Hello Reader,
I looked at the email and gritted my teeth.
I should have known that the text I had just received was not the prelude to good news.
And it wasn’t.
Nope. For the 3rd time in as many weeks, I now had to go into the post office and get them to take another set of photos.
And all because the first two times I’d gone through this process, I’d gotten a message back saying that my expression needed to be “neutral”.
Of course this implied that the expression on my face when the photos were taken … which invariably turn out looking like mug shots … was not neutral.
The first time it happened, I complained to my husband and showed him the photos.
Annoyingly he laughed.
“That’s not neutral,” he said. “That’s your scary face.”
Seeing as how I had tried to put a pleasant expression on my face, when they snapped the photos, his pronouncement was somewhat disturbing.
And I secretly started questioning my ability to read expressions.
The second time my photos were rejected because they weren’t “neutral”, he took one look and said, “you’re frowning.”
Which was also a worry, because that was as “normal” of an expression I could come up with, at least one that didn’t have me smiling, grinning, smirking or outright laughing at the absurdity of it all.
The 3rd time I went in, the ladies at the post office had a different opinion.
“It’s your eyes”, they explained. “They aren’t open wide enough.”
Unfortunately, that’s as far as my eyes actually open.
So, since the 3rd time is supposed to be the dealbreaker, we came up with a plan about how we were going to get the “look” just right this time.
After trying various expressions, we settled on one and then the lady helping me actually wrote a note on the application form. She explained that this was the 3rd time the photos were being submitted, that this WAS my normal neutral expression, and that every single previous submission had actually ticked all the boxes on the organisation’s electronic form and come up green.
Thank goodness this time it worked. I have no doubt that without that little note, I’d have gotten a 4th text and follow up phone call.
Bureaucracy. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
When “normal” isn’t good enough for the bureaucrats
Three separate humans looked at my actual, ordinary face and decided it needed adjusting before a machine would accept it. Which is a strange thing, because my “neutral” is not neutral enough for a government form, but it’s still MY neutral.
Nobody else has that exact scary/frowny/eyes-too-narrow combination.
It’s the same conundrum a lot of freelance writers are quietly wrestling with right now. AI can produce a hundred competent, safe, forgettable drafts a minute. What it can’t produce is your particular opinion, delivered in your particular voice. And, it turns out, that’s the thing editors and clients are actually really looking for.
Safe (and blah), or true (and you)?
So try this in the next few days. Pull up your last five pitches or pieces of client copy and read them like a stranger would. Then ask yourself one very blunt question about each one. Is it safe (and blah), or is it truly you?
If you can’t tell the difference anymore, now is a great time to fix it.
Pick one opinion you actually hold about your niche or craft, something you’d say to a fellow writer over coffee, and let it stay in the next thing you write instead of smoothing it out.
Getting more out of the opinion you already have
Once you’ve got that opinion down, hand it to ChatGPT or Claude (or your AI tool of choice). Ask it to pull out three different angles from it, and whatever it is you're wanting to use it for. Maybe a different angle on a pitch, a social post, or an email opener.
You're not asking AI to write it. You're asking AI to help you spot new ways of looking at or thinking about or articulating your opinion.
You’re not asking it to invent the opinion. You already did the hard part. You’re just asking it to help you get more mileage out of it before the week’s over.
Highlight of the Week
This week’s podcast episode is a good companion piece here. Trudy talked with marketing strategist Lauren Harris about her 60/40 rule, the balance between giving an audience what it wants to see and staying recognisably yourself. It applies just as much to a freelance writer’s byline and pitch voice as it does to a business’s marketing.
Ep 254: The 60/40 Rule Marketing Strategist Lauren Harris Uses With Every Client
And that’s it for this week. Hope you have a lovely weekend.
Trudy (and Treasa)
P.S. When I showed my husband all 3 sets of photos, he tapped the one he’d previously called my “scary face” and said he could see why they had turned it down. It was because I was “smiling.”
So now I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, one of us has a problem reading expressions … and it might not be me!
