It's a Jungle Out There

If you’re like me, you’re scrambling to get things taken care of before the holidays started. This should get you in the mood:

A brief lesson in economics helps us understand why the heck anyone would want to hire us.

Opportunity cost has a very simple definition:

The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action.

So, you have two articles to write, but you only have an hour. For one of the articles, you will receive $15 but you don’t really like the subject or the client. The other article will get you $10 but you love the material. If you write the former, your opportunity cost is $10 plus whatever you enjoyment you get out of writing it. If you choose the latter, your opportunity cost is $15.

This idea is critical to managing your time and your money. Let’s take taxes for example. For an accountant to prepare your taxes for,we’ll say it costs you $150. How many hours could you spend doing your taxes, if you rate your time at $50/hour, and not be ‘losing’ money to opportunity cost? This is assuming there are no other costs like driving or mailing things to your accountant. That’s right, less than 3 hours. You’re so smart.

Knowing how you rate your time helps you determine the opportunity cost of certain actions. Let’s say you want to travel to another city. If you were to drive, it would only cost you $30 in fuel, but it takes you 8 hours. Or you could take an airplane, which costs you $250, but you only take two and a half hours to get from your front door to your destination (hyperbole, yes, but I’m proving a point). The opportunity cost of taking a plane is $250 plus however much your time is worth times 2.5. So if you rate yourself at $50/hour, the opportunity cost of flying is $375. But, for driving it is $430. Of course, if you rate yours at $10/hour then driving is going to be the best bet.

So that’s a brief primer on opportunity cost. So, can you guess how it applies to us? The freelancer? Well, the accounting example that I used earlier is a pretty good example. For many professionals, the opportunity cost of writing their own letters is too high. This is for two reasons. First, it will take them significantly longer to do something. A marketing letter, for example, would take us 4-5 hours, where it could take them upwards of 10 to do the same job. If they pay $350 for the letter, they save 10 hours of their time which they can use managing underlings or making sales. Our opportunity cost per unit of writing work is far far less than for others.

On top of that the product that they would be putting out is going to be of less quality that what we could do. So the loss of potential sales is added to the opportunity cost.

When I pitch my services, I make two points:

1) There are better uses for your time than writing. As I showed above, hiring me to do this job is a better use of your time and money.

2) I know how to write for specific formats. You’ll make more money because I can squeeze more out of the words that I write.

So there you have it. Economics isn’t all about banks and stuff, it is making sure that our resources are being used as efficiently as possible. Use this knowledge not only to bag your clients, but to run an efficient business.

Write something before you write something.

Writing is a skill. There is no doubt about it. Yes, some of us have talent, but talent alone will not carry you to a career as a writer. Part of developing your writing is to write well when it counts.

Almost every fiction writer says that you should write in the morning. I agree with this. I start every day with my own personal projects. Why? It gets my brain limber enough so that I can write well for my clients.

I always write at least 400 words before I get to work. Sometimes it’s fiction. Today it was a book review. It can even be as much as a journal entry. The trick is to always make it personal.

Part of being a writer is developing your personal projects. There’s no way I am going to land a gig reviewing books as it is. The only way is for me to write as many solid reviews as I can, pray somebody reads them and get and independant gig or a syndication offer. The only way I am going to get fiction published, quite simply, is to write. Just like a steel worker doesn’t want to make rebar when he comes home, I don’t want to write, edit and rewrite 400 or so words a day after I have been writing all day. The only way you are going to get your own work done is to do it before you work for other people. Put yourself first.

Every artist warms up. Any experienced sketcher or writer will tell you that they go through at least 5-6 rough outlines before they get to the meat of their subject.

I remember back in college, I had a semester where I didn’t have to write any papers. I had to take exams, but no papers. The next semester, I found writing to be a major struggle. If you read Stephen King’s memoirs, then you will know that he struggled with the writing process after his crash.

The point is that you will be a better, faster writer if you do some mental stretching beforehand. If you run your own blog (If you aren’t doing this, buy a domain and get cracking. Now.), write your posts in the morning. If you write fiction, do it in the morning. Not only is it the only time you’re guaranteed to get it done, but your workday will be improved for it.

Sometimes our barriers are invisible.

I am not one to get all into that self-help stuff. But I took a class called ‘Learning and Cognition’ back in college, and a study that I read about has stuck with me, and truly impacted my worldview.

Back in 1967, B.F. Skinner ran an experiment. (A similar one had been run before at Penn earlier that year, but it’s easy to understand the concept with Skinner’s experiment). He had a bunch of dogs which he divided up into 3 groups. He also devised an enclosure that administered shocks to the dog. The box could normally be jumped out of, unless the experimenter closed it up.

Group A was just tossed in the box. Group B was thrown in their boxes and were administered shocks. They jumped out of the box to avoid the shock, as any rightful animal would do. Group C was put in the box, which was then closed up. They were administered the same shocks as Group B but were not allowed to escape. Group C dogs just lay down and whimpered.

Now we move on to step 2, in which Group A, B and C dogs were put in their escapable boxes and were shocked. Group A and B jumped out. What do you think Group C did? They lay down and whined. In fact, it was extremely difficult for them to learn not to just lie down and whine. Even if they were repeatedly taught that it was possible for them to jump out of the box, only about 1/3 could get their way out of what has been called ‘learned helplessness.’

This study had a profound effect on how we perceive human nature. The most direct application has been in the study of depression. Many people who are depressed can’t ‘learn’ their way out of a depressed state. They feel like, for whatever reason, the things keeping them down are not their fault.

But that’s another story. We freelancers deal with failure every day. We send out queries that are not responded to. Cold calls can be frank and uncomfortable. Although you are improving in your career, you may be hindered from the criticisms from six months ago. Or, you are used to being a failure.

How do you beat ‘learned helplessness’? Truth is not everyone can. The best way is to step back and be as objective as possible. One way I do this is I do a ’self-review’ the first of the month every month after I pay my taxes. The details of this are not really important right now, but I survey everything I have done and try to see if there is anything holding me back. Usually there isn’t, because I’m awesome.

The point I’m trying to make is sometimes we don’t realize the things that are holding us back. I’m trying not to wax chicken-soup-for-the-souletic, but it makes me think about this quote:

‘What would you do if you know you could not fail.’

If failure is something you have ‘learned’, it might be time to beat that habit.

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You can learn a lot from people that run fast for a living.

I try to post daily on TMF, but obviously I didn’t do that this week. Why? Sports, that’s why. My Wednesday started off with the USA World Cup game where the US won with a goal a minute into stoppage time. The whole game was basically the FIFA trying to shut us down with bullcrap calls. You could watch our players, though, simply shrug off the unfortunate events and went headlong back into the fray. Not giving up even when the referee’s whistle could blow at any moment.

The rest of my Wednesday was taken up with the most astounding tennis match I have ever seen. The game started on Tuesday, and the match was put on hold because of darkness. The next day, the fifth set did not stop. Neither player could break the other one’s serve. My mother called me when each player had 35 sets apiece. At that point in time, the match had gone on for 7 hours. I spent the next couple hours watching as each man, John Isner (USA) and Nicolas Mahut (FRA), dug in, refusing to be broken. The game, again, had to be called because of darkness. At that point, the scoreboard had stopped working because the numbers had gotten too high.

The next day I ate my breakfast, and watched as, after the match had elapsed 11 hours and 5 minutes, Isner broke Mahut to win the fifth set at an unprecedented 70 – 68.

We can see two valuable lessons here:

It ain’t over till it’s over.

Always be prepared to rise to the occasion.

The last one takes a little more explanation. Xan Brooks was assigned to Wimbledon coverage for “The Guardian”. I love tennis, but writing about tennis would be pretty hard. Especially in the first rounds of Wimbledon. However, he found himself as the epicenter of coverage for the match. Why? Not because he was liveblogging. Simply because it was some of the funniest stuff I have read in a while.

Despite the fact that we were watching a historic match, it was historic because it was so boring. Someone would serve, they would sit, and that was it really. However Xan blasted us with these gems:

8.55pm: Yet again, Mahut wobbles on the brink of defeat. Yet again he steadies himself. One minute Isner has him at 30-30. The next he’s through again and we’re tied at 58 games apiece.

But wait! An official has stepped out on the court. Is it an official, or is it the angel? Is this endless, epic Battle of the Zombies finally going to be brought to a close?

9.25pm: Last thoughts before I ring me a hearse. That was beyond tennis. I think it was even beyond survival, because there is a strong suggestion (soon to be confirmed by doctors) that John Isner actually expired at about the 20-20 mark, and Mahut went soon afterwards, and the remainder of the match was contested by Undead Zombies who ate the spectators during the change of ends (again, this is pending a police investigation).

Still, if you’re going to watch a pair of zombies go at each other for eleventy-billion hours, far into the night, it might as well be these zombies. They were incredible, astonishing, indefatigable. They fell over frequently but they never stayed down. My hat goes off to these zombies. Possibly my head goes off to them too.

Great stuff. The full blog of the day is here:

Wimbledon 2010 Liveblog: June 23rd

Xan is a hero, and he will probably never have to look too far for a job for the rest of his career. While other commentators were writing about how historic things were, Xan wrote about angels and zombies.

My point? You never know when you are going to be put on the spot. You must always be prepared for the things you can’t prepare for, if that makes sense. As writers, we rarely get occasions to do that. But, boy howdy, when we get them, it is glorious.

Anne, over at About Freelance Writing has a great article today called Just Write, Right? talking about how, if don’t know what to write about, you just need to write. She uses an example of how she started writing questions for a pseudo advice column she wanted to write, and that lead to her writing a full article:

The point is that once I had a question I could begin to form the answer. The question gave me something to chew on to write about that. And before that was the idea of the column.

In other words, you take your idea and you begin to write a rough draft; you don’t worry about complete sentences, or spelling or even organization, you just write.

Once you get some writing down, you can begin to rewrite and edit it, but not until you’ve put some words to paper or screen.

Yes, the rough draft is apt to be awful – that’s why it’s called a ‘rough’ draft. Particularly in the beginning, those first efforts aren’t expected to be readable prose. As you develop the habit of writing you can begin to work toward smoother drafts, but not until the writing habit is firmly established.

This reminds me of two things during my writing career. For the first one we have to travel back in time and across space to high school, which seems farther and farther every day. It was my senior year and my class was prepping for the AP English test. We were supposed to just write something about the Anne Sexton poem about the ‘Mommy and Daddy dance’. I remember reading it and not having any ideas. But then my fearless teacher’s voice echoed in my head, “Just start writing.” And that’s what I did. I just started by re-iterating the overall ‘plot’ as well as the major themes. By the end of the half hour, I had written an essay that merited a ‘94′. Not half bad.

I liken what happened there to something like the warmup when running. You are not going to be able to run at race pace right out of the door. You have to get your muscles warmed up. Sometimes your brain needs to get the creative neurons firing before it can get its real work done.

How can we apply this to our work? Like Ann says, just write something down. You can edit it later. It can be stupid things. It can be a reiteration. The people that know me personally would be very surprised to hear that I am a die-hard outliner. That is how I get my brain juices warmed up before a writing project.

My second story is a lot more recent, but is also seeming a lot farther in the past than I would like. I was like many of us, I wanted to be a freelance writer but I did not have any portfolio to speak of. So, I made a rule for myself, I had to write 1,000 publishable words a day, every day. I had various places I did this. I started a blog called ‘Cool Stuff From a Long Time Ago’ (now defunct, but still worth a read) and I started writing for TextBroker. Not only was I building a portfolio, but I was practicing.

It takes 10,000 hours of doing one activity to make you an expert. The only way you will get to that level is to grind it out every day. One thing lead to another, and then I got an internship with a historic preservation magazine.

This post was a bit autobiographical, but they are two times in my life where I said to myself, ‘Just write.’ Each time they paid off, and got me going. You have to write to be a writer. This may seem pretty obvious, but sometimes we forget it.

Do you guys have any stories like this? Has there been a time you’ve had to tell yourself to simply put words on the paper?

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I wrote up a halfway decent guide to password protecting yourself at my ‘personal site’ heathgordon.com. Make sure that your security is up to date and check it out:

The Heath Gordon Guide to Keeping Your Shit Secure

Keep your writing precise by making sure your demonstrative adjectives have objects.

Rarely do I ever advocate adding words to your work, but I am about to teach you a trick that has stuck with me since I was a freshman in college. First off, dig deep into your grammar pockets. What is a demonstrative adjective? Nope, don’t keep reading. Okay. Give up? It’s an adjective that points out a specific noun. Remember ‘this, that, these and those’? Those words are demonstrative adjectives.

Here’s an example of their use that, while not inherently wrong, is not the ‘best’ way to use them.

Hippos are the most dangerous animal in Africa. This is not widely know.

First off, that up there is a real fact. Hippos kill more people than all other animals combined, multiplied by two. Second, what does an adjective do? It modifies something. Well, if you have an adjective without a modifier directly behind it, your brain has to wiggle a bit until it remembers what the noun is (or rather should be). You have created an ambiguous sentence. ‘This’ could refer to anything, and is forcing you to rely on context to discover the meaning, which draws your reader away from your words.

Here is a better way to craft that sentance:

Hippos are the most dangerous animal in Africa. This fact is not widely know.

That sentence is way, way better. The modern freelancer should do everything he can to avoid ambiguity. A simple way to clearer writing is to make sure that your adjectives precede what the modify.

Can anybody else think of any other examples of this sort of thing? A quick fix to a problem that may not be obvious?

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There are mixed reactions to Stephen King’s work in the writing community. Some people think he is the greatest, others hate him because his work is not literary enough. Whatever your opinion, if you in any way want to write for a living, you have to check out “On Writing”.

I read this book a week after I decided to be a freelance writer, and man did it give a great deal of insight into the life of a fiction writer, as well as the industry. King discusses how to go from being a competent writer to a good one. I won’t go into the details of all of the tips and tricks that he offers, because you have to read the book to get the background behind them.

What King brings to the table is an unpretentious voice. His first real gig was in a newspaper (when he was like 10) so he knows the beat. But more important, you’ll get a box into the head of probably the hardest working writer in the business now. Seriously, he doesn’t use ghostwriters (heh, get it. He writes about ghosts), despite putting out 3 books a year. That was the most fascinating thing to me, is finding out what it takes to truly be a great writer.

For those of you who are looking for inspiration, or are even thinking about writing for a living, this book is for you. Yes, it drags on a bit when he’s talking about his accident, but you’ll get over it I promise. I guarantee you that you will be a better writer for reading this book.

Has anyone else out there read this book? What did you think?

The best way to beat stress is to not get stressed to begin with.

The FreelanceFolder has a great article about the particular stresses of freelancers. They’re right. We have to deal with so many different things that may stress us out, it’s a wonder any of us are sane or rational people. We have to balance our own books, deal with clients and motivate ourselves.

Although Laura goes through the different things that may stress us out, I feel like this is a good time to go through general ways to combat stress. Here are some things I do to make my life as stressful as possible.

1. Get Sleep. I cannot stress (heh) how important sleep is for a freelancer. Yes, everyone needs to sleep. But this is a job where you simply cannot slack off. I have had my own troubles with sleep throughout my life. My last job was in an office. I had to wake up at 7am. My natural inclination is to stay up until 2ish. Can you see how this is a problem? One of the perks of freelancing is choosing your own schedule. Make sure that your schedule is suited to your lifestyle and you are getting at least 7 hours of sleep a night.

2. Deep breathes. When I was in high school I did a lot of Tai Chi, and while I don’t do the formal movements anymore, but the concept of deep breaths from the stomach has stuck with me. When you take slow deep breaths, your heart rate slows down, which slows down your parasympathetic system, which lessens the release of cortisol (literally THE stress hormone). The way I taught myself to take deep breathes all day was to pick certain points during the day, and whenever they came up, I would check to make sure that I was breathing correctly. Soon it will become second nature. On top of this, you cannot breath correctly without good posture, so make sure your posture is good.

3. Exercise. I am not the first writer to tout exercise, and I will not be the last. When you do any sort of extended exercise, your body releases endorphines which make you feel very, very good. I run regularly, and I cannot focus if I haven’t gone for a run in 3 days or so. On top of the physical benefits, I find that running or exercising is a great way to clear your mind. When I go for a run, it symbolises that my work day is over, and it is time to do fun things like play with my hamsters.

4. Drink water. Do you have an afternoon slump at around 1:30? I’m sure that you try to cure it with coffee. For the next week, try drinking a glass of water when you are feeling tired. You will feel better. My rule (before I kicked coffee) was to drink a glass of water for every cup of coffee that I would take. Lack of water is very stressful on your body. The body and the mind are one.

Hope that helps. In the words of Red Green, ‘I’m pulling for you. We’re all in this together.’