You guys,
Cold emailing is the new way to make friends.
Write of Passage is coming to a close and one benchmark for a successful cohort is to develop a few lasting friendships. So I decided to email a student who piqued my interest early on.
Sarah Stadler and I met during a Zoom breakout session. I hate small talk and I hate wasting time, two things that happen often in Zoom breakout rooms where we typically have less than 10 minutes to talk. The person whose name came first in the alphabet was supposed to go first. As soon as we entered the room, Sarah said, “Okay, Charlie, your name starts with ‘C’ so you’re first.”
An alarm went off in my head: ***Get to know this person! She’s cool!***
But I didn’t do anything about it. Don’t friendships just happen naturally, without effort?
When I worked in restaurants, they did. I made friends with co-workers, bosses, and the guests who sat in my section. But in 2022, as a mom of two who rarely leaves her house and only hangs out with her husband, making friends is not something that just happens anymore.
Sending Sarah an unsolicited email felt a little creepy, like I was sliding into her DMs. Hi Sarah, remember me? I was wondering if you wanted to be friends. It was easier and more comfortable to do nothing.
Then I read one of Sarah’s essays where she explained that confidence has to be built:
“And in order for something to be built, action has to be taken to build it.”
Action has to be taken! It was like Sarah was telling me to cold email her. In that same essay, Sarah referenced HARRY POTTER.
*gasp*
A fellow Harry Potter fan. And it wasn’t the first time she mentioned my favorite book series of all time. She also quoted Albus Dumbledore on her About Page:
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”
-Albus Dumbledore
As a writer and a Harry Potter fan, how did I not have this quote memorized? Why is it not stenciled on my office wall?? (Oh my God, Sarah just grabbed my hand and led me to my next Silly Epiphany.)
I read more of Sarah’s writing and found I wasn’t just interested in what she was writing about, like how an autoimmune disease forced her to radically change her relationship with food, I was interested in the way she wrote it.
For example, as a mentor for WoP, I host a one-hour weekly session where I teach students about the craft of writing. I spent an entire session on compression and couldn’t figure out a nice way to tell them that nobody cares about their feelings. Every time you write you were angry/sad/excited/nervous/happy, it’s BORING.
Rather than deliver my usual blunt, abrasive opinions, I should have pointed them to one of Sarah’s essays. She wrote about her reaction when she found out her dad died:
“I can still feel the sting of the bristly office carpet beneath my bare knees. I can feel the red hot heat that spread across my face and the immediate shivering of my entire body that followed. I can feel the knot in my throat and the gasp for air that comes with hyperventilation. Equally memorable was the thought that entered my mind when I was on the floor: ‘If I don’t get up, I’m going to be late for my next meeting.’ Because, bosses don’t rest (certainly, none of mine did). And if I was going to be a CEO someday, I had better act like one.”
Oof. That’s how it’s done, folks. That’s how you show what you felt without telling what you felt. Was Sarah shocked about the news? Uh, yea, but she didn’t use a single “feeling” word to tell us so.
I was further impressed with Sarah’s writing skills in another essay. I could have used this example in my lesson on personal details:
“My life’s dream was to travel the world in pursuit of eating the perfect croissant in France, slurping the longest noodles in Japan, savoring chicken paprikash in Hungary (my grandmother’s home country - it’s a wonder she didn’t add paprika to her coffee).”
The specificity! The playfulness! The fact that she loves food!
Feeling jazzed about a person’s content and the way they write are two clues I should reach out to them. What will come from it? I have no idea. Maybe we become friends and maybe we don’t.
At the very least, I’ll have a badass HP quote on my wall.
—
Until next week,
Charlie
What a wonderful homegrown tribute. Well done Charlie and well-deserved.
Cold email is the completely wrong term for your outreach. I think we need to change it to heart-warming email.