Archives for December 2016

My last day working a full-time job was Dec. 16.  I mostly approached that day with trepidation. But after my first weeks of self-employment, I’m surprised by how well it suits me. Here are some other things I didn’t see coming.

People tell me I seem happier.

Since last May,  I’d been working 9-to-5 while also building my freelance business. Deadlines and stress galore–and it wasn’t just affecting me. Bryan said I’ve been pissy, rude and unpleasant for the last few months. It was so bad that he asked friends for advice on how to deal with it, and had nightmares about me never quitting the 9-to-5. On the first Monday that I didn’t go to the office, he and our friend Andrew both commented on how much happier I seemed. Which was surprising, because I didn’t realize what a toll overworking was taking on me or the people I care about.

I am far likelier to make plans with friends.

When I worked at an office, I craved time at home with my cats. I could sometimes carve out a quick coffee run with a friend during a lunch break, but usually I was too tired after a whole day at work to do much more than cook dinner, drink and watch Bojack Horseman when I got home. Now, I really enjoy excuses to get out of the house and catch up with people. I’m becoming way more social, and it feels great to spend a couple hours in a coffee shop or swimming at the Country Club on a weekday.

I got another gig.

One of my big fears was that all my freelance work would dry up the second I handed in my notice. This is kind of obviously irrational. In fact, not one but two editors contacted me last week congratulating me on taking the leap to freelance and asking if I’d like to do some work for them. The answer was a resounding HELL YES. One of the most unexpected things about a meeting I had with an editor last week: when she mentioned the writing of mine she most admired, it wasn’t a sparkly portfolio piece or anything I’d done for national outlets, stuff that I would THINK is the most impressive. It was the personal, day-to-day stuff that I’d shared here, on my blog. Which is surprising but also awesome.

I learned the tough lesson of invoicing.

Invoicing is one of the banes of my freelance existence. I have been pretty lax about it, because I didn’t depend on the income while I had a full-time gig. Also, I was so slammed that invoicing was very low on my priority list. One of my clients hadn’t been invoiced since SEPTEMBER (!!!), and when I went through deposits and invoices for another, I found that there was a huge discrepancy between what I’d billed and what I was owed. As in, I had only gotten half of the money I’d invoiced for since August. Yikes. This is not something I ever had to deal with as a full-time employee. More than ever, I appreciate the clients who may not pay a ton of money, but who pay on TIME.

I don’t miss the office environment at all.

During my last days at Gambit, I’d find myself bullshitting in editorial meetings with smart, funny writers or listening to graphic designers rip the page proofs off the walls after the book was put to bed on Friday evenings and thinking, “Man, I’m really going to miss this.” But I don’t. I don’t miss anything about the environment. I don’t miss the structure that it brought to my life. I don’t miss having to stay until 5:30 or 6 p.m., even if my work was done before then. I do miss the people, though, and I miss my computer, which is better than the one I have now.

The biggest surprise:

Last week, I spent the night at my grandmother’s house in Baton Rouge with my sister Laura, who came down from Memphis for a visit. Her boyfriend showed up, which was unexpected–we thought he was still up there dog-sitting. But no, he’d decided to buy a ring, rent a car, drive down and pop the question. He figured Laura and my grandmother would be the only ones to see him drop to one knee. He did not expect me to be there at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday.

Normally, I wouldn’t have been. I would have been at work.

When one of my friends started hosting on Airbnb, I asked her what it was like. “You do a lot of laundry,” she said, which was maybe the MOST obvious thing about hosting.

Anyway, I registered my spare bedroom on the site in 2014 and almost immediately had a steady flow of travelers passing through. That year, the room was booked 291 nights. I could tell you how much laundry I did (a lot), how much money I earned (about $24,000 that I split with Bryan) or how many people had loud sex with the door open (two). But I think the most important thing to know if you’re thinking about opening your home to hundreds of strangers is what the mental repercussions are when you open your home to hundreds of strangers.

Especially if you’re not particularly outgoing, like me. 

I also asked Bryan and my sister about hosting. They both came to Airbnb with couchsurfing experience under their belts. Bryan is an extrovert who would keep the house full of friends every day if he could, and he worked from home a lot over the past few years. Laura’s an extrovert who doesn’t care as much about meeting strangers as she does about seeing her friends, and she works a pretty demanding 9-to-5 job at a charter school.

Here is how hosting affected each of us.

How it affects day-to-day life in your house

“I focus on guests having privacy. When people are around, I want to make sure my dog doesn’t bark, that when I am walking, I am tiptoeing. Because I want them to be well-rested and comfortable, I am hyper-vigilant about the noise I am creating. And that can get very tiring.” –Laura

“I make a lot less noise and feel kind of bad if I’m making it. I try to figure out if they’re home or not before practicing guitar. Sometimes I’m wrong.” — Bryan

For me, it’s hard balancing cleanliness with quietness. I used to clean in the mornings before going to work, but usually, guests were asleep at that time. So I’d try to quietly unload the dishwasher, quietly scoop out the litterbox, quietly empty the trash. Which is a really tough balancing act.

The most annoying part about sharing your space with strangers

“When I feel like my space is not being respected. I respect their space, but it feels like they have free reign over mine. Some guests feel too comfortable, and as a host, you feel very isolated, like you have to stay in your room if you want alone time.” –Laura

“Some people talk a lot. Sometimes, it’s great. But sometimes it’s annoying because you don’t feel like telling them about the best New Orleans food or what Hurricane Katrina was like. The way our house is set up, it’s very difficult for us to get away from them, but not difficult for them to get to get away from us. So the hanging out happens on their terms.” –Bryan

Tips for dealing with annoyances

“Set up an alternative living space in your bedroom or outside. Feel free to have rooms the guests can’t go in. We have three bedrooms, and one I have set up as an alternate work area, so I can be private. I don’t put pictures of that space on Airbnb, so they don’t think it is part of the house.” –Laura

“You can take a few days off whenever you want. I can go in my little other room to get away from them. We have left the house a couple times. Sometime, I have to say, ‘OK, they’re paying me, I’m leaving, it’s fine. That doesn’t happen that often.” –Bryan

What should people expect going in to hosting?

“It’s easy to think people are annoying, because you have a lot of perfect guests. Every once in a while, you get someone who is demanding or awkward or unpleasant, and that’s when you need to remember that people are paying you for a service.” –Laura

“The range of emotions is high. Sometimes you are frustrated and pissed, and you’re like, “I’ll never do it again.”  Other times, it’s awesome, because you’re like, ‘I can’t believe I’m getting paid to hang out with these great people.'” –Bryan

Get used to meeting strangers when they’re in their underwear and pajamas. This has happened so many times that it’s normal to me now. Guests seem embarrassed, but they’re the ones walking around with no pants, so who’s really to blame?

I try to make my blog posts useful, entertaining and mostly positive. Today’s will not be one of these posts. This post involves literary lies, thievery and subterfuge. It also is the story of how my novel came to be unpublished.

The gist is this: Torquere Press acquired my novel in fall 2014. Shortly thereafter, the press was sold to new owners. I was like, “Cool, maybe they’ll bring some good changes.” An LGBT press, Torquere had been around since 2003,  one big reason I chose to sign with them. Everyone had good things to say about Torquere. They assigned me an editor, handled the cover, did a small amount of marketing and released the book in summer 2015. I held up my end, promotion-wise. I did talks at libraries, signings, that kind of stuff. So it was pretty disappointing when my royalty check was only $60. I really thought the book had sold more copies. The next quarter, my check was $20. After that, I didn’t get any royalty checks at all.

I figured, well, my book is a flop. Critically, it got no traction. Craft-wise, it was the best I could do at the time, but I knew the book was flawed and hoped my subsequent work would be better. And financially, I didn’t recoup the money I put into booze for the book party, promo copies, Goodreads giveaways and targeted Amazon ads. I felt like I had failed at every level.

Soon I heard rumblings of discontent. My fellow authors weren’t getting paid, they said in our private email chain. Last summer, one of Torquere’s co-owners went to jail for writing hot checks to authors (the item is here–-her first name is Kristi).  More and more and more authors reported bounced checks and nonpayment, requesting their rights back only to be stonewalled. Meanwhile, Torquere kept signing new contracts and participating in Twitter pitch contests.

Yesterday, Torquere owners Kristi and Joanna sent an email to all their authors saying the press was closing. There’s a post about it on Writers Beware, though Torquere has not yet gone public on their pages. I’m getting my rights back to the novel eventually (within 90 days, they claim). But as far as getting paid, I’m not holding my breath, and neither is anyone else. I feel especially sorry for the editors who are owed thousands of dollars.

One of the shitty things about crime is, when it happens to me, I wonder, “How did I invite this into my life?” And when it’s the petty crime that’s so common in New Orleans, the answers are simple: I left valuables in plain sight in my car. I didn’t lock the deadbolt. That kind of thing. Victim-blaming is never the right way to go, but it’s the mentality I revert to when I’m a crime victim. I feel stupid, ashamed and embarrassed—I should have prevented this! I should have known better!

When crime happens in the literary realm—which is a new one for me—the psychic ramifications are still there, but they’re a lot more troubling. Self-defeating stuff like: if I was capable of writing a decent book that got picked up by a decent agent and a decent press, this wouldn’t have happened. 

On the silver lining side: if and when I publish my next book, I might get a second chance to be a debut author. I don’t think I lost that much money. And I learned something—I think. That thing is to get out of my own way. When I submitted this novel to small presses, Torquere’s was the first offer I got. I committed a cardinal sin, which was to accept the offer without revisiting every press I had subbed to first. I really didn’t think anyone else would want to publish my weird, flawed book. Three offers rolled in after Torquere’s, one from Evernight Teen, which is a much bigger small press, with owners who have yet to be incarcerated for stealing from their authors. I regret not giving myself the chance to take their offer. But I’ve learned not to put myself in that position again.

Right now, I’m deciding whether I want to forget this book ever happened or try to re-home it with another publisher. I’m leaning toward the former, because my energy is focused on my next book. But I don’t have to choose right now. After all, I still don’t have my rights back.

 

Stock photo via Unsplash

I‘m going to be blogging about freelancing a lot, for two reasons. One, I’m in the process of transitioning from a 9-to-5 newspaper job to self-employment and that’s where my focus is right now. Two, because there’s a lot of haziness and confusion about how freelancers make it work. I’m not saying I am an expert, since I’m just now switching over, but I am earning enough freelance income to cover my bills and quit my job. The assignments listed here pay $50-$200, depending on the client. Here are my main clients and how I got them.

Thrillist. Thrillist is my biggest client right now. My editor generally offers me three to five health assignments every two weeks. I usually claim two assignments from each batch because that’s all I have time for. I’m hoping that once I’ve quit my job, I can take more, because I love health reporting, I love my editor, and I love working with Thrillist. I got this gig by cold-pitching Thrillist; you can read the cover letter I wrote here.

Imaginal Marketing Group. Imaginal handles marketing for salons nationwide. I usually write blog content for them. I got this gig in August, thanks to a referral from owner Kathleen Turpel, who used to work at the newspaper where I work now. This is another reason I’m glad to have had my newspaper job for so long–the contacts are invaluable and the position is a great platform. I suggest that anyone who wants to become a freelance writer work a full-time writing job first (not that this is a super easy thing to do, but if you have the chance, take it, or at least intern). 

SixEstate. This is a content marketing firm, too. I got this gig by applying on WorkNola.com, and a recent scan of that site reveals the owners are looking to pick up more copywriters. So feel free to apply.

SOLID Web Service. I write blog posts for spine surgeons, bariatric surgeons, physical therapists and soon, a lawyer. This is a position where my health reporting background really comes in handy. I got this gig through LinkedIn. Owner Jamie Foster saw my profile and contacted me. So it always pays to keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, if you’re a freelancer.

This is how my week (Monday, Dec. 5 through Friday, Dec. 9) breaks down, freelance-gig wise:

Monday: Blog post for SixEstate 

Tuesday: Blog post for SOLID Web Service 

Wednesday: Blog posts for SixEstate and Imaginal 

Thursday: Blog post for Imaginal 

Friday: Blog post for SixEstate and stylist profile for Imaginal 

The week’s invoices will total $460*.  That’s a little short of the goal I set for myself ($500 a week), but it is still pretty dang good, especially since I am still working full-time at the newspaper. I also get income from renting out my spare bedroom on Airbnb, which warrants its own post. Anyway, next week, I’m set to earn $450, writing two Thrillist pieces and a blog post. That’s also my very last week as a 9-to-5er. As much as I am going to miss the people at Gambit, I’m looking forward to only working one job starting December 16.

*If you want to know what each client pays per blog, message me–I feel like they wouldn’t appreciate me sharing rates on a public post, though.