver: Short stories that are up to 10,000 words.
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::Krissi Driver: But yeah, that's a good point to make. There are so many different places to publish. So, like you said in your opening, there are literary magazines, there are mainstream publications. So, for example, I have had essays and articles, reported articles.
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::Krissi Driver: published on the front page of the New York Times, in Business Insider, The Guardian, Fast Company.
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::Krissi Driver: big publications like that, and then the smaller publications, like literary magazines, The Sun, and Bravity Mag, and Splitlip, to name a few. A couple of those are… most of those are online, but there are some that are still in print. McSweeney's Internet Tendencies, which still publishes a print quarterly journal.
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::Krissi Driver: there's just hundreds, literally hundreds of them, and you can also publish yourself, and do a self-publishing. You can publish on your substack, of course. You can publish on Medium, or LinkedIn Pulse, or your own blog on your website. The danger
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::Krissi Driver: and I say danger with a grain of salt, because I don't mean that it's dangerous, necessarily, but once you publish in those places, once you publish to your Substack, Medium, LinkedIn, whatever.
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::Krissi Driver: You are… you are giving that place… that piece of writing a home, and that's where it ends.
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::Krissi Driver: more often than not. And what that means is you are claiming the first rights of that publishing for yourself. There's nothing wrong with that. You absolutely… you're not doing anything wrong. You could totally do that.
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::Krissi Driver: But it limits your ability to put that work elsewhere later. And…
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::Krissi Driver: publications, literary publications, especially mainstream publications, they want the first rights. They want to be the original place that that work has been published, and so if you publish it on your own substack.
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::Krissi Driver: you're kind of out of luck, because they don't want that. There's a handful, I would say, probably more than a handful, of literary publications that will accept work that has already been published somewhere, and I have heard of it happening occasionally.
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::Krissi Driver: With mainstream publications, but those are rare.
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::Krissi Driver: And so.
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::Krissi Driver: what I always encourage people to do is… it depends on what your goal is for that piece of writing, because it very well could have…
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::Krissi Driver: a great life in a different place that's not your substack, and it's not your Medium account. And everything counts, so if you… I have a short story, for example, that I published to my Instagram in slides, in, like, a carousel form. That's it.
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::Krissi Driver: I cannot publish that anywhere else unless I'm looking specifically for a place that publishes previously published work. That's a lot of the word publish, but
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::Krissi Driver: It… it limits you when you don't really think about the potential your work could have
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::Krissi Driver: And if it could fit somewhere else.
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::Krissi Driver: And I think so many writers don't realize that they have other options, that there is a possibility of something else before they… they submit, you know, click submit, or click publish, or whatever the button… the button says in their
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::Krissi Driver: In their publishing platform, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I have to wonder if it doesn't come down to what… what is the purpose of your content? And I know there's a lot of people out there that just, like, they publish…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: whatever hits him is, like, I gotta get it all out.
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::Krissi Driver: Without…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: really thinking about what… what is the end game for this piece of content that I'm creating? Do I want it to further my reputation, and would it be best served if I… you're basically selling your content to these.
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::Krissi Driver: You are.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: publications, versus
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: retaining ownership of it and publishing… self-publishing on a platform like Substack or Medium. Substack is coming up with a partners program where you can partner with other big brand names.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: there's… there's a thing going around right now, and I… it's acronyms, so I'm…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: really shady on these. I think it's UCG. It's, a user content generation, or generation.
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::Krissi Driver: Oh.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Something like that. Where you… you…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Create testimonials, basically, for these bigger brands, and they… they will pay you.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: For it, for your audience.
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::Krissi Driver: audience. Mmm.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, and it's coming to writing in the form of Sev Stack. Right now, it's only for best sellers.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay. They have access to it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the partner program, but it's… if you think about that in terms of the way that you're creating content, I think that it would help
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Help people when they're, like, coming to…
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::Krissi Driver: public.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: decide, you know, where… what is my purpose?
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah. Yeah, I think…
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::Krissi Driver: That is… that is the thing. You really need to have some kind of idea of what the purpose of the writing, the piece that you're writing, is going to be. Is it to inform? Is it to educate? Is it to entertain?
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::Krissi Driver: Is it just a whiny thing, you had a bad day, and you're just trying to get it out, and it's a personal essay of… or an open letter to the universe, or whatever? You know, and the best way to kind of determine where your work could fit is to
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::Krissi Driver: pay attention to what you consume every day, what media you're consuming. A lot of times, I will see an essay or, you know, some… a notification from one of the publications I follow pops up on my screen on my phone, and I think.
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::Krissi Driver: I could have written that, or I could have written something like that, and that's a great way to think about it, because if somebody else is already doing it, and it's been accepted at one publication, you could very well do something similar
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::Krissi Driver: potentially at the same publication with a totally different angle, or at a different publication with a similar angle. And so, that's…
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::Krissi Driver: That's really the question one has to ask themselves, is…
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::Krissi Driver: what am I trying to achieve with this piece of writing? Because not everything is meant for somewhere else. Like, if you're building your business.
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::Krissi Driver: your substack is probably the best place for that kind of content. Like, no other publication is going to want to publish that, I'm sorry to say.
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::Krissi Driver: But there's lots of things that could live elsewhere, and before you publish them on your substack, it's a long game, it's not an immediate thing, it can take a lot of time, but
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::Krissi Driver: It's so worth it to be willing to wait, and find those kinds of places where your work can live.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think it's interesting, you're talking about, you know, if you're creating business content, and this came to me while we were having the conversation over on Monetize Your Mission Mastermind.
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::Krissi Driver: Mmm.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Because I do primarily talk to people about getting started on Substack. That's…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the thing that I like to do. And so, I couldn't…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: reach out to publications and talk to them about, you know, hey, come on over to my school community and learn how to get started on Substack.
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::Krissi Driver: Right.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're not ever gonna publish that. But they might publish something that's around the idea of, hey, have you heard of Substack?
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::Krissi Driver: Is this a…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Fundamentally different sort of platform, and they've got, you know, a lot different idea about how
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: How publishing can be.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Something like that might get picked up in a business magazine, and.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Substack would love it, because, you know, they're getting free advertising, and then the publication, it would just have my byline, but I would have been published somewhere saying, hey, look how great this is, so that…
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::Krissi Driver: Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It lends authority to me, because you borrow the authority from the publication that's…
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::Krissi Driver: Right.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And then, then I… I'm still, you know, over here on my substack, talking about how great substit.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: to get started.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes, exactly, and that… that's the thing that a lot of entrepreneurs don't realize, is
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::Krissi Driver: you have valuable information in some capacity. You are… you are a teaching machine, whether you realize it or not. And that experience
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::Krissi Driver: sharing that with other people through other publications, like, yeah, what you don't want to do, and what will never get accepted, is you being… walking in and being a Ron Burgundy, and, you know, like, I'm a pretty big deal, sort of situation. Nobody wants you to come in and toot your own horn.
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::Krissi Driver: But if you have a… true…
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::Krissi Driver: desire to be of service, and to share something of worth and value to that audience, like, here… here are 5 reasons why you should be on Substack, or…
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::Krissi Driver: why Substack is better than the other competitors, Beehive, and I can't… I know there's a few other ones out there there. Yeah, exactly.
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::Krissi Driver: What… those kinds of service-based pieces
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::Krissi Driver: not only do they give you that clout, they… you are borrowing, like you said, the… the, I…
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::Krissi Driver: It's still authority, thank you. It's still early for me, and I haven't finished my copy yet. I'm still working here. But you borrow the authority from that publication.
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::Krissi Driver: And on top of that, not always, but often, you get a link. So it's not just your name that's on that piece, you get a link back to your own website, or your social, or your school community, or your substack.
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::Krissi Driver: Or your landing page to your lead magnet, or whatever it may be.
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::Krissi Driver: And that will live there until, you know, hopefully forever. Things happen, and websites pull things down, and there's a different way to protect your written work, which is a conversation for another day. I've had pieces disappear, which is really disappointing.
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::Krissi Driver: But that link is there, and it lives on that website. Like, you don't know who's gonna come across that in a year's time.
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::Krissi Driver: And they read that article, and they see you've got a link there, and boom, you know, they're on your email list all of a sudden. So, there's just… it's… it's not just about creative work. There is such an opportunity for entrepreneurs who are trying to widen their audience and get eyeballs on their… their…
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::Krissi Driver: Opportunities and their offers that they otherwise would not have.
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::Krissi Driver: by pitching to mainstream publications and getting published there. I could talk all day about that.
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah, it's…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Let's talk about the biggest mistake writers do make when they're pitching to mainstream publications, and what should they do instead.
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::Krissi Driver: Ugh, yeah, so I would say probably the biggest thing is not understanding how to write a pitch.
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::Krissi Driver: So, the pitch itself is… it needs to be short and punchy. Think about an editor at a magazine, or a newspaper, or a website publication.
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::Krissi Driver: They get, from freelance journalists and other entrepreneurs and people like me that are creative writers.
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::Krissi Driver: They get bombarded every day with emails, and
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::Krissi Driver: Writing the pitch, you need to have a pitch that's probably… and some of them will very clearly tell you. Most places have a writing guidelines
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::Krissi Driver: Web page, or somewhere on their website that will tell you
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::Krissi Driver: what they're looking for in a pitch. A lot of places will do that.
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::Krissi Driver: Generally, it's somewhere between 250 to 300 words, which might sound like a lot. It is not.
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::Krissi Driver: You need to have… to have,
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::Krissi Driver: ideally present a suggestion for a headline, and it should follow whatever formatting. For example, Business Insider is notorious for having really long titles for their pieces that kind of tell the story without the person having to even read the story.
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::Krissi Driver: that's the kind of title you should present in your pitch. And the last thing that I would say
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::Krissi Driver: people make a mistake on is choosing the wrong subject line. Your subject line is what's gonna get your email opened in the first place, and it kinda needs to be a little clickbaity, which is a terrible thing to say, but that's just the truth of it. And…
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::Krissi Driver: if you get… they're… they get cut off, and so there's a really great tool, I'll tell you,
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::Krissi Driver: a company online called OmniSend, O-M-N-I send.
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::Krissi Driver: they have this really great tool for email subject lines. It will tell you where your subject line is going to get cut off on a mobile screen, as well as a full computer screen, and I use that all the time to write my subject lines, because I want to make sure that
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::Krissi Driver: My email looks of… is interesting-looking enough for that editor to actually open it.
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::Krissi Driver: So there's…
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::Krissi Driver: there's a few mistakes that can be made when you're writing a pitch, but I would say the pitch length and the title, making sure you have a title of some kind in there, and then your subject line, because the subject line is probably the most important thing, because if you don't have a good subject line, you might not even get opened. And following up.
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::Krissi Driver: You must follow up.
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::Krissi Driver: You must, you must, you must, you must follow up, yeah. Okay, so that's, like, 3 or 4 things. Not the most important thing. Yeah, it's four things. Okay, I'm glad one of us can…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Good!
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::Krissi Driver: It's good.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I, I can validate or…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: yeah, validate your point about subject lines. I have lots of people that email me to come on this podcast.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And often, I'll miss it. They have to send me, like, 2 or 3.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: messages, because I think that it's just, like, It's…
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::Krissi Driver: Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: not to say spam, but I get a lot of emails, like, hundreds of emails.
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: a day, and I just glance through them, and if it doesn't really, like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: anybody's listening, and you want to come on my podcast, just put podcast guest in all caps. Yes. It's fine with me! I want to talk to you, but it's just, like, it's a problem for me.
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::Krissi Driver: That is a… that's a big thing, and putting the word… you have to also think about the…
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::Krissi Driver: The real estate of the subject line
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::Krissi Driver: It is not a big piece of land.
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::Krissi Driver: It's… it's small, and you have to be really choosy about that, but…
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::Krissi Driver: It's also important, a lot of places, editors and publications will tell you, write the word pitch first in your subject line, or write podcast, or…
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::Krissi Driver: PD guest, or PC guest, or something like that, you know, if you're trying to reach out to Jill, and follow up, because you don't know if your email got opened.
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::Krissi Driver: A lot… like, again, they're getting dozens of emails in a single day.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Sent to spam.
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::Krissi Driver: Or it might get sent to spam, which, heaven forbid that happens, but…
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::Krissi Driver: your… your chances of being seen are better if you're willing to follow up, and I have a very specific
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::Krissi Driver: very specific rules that I teach for this. I suggest you send on a Tuesday, if you can, in the morning of the time zone that your editor is probably going to be in, which, if I had to guess, is either East or West Coast, most often compared, you know, more often than not, east or west coast, United States.
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::Krissi Driver: Send in the morning on a Tuesday, because Tuesdays are… we know from email marketing, are the best days for email opens. I don't know why that is, it's just the case. Never send on a Monday, never send on a Friday, because you're too close to the weekend. Send ideally, on a Tuesday.
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::Krissi Driver: follow up a week later, follow up a week after that, and then I like to send, when I'm ready to just call it quits, what I call a last chance email that says, I didn't… if I don't hear from you by Friday.
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::Krissi Driver: I'm gonna assume this is a no, and I will start pitching this idea to other publications. The other mistake people make is they will pitch to multiple places at once without saying explicitly, by the way, I'm pitching this to multiple places at once because it's timely.
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::Krissi Driver: And that can get you into trouble. But following up that way is how I got into the New York Times. And I had to wait for 4 months before I finally got in. But I got the initial yes in February, and then I got the next yes to write in…
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::Krissi Driver: April, I believe, and I finally wrote it in June, and it didn't get published until almost 2 weeks after it was supposed to go, and then by a miracle of the universe, it landed on the front page of the national and international, editions.
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::Krissi Driver: Can't complain, can't complain, it took 4 months to get there, but man, was it really super cool for that to happen. And if I had not followed up, that would not have ever happened.
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::Krissi Driver: And I had to follow up a lot, and I had to follow up for months with that editor. So following up is so, so, so important. So important. Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, you teach the gateless Writing Method. How does that approach help writers overcome perfectionism that keeps so many of us unpublished?
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::Krissi Driver: Yes, that is a great question. So, the gateless method is, what we do is we come together as a group.
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::Krissi Driver: We do a bit of a meditation and settling in so that we are more in tune with our own bodies and writing from a more somatic state. So you're kind of trying to separate yourself from everything that's been happening during the day, what's coming after the writing session, that sort of thing, like, just really being grounded in the moment.
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::Krissi Driver: We give a prompt, we'll write on that prompt, you can ignore it, you don't have to use the prompt, it's not like a rule or anything, of course, if you're feeling something else. And you just write on the page whatever comes up for you. And I find that writers, and for myself as well.
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::Krissi Driver: By being disconnected in that moment.
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::Krissi Driver: To everything else, and really connected to my own heart and body.
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::Krissi Driver: I'm just amazed at what comes out on the page. And it's never perfect, it's a first draft. It's not meant to be perfect, but it's a starting place.
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::Krissi Driver: And we'll set a timer for 15 to 20 minutes. When that time is up, we invite writers in the group to read what they've written from that session.
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::Krissi Driver: And then the other writers in the group will go around and give feedback, and we only do positive feedback. We don't ask questions, we don't make suggestions, we certainly don't criticize anyone's work, and the reason for that is because your
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::Krissi Driver: fight or flight?
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::Krissi Driver: mechanism, that… that evolutionary mechanism that we all have. When somebody criticizes your work, no matter how well-meaning they are.
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::Krissi Driver: That switch gets flipped, and you are gonna crawl inside yourself, you're gonna lose confidence about your work.
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::Krissi Driver: it doesn't matter if you think you need that kind of criticism. You don't. You'll figure those things out
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::Krissi Driver: later. You don't need that with a first draft. And so, I love the gateless method. I love doing prompted writing sessions with writers. I love being a part of them when I'm not the teacher or the host of that session.
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::Krissi Driver: I've just been amazed at what… what other writers come out with in those salons. Which in a salon, by the way, is just a group of creatives or artists coming together to share their work. That's what a salon means. And…
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::Krissi Driver: I was certified last year, and I'm just completely obsessed with the gateless method.
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::Krissi Driver: and the brain science behind it, which I am not a scientist, I cannot explain very well. I did not do well in science when I was a kid.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We'll just call it magic.
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::Krissi Driver: subject, but it is, it is a form of magic, it really is. And the parts of your brain that light up.
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::Krissi Driver: When you're praised versus the things that happen when you're criticized or questioned.
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::Krissi Driver: it… it really, really matters. It matters to… to everyone, and you don't have to be a quote-unquote writer to get something out of a gaitless salon.
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::Krissi Driver: That's why I love it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love it. I love the concept, and I've been in groups…
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::Krissi Driver: Come sometime!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I will! I will. You do that over in your school community, right?
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::Krissi Driver: I do, yeah, we do them in the school community. It's $39 a month. So, my school community is called the Write Hustle Writers Group, or Writing Group, excuse me.
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::Krissi Driver: And we… I have a free course that talks all about publishing and how to get your work into mainstream publications through pitching.
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::Krissi Driver: And through submitting.
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::Krissi Driver: what the kind of unspoken or unwritten rules about all of that are. So that's available to everyone for free, and then the writing sessions, I do a few of them for free to everyone in the group every month, and then the… it's $39 a month.
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::Krissi Driver: to come to all of them. So, we do, and we do that entire process together. We settle in, it's all on… on Zoom or Google Meet.
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::Krissi Driver: and, sit and write together, and then read. There's never any pressure to read. I also want people to realize, like, if you get called on to read and you don't want to share.
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::Krissi Driver: that… there's no shame in saying, I'm gonna pass today. That's perfectly fine.
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::Krissi Driver: But yeah, that's… that's what we do in my community. I love it so much. We just hit 100 members, which I'm super excited about, so that was a big accomplishment. So, I hit 100… 100 subscribers on Substack and 100 members in my school community right around the same time, so that was kind of an exciting…
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::Krissi Driver: Exciting thing to happen. Hundreds all around, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know, That is a big deal. It's a way bigger deal than people give themselves credit for.
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Good People is like a stadium, or a big auditorium.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You have a big auditorium full of people that are like, hey, we want to be friends with you!
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah, yeah, imagine if they were all at one riding salon together, it would be…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yes!
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::Krissi Driver: Crazy, crazy! But, yeah, it's, it's very exciting. Thank you.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I… I'm in the… I'm in the pushing.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: For, you know, you have 3 people in your community?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're your buddies! It's very intimate. You guys are gonna have a great time growing together. Yes. And it just, like…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm so over the influencer numbers out there. They don't mean anything, and some
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You look at these people that have tens of thousands of followers, and their open rate's, like, 2%.
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::Krissi Driver: Right. Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: nobody's… nobody's interacting with them. They're just one of a bunch of numbers. And so.
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::Krissi Driver: Hmm.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: If you have 100 people and, you know, 50 of them at a time are opening what you're writing to them.
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Wow.
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::Krissi Driver: That's excellent, yeah, yeah. So, I'm very pleased, thank you. Thank you for…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, perfect.
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::Krissi Driver: Javing it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: to you.
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::Krissi Driver: You're so cute. Thank you.
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah, it's exciting.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: For somebody listening right now who has finished… who has a finished piece that they're ready to share, what's the exact steps they should take before… to make sure the first publication opens doors instead of accidentally closing them?
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::Krissi Driver: That's a great question. So, the important thing to do is to sit with that piece.
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::Krissi Driver: And ask yourself, what is this trying to accomplish, or what do I want it to accomplish? Because there, like we talked about before.
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::Krissi Driver: there are instances where the best place for that is going to be your Substack, or your Medium, or wherever it is that you're publishing, if you're not on Substack. Jill's… I'm sure most of your audience is on Substack, so we're gonna go with that. But
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::Krissi Driver: The likelihood of
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::Krissi Driver: Of something for your specific audience, a teaching thing about whatever it is that you're trying to build your business.
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::Krissi Driver: That kind of thing probably does fit best on your Substack. But if you've written a personal essay of some sort about your personal experience in life, if you're writing fiction of any kind.
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::Krissi Driver: Those sorts of things… And even some service pieces, like, you know, that you might be…
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::Krissi Driver: Publishing to your own substack, or thinking about publishing to your own substack.
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::Krissi Driver: look around and, like, just do a Google search and see what comes up from different publications about the topic that you're writing on, because there's a lot… there's a high likelihood you might be able to put it somewhere else.
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::Krissi Driver: And you may need to make some changes to it beforehand, or you might need to pitch it instead of submitting the entire completed piece.
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::Krissi Driver: which is something else we could talk about a different day. It's a long, long explanation, but there might be some nuances to what you can or should do
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::Krissi Driver: But there's… there's still just very… as much of an opportunity, especially if you're writing fiction or personal essays.
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::Krissi Driver: I can't stress this enough. If you are writing fiction and personal essays, there are a million different places that your work could live, and live happily, and entertain
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::Krissi Driver: other people, and be… and be meaningful to other people that you wouldn't otherwise reach on your own substack. So…
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::Krissi Driver: Think about what it is that you're trying to accomplish, And then look around.
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::Krissi Driver: literally look for some other places where it could go before you publish your piece. And if you find something.
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::Krissi Driver: be willing to wait a while, because it isn't an overnight thing. Sometimes it isn't in a week. For me, for my New York Times piece, it literally took 4 months. Like, literary journals are notoriously slow, they take months to get back to you.
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::Krissi Driver: So don't let a long timeline discourage you.
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::Krissi Driver: If you're in a hurry to get it out, then I would say do it… do it on your own publication, but if it can wait.
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::Krissi Driver: do wait, because you might have more of an opportunity than you think you do. Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Good things come to those who wait.
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::Krissi Driver: Yes, that is a great way to think about it, exactly.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, how can people reach out to you?
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::Krissi Driver: You can find me on Substack, of course. My name is Chrissy Driver, K-R-I-S-S-I. I know it's a weird spelling, but it's… I'm the only one, as far as I know. Chrissy Driver, and my substack is called The Byline Blueprint. I'm also on Instagram.
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::Krissi Driver: And, you can visit my website, chrissydriver.com, and, see… I have several things over there to offer, and, some freebies that you can download if you're so inclined, and…
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::Krissi Driver: Yeah, you can find me on my website, or the socials, or Substack.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That is so wonderful. She does have 99 writing prompts on her.
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::Krissi Driver: I do, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: her website. I do want to mention that.
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::Krissi Driver: Thank you for reminding me. So if you go to my website, you can find it, or you can type in Chrissy, K-R-I-S-S-I, Driver, chrissydriver.com slash prompts.
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::Krissi Driver: P-R-O-M-P-T-S prompts. And, it's a PDF. You can download it from the Google Drive of 99 different writing prompts to get you started. So if you're not into writing with a circle or writing with other people, you can write from the… or you're just feeling uninspired one day.
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::Krissi Driver: You have, can have 99 writing prompts to get you started somewhere.
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::Krissi Driver: Thanks for that reminder.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Thank you for joining us today and sharing your fount of wisdom about writing and publishing.
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::Krissi Driver: Oh, thank you, Jill. This has been so much fun. I really appreciate the invite. Thank you so much.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You can learn more about Chrissy and find those 99 prompts over at chrisseddriver.com forward slash prompts, and please consider subscribing to her substack at the bylineblueprint.substack.com, and if you're really interested in writing.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Join her school community. It's free to join right now, and it's… it's a happening place.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To me?
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::Krissi Driver: Very cute.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We'll be sure to put those links in the show notes below. Thanks for joining us today. If you're ready to amplify your voice, monetize your mission, and start attracting premium clients, your next step is simple. Head to thecoachesalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit. Join us for our next episode as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency, and remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world. Start today.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And get visible.
