CARLY VALANCY SAYS REACHING OUT IS A CREATIVE PRACTICE

Carly Valancy was our guest on a recent Escape Pod Zoom call, talking with our community about the art of reaching out.

This isn’t about cold emailing, or bulk mail, but gentle, direct, thoughtful messages to people for the various desires you seek (“would you write a blurb for my upcoming book?”, or the blessings want to share (“I love your work”).

Some take aways from the 75 minute Zoom call:

Your subject line can be direct: You don’t need to beat around the bush or be fancy. Your email is competing with 1,000 other emails in someone’s inbox, so stand out by being 100% you, which can include asking for the thing you want. Managing our inboxes takes time and energy – make it easy:

“Go for it. Just say what it is that you want, because it’s okay to want something. When you’re asking for something in an email, you’ll often try to make the subject line dance around the thing you actually want. What if you just said it?” Carly Valancy

Be honest. Someone on the call admitted that they hold back from reaching out because they’re not on social media, so they’re worried they might not appear to be “legit.” Carly’s advice is to just just say that. Write something like, “I almost didn’t reach out because I’m not on social media,” and then show your work.

“Tell them something only you could tell them,” says Carly in “How to Write an Unignorable Email.”

Plant seeds for your future self. Carly emailed Anne Bogart (a major figure in American theater) in 2019 and got a nice reply, and nothing more.

But six years later Carly followed up on the same thread and got to interview her! Not every email has to get results today, or even this year. Let things take their time!

It is totally normal to lose touch. If you think of someone after five years, that’s fine. Just reach out.” Carly Valancy

“Keeping your network warm” is mostly crap. Carly said this at a Harvard workshop (which she landed because of reaching out). You don’t have to keep a schedule to try to keep folks “warm” because someone told you to. It’s perfectly fine to lose touch with people, and they might be delighted to hear from you all these years later!

Treat reaching out as a creative practice, not a formula to figure out. Your subject line, your tone, your timing – they aren’t skills you’re born with. Same for Carly! She just got better by writing a lot of emails and paying attention to the reactions, the replies (and sometimes the lack of replies), and what felt right. Every time you send an email, you’re learning something about you want to operate.

Ultimatly, reaching out can feel off, mostly because we just never do it. We’ve spent the last decade posting every 2 hours on social media, but reaching out a photo editor? Someone who books shows at the local venue? Another writer you admire?!

It’s only scary because it’s unknown.

The person might not reply. Not next week, not ever! But if we don’t ask, we don’t get. And if we don’t reach out and tell people we love their work, or admire what they do, we limit our own creative growth.

As Carly says in Who you know is up to you, “as AI starts to creep further and further into our world, our relationships, our ‘soft skills,’ our ability to reach out and be human with each other will become even more important.”