On Money and Freelance Writers – The Tale of the Mocha Latte

Aug 26 2010

Chrematophobia

freelance writer, relationship with money, value moneyOne of the first issues we must tackle as freelance writers is our relationship with money.  It’s not a pleasant matter to discuss, I know, but without a clearing in this area all of our efforts will be for naught.  In order for us to succeed we must be prepared to accept success.

Recently I read about a study in which the connection between creativity and mental illness was explored.  It found that 80 percent of writers suffer from some mental illness, usually depression, compared to 30 percent in the study’s control group.  This didn’t come as much of a shock to me.  I’d wager a bet you aren’t too surprised by it either.  E. L. Doctorow knew this when he said, “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

As this study exemplifies, most writers are not innately wired for success.  Creative people tend to self-sabotage and pick at old wounds for inspiration.  We often become so wrapped up in, and identified with, suffering we believe our creativity depends on it.

This identification with suffering has a direct effect on how we feel about money and how our relationship to wealth is expressed.  But here’s where the solution may seem a bit counterintuitive.  It is the ego, that great ball of pain we like to nurture so often, that stands in the way between ourselves and our financial success.

Let me offer myself up as an example.

My parents raised my sister and I in a very liberal and politically active environment.   Our home served as a safe house for political refugees from El Salvador and Nicaragua.   My parents led the east coast effort to free Leonard Peltier and volunteered much of their time to the American Indian Movement.  I grew up with the belief that the poor were virtuous and the wealthy evil (except for a few likeminded and philanthropic celebrities including Robert Redford and Stevie Van Zandt).  This belief was understood and reinforced on an almost daily basis.

As I maneuvered my way through adulthood and into a relatively successful career in the biotech industry it seemed that no matter how much money I made finances were always a struggle.  When I walked away from my career to pursue my passion for writing full-time the struggle, of course, continued.

Through a series of events, the details of which I’ll spare you here, I found myself with a few black trash bags full of clothes, eighty seven cents in my pocket and on my way to Detroit to stay with a lover I’d only ever known via the internet.  I know, now you want the details.  Maybe later.

During the long ten hour drive away from my family and friends and into the unknown, I kept toying with the coins in my pocket.  This once-successful project manager who took clients out for three hundred dollar dinners every week was now virtually homeless and completely broke.  I couldn’t even buy myself a cup of crappy coffee if I’d wanted to.

But it was precisely a cup of coffee, purchased in the middle of the night somewhere between Philadelphia and Detroit, which led to a breakthrough in my relationship with money.  As he filled the truck with gas, Mark handed me a ten dollar bill and told me to go into the rest stop and get myself a coffee.  Although we’d never met in person before he was already well aware of my love for the stuff.

I stood in line, ordered a mocha latte, paid five bucks for it and walked out.  Mark took a turn sleeping while I drove and I could not take my eyes off of that five dollar cup of coffee.  It had been six months, maybe longer, since I’d had money for such a luxury.  I found myself having a tough time drinking it, as if somehow I didn’t deserve it.

freelance writer, mocha latte, value moneyThe struggle carried on in my head for miles, my gaze constantly switching between the glowing white lines on the interstate and my venti mocha latte.  During the course of this struggle the coffee grew cold and developed a floating layer of fat which had previously been fluffy and delicious whipped cream.  It was now inedible, or undrinkable as the case may be.  I had succeeded in depriving myself of the treat. I had succeeded at failing yet again.

Failure and deprivation were my themes.  They ran through every storyline in my life up to that moment.  But for the first time, as I stared into that greasy cup of cold coffee, I questioned those themes.  I became willing to take an honest look at where they were coming from.  The answer surprised me and, actually, still does today.

It all stemmed from the ego.  My ego was so strongly identified with righteousness and virtue it made sure I derived little enjoyment out of life.  Because of the messages I took from my youth, in order for me to feel like I was better than you I could not allow abundance of any kind into my life.  It was no wonder I’d spent the majority of my years battling severe and crippling depression.  I had created a prison of failure for myself and I’d done this only so I could say I was superior to you, or more creative than you, or more willing to sacrifice than you.  You get the gist.

I’m going to go out on a not-so-thin limb here and suggest that this struggle is a theme in many artists’ lives.  I call it the Starving Artist Syndrome (SAS) and if you have been suffering throughout your adult life just to pay your bills each month it is something you should at least consider.  But if you are about to embark on building your own freelance business it is an absolute must.

As writers, this paradoxical relationship we have towards success and, subsequently, money can most certainly be our own downfall.  So ask yourself now, are you ready to embrace success?  Are you prepared to let money flow freely into your life?  Do you have the confidence and self respect required to not only put a monetary value on your craft but to build a secure existence with that money?

Confidence, success, self respect, security.  Not very strong themes for most of us.  These definitions are better placed on a CEO of a multi-national corporation or high ranking politician.  These words are thrown about to motivate used car salesmen and network marketers. Ew, right?  Wrong.

Despite the aversion that many of us feel towards sales-speak, the fact that you are going into business for yourself means that you must accept these as elements of change in your life.  To this day I have a much easier time writing ad copy for a complete stranger than I do my own business.  It is a never-ending process of growth and self discovery and we each have the ability to re-write the stories we carry around about ourselves.  We each have the power to change, to embrace abundance and accept it into our lives.

Just give it a try.  Nothing’s irreversible.

Reality

Here’s the truth that we all already know: money is not real.  I don’t mean at the subatomic level at which everything begins to appear unreal.  I mean it’s really not real.  Like, we don’t even back up our currency with gold anymore.  Its value is meaningless until we assign a value to it.  Money is built on nothing, stands for nothing and on its own can do no harm.

So why are we all so afraid of it?  Why do we feel that wealth is going to ruin us or tear us away from our creative energy?  Because somewhere between the lines of our stories we did assign a value to money as well as to ourselves.  We decided we were too good for it or undeserving of it.  That we’d lose ourselves in it or be somehow changed by it.  And because of our ego’s compulsive and perpetual need to be “right” we made certain of it.

It can be a tough pill to swallow, believe me I feel the pain on a regular basis.  That all of our suffering and struggling up to this point has only been to feed our egoic nature just doesn’t seem fair.  We’ve been duped, had, schnookered, and all by the very force we believed was our creative lifeblood.  Our great and powerful minds (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain).

So now what, you ask me.

Which in turn I ask you.

So, now what?

You get to decide.  You get to choose for yourself how you are going to proceed.  But proceed from a place of awareness.  Proceed not with caution but with a fearless and awakened sense of purpose.  Know that you and you alone are deciding to take this journey.  You are creating your own future today, in this moment, and it can be anything you decide it can be.  Whichever way you go, whatever direction you decide on, above all else, drink the goddamned coffee and enjoy every second of it.

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Jenny’s Coney Island

Aug 20 2010

When I first came to Detroit we had been driving all night and stopped for breakfast at a place called Gus’ Coney Island. I didn’t think much of it except to wonder what appeal Coney Island had to someone running a diner in the mid-west but I chalked it up to the owner probably being a New York ex-pat.

Over the next few weeks I started to notice these places everywhere. Joe’s Coney Island, Bob’s Coney Island, Leo’s Coney Island, hell there’s even a few National Coney Islands peppered about the suburbs.

No one else found this phenomenon odd, they’d all grown up around these establishments, but it was driving me up a wall. I did a little research.

As it turns out, a Coney Island to a Detroiter means two things. The first is a chili dog. A really gross chili dog with onions and mustard.

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A Coney Island is also a restaurant, typically owned by a Greek (just an observation), which serves Coney Islands. No, it’s not all one chain of Coney Island restaurants nor is it all one brand of Coney Island dogs.

The story goes that in 1917 Gust Keros, a Greek immigrant, opened the first of these called the American Coney Island in downtown Detroit. Mr. Keros apparently fell in love with a messy chili dog in the real Coney Island Park (sorry Detroit, there’s only one original Coney Island) and decided it would be his restaurant’s signature dish and namesake. My first hunch about the ex-pat turned out to be not too far off.

What I found particularly amusing is Gust Keros and his brother actually opened American Coney together. Not long after they had a falling out as brothers in business together almost invariably will. They split the business in half and went their separate ways. Sort of. Actually to this day the rival brother’s Lafayette Coney Island sits right next door to American Coney Island and they’re going on 100 years of arguing who’s Coney Island is the original.

I would really like to think that the not-so-slow spread of Coney Island diners (and dogs) across the Detroit metropolitan area over the past century did not stem from a silly argument between two brothers who were probably still pissed off about a girl they both liked in sixth grade. But all other explanations fail me.

There is, however, an important lesson to be learned here.

For whatever reason, all these years thousands of small business owners across the metro Detroit area have decided to brand themselves generic. Their participation in this unusual tradition only serves to have their businesses sink back into the sidewalk with all the others. The businesses they saved for so long to open. The businesses they invest most of their time and all of their money to maintain. Blood. Sweat. Tears and lots of them. Generic.

Maybe no one would want to eat crappy eggs at their restaurant unless they used the Coney Island stamp. Maybe customers would never know they sold hot dogs with chili unless they took on this now-historic name. Maybe no one would know they were Greek and offered spinach pie and flaming saganaki. The Keros’ never trademarked the Coney Island name, so maybe it’d just be best for the next owner to use it too.

But it is exactly those maybes that paralyze us. Those fears, insecurities and questions that arise whenever we try to be remarkable. Whenever we try to stand out amongst the crowd, there’s always that incessant voice like a golem in our heads “turn back, before someone SEES you.” It is always those maybes that send us shrinking back into our protective shells.

If there’s one thing to be learned from chili dogs and diners it is this: those maybes are your enemy.

As a freelance writer and small business owner every time you feel that pang of fear when you’re about to go out on a limb, ignore and move quicker. Every time you let yourself drift off into anxiety-day-dream-land to attempt to get inside the heads of your potential clients, stop immediately and get back to work. It does us no good to be anyone but ourselves.

We only have ourselves to sell. We don’t have a disgustingly sloppy pork product on a bun to pawn off as art. Yes, many would argue it’s a work of culinary mastery.

We are writers trying to make a living by selling ourselves. And you better be damned sure there’s something original and special about you because if you don’t know that, your potential clients surely won’t either.

Be bold. Be remarkable. Be unique. Stand out. You’re the only you on the market! Now shake that money maker and go get those contracts. And, as if to state the obvious, best to avoid those chili dogs when shaking said money maker.

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First Impressions, Second Chances

Aug 13 2010

“In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.” ~Henry David Thoreau

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One of the first things we must all learn, and this is almost invariably learned the hard way, as entrepreneurs is when to admit we’re wrong. The level of swiftness and grace with which you approach this task can make all the difference. We are all humans. I do not buy into the first impressions approach, it’s too one-dimensional.

As we are all human, we are always already at a high risk for fucking up. Add a little stress onto that in this house and you get the infamous, always exciting Exploding Jenny Doll. Trust me, it’s nothing your daughter wants under the Christmas tree this year. Although your husband might find it amusing, but back to our story.

My freelance writing business has been growing beyond my wildest expectations and it’s been an amazing journey so far. I couldn’t imagine nicer people to work with than my clients. I feel truly blessed in all areas.

Except…

I waited too long to try to find some assistance. Now granted, this is a pitfall that is almost impossible to avoid, especially when just starting out. Or at least that’s my story. So, I found myself buried up to my well-waxed eyebrows in work and no one to help.

I do most of my business, well now all of it, through Elance. It’s a great site and I recommend it to anyone looking to start a freelance writing career. I don’t get kick backs for saying so, either. I truly think they’re the freelance industry’s go-to site at the moment.

For some reasoning and twisted logic that I cannot even recall, I decided to hire an assistant through a site I’d never heard of and I won’t mention them here lest they get a bad rap based on one service provider. It did not go well. At all. Virtual blood was shed.

I then decide once again not to turn to my old and trusty friend Elance but instead set up a second posting at the crappy site. A week goes by and I’ve no good qualifiers. By ‘good’ I mean they speak the language.

Finally, I post at Elance. Two people stand out right away and, now that I am literally on life support because work has been piling up, I hire them right away and give a frenzy of emailed instructions, examples and dump the work in their laps. (Refer to my post on multitasking to predict how things go from here.)

Tapping my foot I wait for their work to come in. The one looks great. The other doesn’t look like he’d even glanced at my overly detailed instructions. He had rendered this work useless and I bet he was still going to expect me to pay for it!

I wrote him a lengthy email releasing all of my pent up stress and frustration with implied “how dare you” sprinkled throughout. Although I had to admit to him, even as pissed off as I was, he was an extremely talented writer and I was sure he’d be successful. Just not in my organization.

Have you guessed where this is going?

I receive an immediate response from the man stating, in a much more civil tone than I would’ve used, that he had received NO instructions and NO examples and had NO idea what I was talking about.

I looked with shaky hands through my emails and, of course, he was right. I had mistaken him for the other guy (they have similar usernames) and sent him the “welcome” packet twice. No wonder his shit looked good!

But now I had some crow to eat, and fast. I emailed the person right back apologizing, trying to take an insanity plea, and begging him to give this another chance. He really is an excellent writer.

He accepted my apology and offer, very graciously too I might add. He served as an example of forgiveness, compassion and professionalism. Three things I admire and strive for but so often fall short of.


So what have we learned?

First – Always, yes even when your head’s about to explode from the pressure you’re inflicting on yourself, always assume that there has been a miscommunication. I could have prevented that entire fiasco by simply emailing one question: “This isn’t really what I was expecting. Was there a misunderstanding about the details?” BIG difference from the self-indulgent tongue lashing I gave the poor man.

Second - It’s your business, you’re not allowed to take it personal. If someone fails under my supervision, I’ve actually been the failure. And letting yourself take someone else’s mistake as a personal insult (which is really what I’d done) means you’re operating totally out of your egoic nature.

Take some quiet time. It’s just an indication that you’re not taking soulful care of yourself. Never put your writing business before your sanity. If you have a nervous breakdown there ain’t gonna be much left of your business anyway. Don’t ask, just trust me.

Third – Instead of listening to the incessant ramblings of our neurotic minds, stop expecting things to go wrong. Create the space for everyone around you to succeed. It’s not a matter of anticipating success, it’s a matter of already living with success. Don’t expect mistakes, look for the things everyone is doing well and offer praise and appreciation…including yourself!

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