Reflections on And the Award Goes to . . . 

Back in the winter of 2012, when Nate and I were new parents, I decided to give up on writing—and likely would have, if I hadn’t gotten a phone call from Poets & Writers Magazine to tell me I’d won an award I’d forgotten I’d submitted for. 

I tell this story in more detail in our season 3 episode “All the Roads that Lead from Home,” which is this week’s inspiration. If you are feeling discouraged creatively, I encourage you to listen.

Reflecting on that moment in light of this module, I realized that nearly a decade later, I was in an almost identical situation when I won the International Women’s Podcast Awards. I wasn’t quite ready to give up on podcasting, but I almost didn’t submit for that award because I was feeling so discouraged. I knew that our season 2 weekly episodes were better than the ones I’d put out daily in season 1, but even after a year of making them—and putting several months of effort into social media—we still hadn’t reached the download numbers we’d seen at the height of season 1. 

For this week’s module on pitching, we’re including the ten-minute clip that I submitted for the International Women’s Podcast Awards, and also the 3-minute acceptance speech I was asked to submit in case we won. For those of you who would like to hear the original episode that I was pulling from to create that 10-minute clip, we’ve included that as well. 

Looking back on both of those experiences, I realized that while there were similarities, there was a lot that I learned this time around that I wish I’d known back then. So in this reflection, I’ll share three things that I hope will help you as you’re putting your own work out there: 

1. See pitching and submitting as a necessary part of the creative process—regardless of whether or not you win.

2. Make the extra effort to put something out into the world that you’re proud of.

3. When the wins come, use them to create connections with people you’d like to work with.

Let’s take those one at a time. 

First, See pitching and submitting as a necessary part of the creative process—regardless of whether or not you win.

I’m going to say two seemingly contradictory things in the same breath: there are seasons where you just need to create and when you’re not ready to put your work out there. AND you should put your work out there whenever you can—even if you don’t feel ready.

I used to think that the only reason to submit something was because you might get accepted or win an award or get a story published. That’s still a perfectly good reason to submit, and if you never submit, you will never get to experience those wins. 

But there’s a more subtle skill in that process that I think matters a lot more than accolades: persistence. For every award or honor I’ve received in both creative writing and podcasting, I’ve gotten hundreds more rejections. I have a whole file full of rejection letters from agents back when I was submitting to them by the dozens. Back then, I saw them as proof that I wasn’t quite good enough yet to get published. Probably, that was true. 

But over time I’ve come to understand that they’re also necessary signposts along my creative journey. It’s incredibly difficult to pick yourself up off the ground after you’ve been rejected or ignored, and it’s even harder to try again. Quitting would be easier.

But if rejection becomes the trigger to slingshot yet another effort, then you’ve developed one of the single most important qualities to continue in any line of work: persistence. 

I don’t know if anyone ever really develops thick skin. I certainly haven’t. But I have learned to see those rejections differently. In some seasons, they’ve provided the motivation to grow and improve my craft, or the way I pitch or study what others were doing that I could learn from. 

I still get discouraged when I get rejected, but instead of licking my wounds like I used to, now my almost-instant reflex is to put myself out there again—even when I don’t feel like it. 

I’ve also learned to recognize for myself when the work is good—and to know that whether or not it ever gets recognized. Because I’ve put work out there over and over again hundreds of times now, I’ve learned to trust myself, and to know when the work is great (and also when it’s good enough). 

Real, enduring confidence comes not from getting awards, but from learning to see your work and yourself so clearly that you know that what you’re making is good. Having people in your life who can remind you of that helps too, for the times when you feel too discouraged or tired to see it yourself.

In our conversation, Naomi talked about all of the people who applied at the last minute. I was one of those people. I made it in just under the deadline, and I almost didn’t submit.

“Just spend a couple of hours putting something together,” Nate encouraged me. “You’ve already put all of this work into creating all of these episodes. What do you have to lose in trying to get one of them out there?”

So that’s what I did. I read through the submission guidelines once again, made sure I was following the rules, and then scanned through the episodes we’d created that I thought had the best chance of winning. I chose one that was close to my heart, the story Sarai Waters shared with us about the six months that she was homeless in L.A. and San Francisco. Which brings me to #2.

2. Make the extra effort to put something out there that you’re proud of.

When I listen back to both my ten-minute submission for the International Women’s Podcast Awards and to the original episode it was taken from, there’s a lot I would change if I were making it now. Back at the time we made it, none of our trainees had podcast mics, and many of them lived in noisy cities where even the insides of their closets weren’t quiet, so we were constantly troubleshooting how to get the audio to sound better, how to work around computer fan and refrigerator noises, or sirens going past. 

I know things about recording and cleaning up audio that I was only beginning to learn back then. There are a hundred tiny adjustments I would make to the voiceover and sound design, everything from music choices to the tenor and cadence of my own voice.

But when I was creating that ten-minute clip to submit for the awards, I didn’t have time to recreate the episode. I could hear the low-level hiss in the audio, but I didn’t know enough about EQ or plugins to know how to fix it. My audio editing toolkit was pretty limited, and so I did the best I could with what I had.

I tried to make up in story what I lacked in sound, and also to bring in sounds that could enhance the story. I thought about all of those storytelling elements we’ve talked about in these modules: about how to hook, engage, and invite. How to craft a narrative arc that stretched from the conflict and character, through the setting, and toward the resolution. Essentially what I was doing was making a 10-minute trailer from my 34-minute episode. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for the judges to pick it as a finalist. 

But the story doesn’t stop there. When I got the email that I’d been selected as a finalist, there was also a request to attend the award ceremony in London—or to send an acceptance speech through a video if I couldn’t. The email stated clearly that only people who submitted acceptance speeches or attended would be eligible to win.

I remember when I got that email. It was an incredibly busy time, and the last thing I wanted to do was to make a video. But I also knew that if I did win, I’d be glad I spent that time making the video as good as I could. So I spent several hours thinking carefully about what I’d want to say if I had just a few minutes to say it, what message I wanted to put out there on the off chance that we actually won. I’ll probably never know if the judges picked us for the “Changing the World One Moment at a Time” award because the video gave them a perfect way to end the night, but I did think about that when I made it. I probably spent about as much time on that video as I did on the original submission. Even as I was making it, I didn’t really believe we had a chance of winning. But making it gave me permission to articulate why I was doing this work in a way that I needed at the time, kind of like how when you write a personal statement or an artist’s statement, it helps you see yourself more clearly.

And of course when I did get the news that I won, every minute I’d spent creating that video felt worth it. Which brings me to #3.

3. Use the wins (and even the honorable mentions, shortlists, and nominations) to create connections with people you’d like to work with.

I’ve often said that awards and accolades rarely change your life, but they can provide opportunities to connect with others that might not have been available to use previously. 

I found out about the International Women’s Podcast award a couple of weeks before the She Podcasts Live conference, and so I gave myself the goal of trying to meet a few new people who were doing similar work and who might be interested in the work we were doing or even partnering in some way. But before I did that, I reached out to Naomi to see if she’d be interested in jumping on a call so we could learn a little bit more about each other. 

Naomi and I hit it off instantly, and recognized in each other a kindred spirit who appreciated each other’s work. It was the beginning of a real friendship, one that has continued since then. Naomi is on the short list of people in this industry who I can reach out to when I’m having a hard week, and I know she’ll be there to support and encourage me.

But the other thing that came out of that conversation is that Naomi put me in touch with people at Shure, who sponsored the award, and also a handful of other people she knew who she thought I’d enjoy meeting. I put her in touch with people I knew too, so that my industry relationships could benefit her and the work she was doing. Both of us get a lot of joy from making introductions to help others, and it’s something that we’ve continued to do for each other whenever we think of it. 

By the time I went to She Podcasts Live, I had meetings lined up with several other industry professionals, including Marla Isaaksan, the founder of the Ossa Collective and Arielle Nissenblatt, who you heard from in last week’s module. I also met Laura Davidson from Shure, who knew about me because of the introductions Naomi had made with some of Shure’s UK employees, who then introduced me to Cori Fry of Libsyn and Laurel Earhart of Advertisecast, who you heard from a few weeks ago in our How Not to Podfade module. I have loved meeting every one of the people you’ve heard from in these modules not because of what they could do for me, but because they’re the kind of people I want to be spending time with, who care more about helping others than helping themselves.  

A side note here that I was also at She Podcasts Live as a speaker. I’d submitted for that months before—another kind of pitch—but never heard back. When they started announcing the upcoming speakers, I reached out with a friendly note to confirm that I hadn’t been selected. To my surprise and delight, they responded right away saying actually they would love me to be a speaker, and just hadn’t gotten to my submission yet. Which was a great reminder to me that persistence matters a lot more than luck or talent or any of those other things we tell ourselves we lack. Would they have emailed me eventually if I hadn’t sent that follow up? I’ll never know. What I do know is that people are busy, and even the most organized event organizers miss emails or get behind schedule. I’m so glad that I sent that follow up email, because going to that conference meant meeting so many wonderful people, and made me feel more at home in this industry.

You're probably getting the picture by now that whether we're talking about networking or pitching or collaboration, we prioritize relationships over pretty much everything. That's because we want podcasting to be a space where people feel welcome. I hope it's already become that for you.

I hope that it has already become that for you. If you’ve appreciated the insights from the people you’ve heard from in these modules, I hope you’ll reach out and let them know. Most of all, I hope you’ll keep putting your work out there, being persistent even when it’s hard. Let us know when you do, so we can cheer you on, and become part of the reason you feel seen.