Table of Contents
For anyone whos ever hit the snooze button
five times in a row on Monday morning.
To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
Bette Davis
The two most beautiful words in the English language are check enclosed.
Dorothy Parker
introduction
Eat, Pray, Quit
When I was twelve and writing in my diary about how much I hated my braces and loved Arthur Finkelstein, I fantasized about someday publishing the whole hot confessional mess. My book, The Bride Wore a Night Brace, would be acclaimed the world over.
Girls would write me sentimental notes about how Id helped them learn to smile again, despite the ten pounds of hardware obscuring their teeth. Boys would send me lengthy missives about how Id convinced them to take a second look at that gangly girl in the corner, the one who could pick up twelve different radio stations with her headgear, and ask her if she wanted to dance. High school teachers and college professors alike would make my treatise on preteen angst required reading in their classrooms. Politicians would buy it for their sons and daughters. Id be invited to the White House, interviewed by Barbara Walters, andonce the movie version of my opus grossed a billion dollarsgiven my own star on Hollywood Boulevard.
Not for one minute did I think that someday Id be trapped in a 9-to-5 (or 5-to-9) job, fielding thirty dozen emails a day and straining to stay awake during staff meetings. Not even for a nanosecond.
Then I finished school and cruel reality set in.
Occasionally, my older, wiser coworkers would stop debating whose carpal tunnel was worse long enough to share their hard-won pearls of workforce wisdom with me. I used to be like you, thinking that one day Id pursue my own writing or take up painting again, theyd say. But eventually, you learn to let go of those silly dreams. You gotta grow up sometime and get a real job like everyone else.
Why? I remember thinking. Whats so juvenile about actually liking what you do for a living? Whats wrong with designing your own career if you cant stomach the one youve got or cant figure out what kind of a job you want in the first place? Isnt that a better bet than hanging on to a 9-to-5 that makes you feel like youre crawling over broken glass sixty hours a week?
Im guessing you can relate. You want more control over the work you do, who you do it for, and where you do it. You dont want to be told what the pay range for the job isyou want to set it yourself. You want a flexible schedule so you can devote more than fifteen minutes a day to your family, the canine couture empire youve been hoping to launch, or the screenplay youve been nursing for the past decade. You want to work in your bunny slippers with your dog lying at your feet. Most important, you want off the corporate hamster wheel and you want it now.
You certainly wouldnt be alone. Only one in two Americans are happy with their jobs, reports The Conference Board, one of the worlds leading business think tanks. Not surprisingly, in 2007 the U.S. Census Bureau found that almost twenty-one million Americans work as self-employed professionals or independent contractors.
Some of us turn to freelancing in the wake of a layoff. Others turn to it as a way of easing back into the workforce after having a child. Others have simply found that traffic snarls cause them to froth at the mouth and fluorescent lighting gives them a bad rash.
This isnt one of those I am perfect and you can be too books where I tell you how rich and slick and esteemed and redeemed I am (dont I wish), or how I did everything right when I first fled the cube in 1992 (nothing could be further from the truth). If youve read my first book, The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube, a guide to fleeing the cube farm for flexible, temporary, overseas, social service, or self-employed work, you know I was hardly the poster child for self-employed success during my early freelance years. When I left my day job in the dust at age twenty-four, I had the business sense of a beagle, the paltriest of portfolios, only one client to my name, and no money saved.
Thanks to a crazy little thing called trial and error, I fortunately got with the freelancing program and figured out everything from naming my price and structuring my time to wooing clients and whipping my contracts into shape. To help you do the same (only without all that fumbling in the dark), I packed as much of my freelance know-how as would fit into this book. So consider this your crash course in becoming gainfully self-employed.
Every great story has three actseven the story of your shiny new freelance life. In this book, Ive laid out those acts for you chapter and verse. In Part 1, youll find details on those first key steps you need to take as an indie professional, from making a budget and setting goals for yourself to getting a business license and building a web portfolio. In Part 2, well talk about landing the work, from marketing yourself like mad and getting in the referral game to negotiating rates and contracts like nobodys business. And in Part 3, well cover all the day-to-day details of surviving and thriving as a creative professional for hirein other words, staying sane, solvent, and off the IRSs shit list.
Whether youre on a fact-finding mission, eager to learn how this newfangled way of boss-free working works, or already freelancing on the side and wondering how soon you can turn in your letter of resignation, this book is for you. Even the seasoned freelancers in the bunch are sure to pick up some tips and tricks here. After all, what freelancer doesnt love a little dirt on how her self-employed counterparts deal with missed deadlines, clients from hell, and checks that are MIA?
For the record, Im not an accountant, financial adviser, or legal professional. Im a journalism major turned freelance writer who makes her living writing articles, books, and corporate marketspeak, with the occasional editing or teaching gig thrown in for variety. While I touch on some of the legal and financial gobbledygook of working for yourself in these pages, my advice isnt meant to take the place of the advice of a trained financial or legal pro (in fact, my own legal adviser made me type this very sentence). So for tax, financial planning, and legal help, please, hire yourself a good accountant or lawyer who can keep you out of debt and out of jail, okay? Dont waste your one phone call from the pokey on me.
Instead, learn from my sixteen years of hard-won freelance wisdom and the missteps I made while scrambling to gain a foothold on my so-called freelance life. As far as Im concerned, you might as well benefit from the biggest lessons I learned and blunders I made and save yourself some time, agita, and bounced checks in the process.
Because diversity is a beautiful thing, Ive also included the war stories and sage advice from several dozen of my full-time freelance heroines (and a couple of moonlighters), from a pet photographer to a personal trainer, writer to web developer, visual artist to virtual assistant, rocker to radio producer, animator to auctioneer. Many of these freelancers are the main breadwinners in their households, regardless of whether theyre single, shacked up, or somebodys mom. Many have mortgages and kids to put through college. All of them rely on their freelance income to make ends meet; you wont find any hobbyists or trust fund babies here.
