How Much Is Your Time Worth?
How much is your time worth? This will be both an existential post . . . and a practical one.
The really terrific Mark Terry recently did a 10-part blog series on freelance writing for a living. As such, he included resources for hunting down freelance work. Now, as an aside, I have supported a family of six as a fiction writer for years now, but I have kept a couple of really top-notch business or publishing clients, mostly because I've been with them so long and I have actually come to really enjoy the people I work with. Sometimes I get a big job, sometimes I don't hear from them for a while . . . and that suits my fiction career nicely. That's a freelance writer/editor.
Anyway, most of my regular readers and friends know I have an 18-year-old daughter who is going off to music school in the fall. Music school thus, if you don't know, falls out of the realm of "state college tuition." State school costs, around here, $15,000 with tuition, room, and board. We're WAY upwards of that. Oh, and I bought her an 18th-century Italian violin this year. And a new bow. Bows can cost the amount of money some human beings spend on a car. For a bow. I paid more for her instrument than the down payment on either of my first two houses. So, by necessity, I let it be known among my old clients that yes, I'll take work if they have it.
Anyway, while perusing Mark's resources, I was astounded by the audacity of some of the people advertising for writers. We're not unionized, but apparently they think that means we're all hacks and idiots. Or, more likely, desperate. Ads for COMPANIES--corporations--who want someone to write an entire self-help book for a flat fee of $1,000. I'll pick myself up off the floor from laughing so hard. Ads from upstart blog sites or online sites who will spend 2,000 words for an ad describing their completely arrogant, picky, condescending "requirements" with caveats like, "Don't apply if you're not a pro, don't apply if you're a flake, etc." They want Pulitzer-winning writers, but hey, we can only afford "for now" to pay you $20 for the entire assigment, "but that should change as we grow." Let me jump at this one.
The sad thing is, they will FIND writers who will work for what is, as a friend of mine put it, only a living wage in Sub-Saharan Africa (which in itself is a sad statement on the world, but . . . I digress). There's nothing wrong, as a writer, with starting small to build your clippings file, but . . . my own opinion is the business model some of these people have is at its heart corrupt. "I don't have enough working capital to pay people, so I will offer them nothing or close to it, then when I make some money, I will offer to pay them--but I will not offer any back compensation for the work they've already done which has now afforded me the capital to pay them."
If that business model sounds like some e-pubs that have gone out of business and screwed writer friends, then so be it.
Now the funny thing is, if you, like a friend of mine and I recently calculated, added up ALL the writing, all the workshopping, all the drafts, all the submitting, all the rewrites, all the reading and correcting galleys, all the promo, etc. that go into writing and having a book published, even with a decent advance, we probably make 5 cents an hour. We do fiction because we love it. And yes, you can make a living at it, even if you are not him. But you have to work hard at it. But at least, I think, the publisher, by giving you a REAL advance of a decent size, is recognizing that work.
So I set a price, bottom line, for editing or writing. When I first started making real money as an editor, I gulped at my price. But I practiced being able to say what my fees were. And then I thought about what DOCTORS charge per hour, what LAWYERS charge, what accountants charge. And I didn't feel so bad. At all.
The second part of this post is a more esoteric question. What is your time worth? If I had a dollar for every person who asks me "How do you do it?" I wouldn't have to work. Yes, I have four kids; yes I always volunteer; yes, I blog; yes, I write; yes, I have hobbies; yes, I love to read; yes, I do, indeed, have the infamous Demon Baby. But what I DON'T have is a lot of . . . well, crap. I don't feel some guilty compulsion to volunteer for every event at school--unless it's something I am passionate about. I don't watch television unless it's something I really, really want to watch. My time is precious. I shared about having Crohn's disease two posts ago. You learn just HOW precious time is when you've been deathly ill. My time is worth a lot more than . . . wasting it.
To that end, what I REALLY cut out of my life are negative people. More often than not, I walk away from angry people, from the people who cut a swath of hostility. I don't need to spend my time arguing with the jackass up the street, or my son's Evil Science Teacher. When she asked me for a conference to discuss my grievances, including that she apparently feels no need to try to make science fun and engaging, I told her I didn't have time. Not that I didn't have time to care about my son, or that I didn't have time to spend with him. I don't have time to spend with HER. Not even a minute. My time is THAT precious. I am not going to fundamentally change the negative people. I told her so. Yeah, the schools don't like me too much, but I feel my time is THAT precious. I guard it vigilantly.
So that's my post for the day. Underpaid writers . . . time-sucking negativity.
Thoughts?
The really terrific Mark Terry recently did a 10-part blog series on freelance writing for a living. As such, he included resources for hunting down freelance work. Now, as an aside, I have supported a family of six as a fiction writer for years now, but I have kept a couple of really top-notch business or publishing clients, mostly because I've been with them so long and I have actually come to really enjoy the people I work with. Sometimes I get a big job, sometimes I don't hear from them for a while . . . and that suits my fiction career nicely. That's a freelance writer/editor.
Anyway, most of my regular readers and friends know I have an 18-year-old daughter who is going off to music school in the fall. Music school thus, if you don't know, falls out of the realm of "state college tuition." State school costs, around here, $15,000 with tuition, room, and board. We're WAY upwards of that. Oh, and I bought her an 18th-century Italian violin this year. And a new bow. Bows can cost the amount of money some human beings spend on a car. For a bow. I paid more for her instrument than the down payment on either of my first two houses. So, by necessity, I let it be known among my old clients that yes, I'll take work if they have it.
Anyway, while perusing Mark's resources, I was astounded by the audacity of some of the people advertising for writers. We're not unionized, but apparently they think that means we're all hacks and idiots. Or, more likely, desperate. Ads for COMPANIES--corporations--who want someone to write an entire self-help book for a flat fee of $1,000. I'll pick myself up off the floor from laughing so hard. Ads from upstart blog sites or online sites who will spend 2,000 words for an ad describing their completely arrogant, picky, condescending "requirements" with caveats like, "Don't apply if you're not a pro, don't apply if you're a flake, etc." They want Pulitzer-winning writers, but hey, we can only afford "for now" to pay you $20 for the entire assigment, "but that should change as we grow." Let me jump at this one.
The sad thing is, they will FIND writers who will work for what is, as a friend of mine put it, only a living wage in Sub-Saharan Africa (which in itself is a sad statement on the world, but . . . I digress). There's nothing wrong, as a writer, with starting small to build your clippings file, but . . . my own opinion is the business model some of these people have is at its heart corrupt. "I don't have enough working capital to pay people, so I will offer them nothing or close to it, then when I make some money, I will offer to pay them--but I will not offer any back compensation for the work they've already done which has now afforded me the capital to pay them."
If that business model sounds like some e-pubs that have gone out of business and screwed writer friends, then so be it.
Now the funny thing is, if you, like a friend of mine and I recently calculated, added up ALL the writing, all the workshopping, all the drafts, all the submitting, all the rewrites, all the reading and correcting galleys, all the promo, etc. that go into writing and having a book published, even with a decent advance, we probably make 5 cents an hour. We do fiction because we love it. And yes, you can make a living at it, even if you are not him. But you have to work hard at it. But at least, I think, the publisher, by giving you a REAL advance of a decent size, is recognizing that work.
So I set a price, bottom line, for editing or writing. When I first started making real money as an editor, I gulped at my price. But I practiced being able to say what my fees were. And then I thought about what DOCTORS charge per hour, what LAWYERS charge, what accountants charge. And I didn't feel so bad. At all.
The second part of this post is a more esoteric question. What is your time worth? If I had a dollar for every person who asks me "How do you do it?" I wouldn't have to work. Yes, I have four kids; yes I always volunteer; yes, I blog; yes, I write; yes, I have hobbies; yes, I love to read; yes, I do, indeed, have the infamous Demon Baby. But what I DON'T have is a lot of . . . well, crap. I don't feel some guilty compulsion to volunteer for every event at school--unless it's something I am passionate about. I don't watch television unless it's something I really, really want to watch. My time is precious. I shared about having Crohn's disease two posts ago. You learn just HOW precious time is when you've been deathly ill. My time is worth a lot more than . . . wasting it.
To that end, what I REALLY cut out of my life are negative people. More often than not, I walk away from angry people, from the people who cut a swath of hostility. I don't need to spend my time arguing with the jackass up the street, or my son's Evil Science Teacher. When she asked me for a conference to discuss my grievances, including that she apparently feels no need to try to make science fun and engaging, I told her I didn't have time. Not that I didn't have time to care about my son, or that I didn't have time to spend with him. I don't have time to spend with HER. Not even a minute. My time is THAT precious. I am not going to fundamentally change the negative people. I told her so. Yeah, the schools don't like me too much, but I feel my time is THAT precious. I guard it vigilantly.
So that's my post for the day. Underpaid writers . . . time-sucking negativity.
Thoughts?
Labels: freelancing, time management
posted by Erica Orloff at 6:56 AM
37 comments
