My So-Called Freelance Life - Michelle Goodman [42]
Don’t be afraid to push beyond your comfort zone if a dream client invites you aboard a project that’s a bit outside your area of expertise but one you know you can handle. This is what’s known as a lucky break. My first few years in business, when a potential client asked “Have you written case studies before?” I usually would say, “Yeah, but only once or twice, and that was just for a friend.” Realizing this was not the preferred answer—and that software case studies weren’t much of a stretch from the marketing docs I’d been writing—I began leaving it at “yes” and showing off my one or two relevant samples as though they were the pick of the litter. As long as I had a reference book I could consult (The Chicago Manual of Style, the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, et cetera), a seasoned freelance friend I could go to with questions, and a sample of how the completed project was supposed to look, I was happy to take the leap.
That said, if you’re utterly devoid of the necessary skills, faking it till you make it is a recipe for disaster. If you’ve never picked up a camera in your life, don’t embarrass yourself by accepting a commercial cinematography gig. One of my most painful gigs in the younger, stupider era of my freelance career was writing a script for a videotape that came with an anti-aging cream some fading soap opera star was hawking on an infomercial. Because I’d once faked my way through cowriting a crappy screenplay with a friend, I convinced myself I could handle writing a sixty-page commercial script. Because the video producer was perpetually drunk, she believed me. To say that I had no idea what I was doing would be generous. My script was incoherent at best, and the producer wound up rewriting every line. Needless to say, I wasn’t asked back to that party.
Paid in Exposure: Slice of Heaven or Pie in the Face?
Here’s my most hated statement in the freelance lexicon: “We can’t pay you, but think of all the exposure you’ll get!”
Throughout my freelance career, I’ve been offered almost as much “paid in exposure” creative work—what I like to call PIE—as work that pays an actual living wage. And let me tell you, at this point in my career the offers of PIE are starting to get a bit stale.
“Too often, some guy with an ‘idea’ and ‘connections’ will want you to do lots of free work, promising you riches later. He’s lying. If he really believed his idea was going to take off, he’d invest his own money in it,” Molly says.
But for every shady guy with questionable “connections,” there’s a reputable webzine, literary journal, art gallery, or rock club with shallow pockets that’s put many a green freelancer on the map. And when you’re new to the writing, performing, or visual arts table, a big helping of PIE can feed your career for weeks, even months, to come.
“When you’re first starting out, that’s what you want,” says cartoonist, illustrator, and graphic novelist Ellen Forney. “You want to get your work out there, in as many places as possible, as many times as possible.”
For example, I’ll write the occasional article for an independently owned magazine I strongly believe in, despite the modest pay. What these magazines lack in budget, they make up for in visibility and portfolio pick-me-ups, so much so that their pages are often peppered with contributions by big-name writers, illustrators, and photographers. In fact, my previous book, The Anti 9-to-5 Guide, stemmed from an article I wrote for BUST, one of my all-time-favorite indie magazines. If that’s not PIE, I don’t know what is.
Of course, for every freebie or low-paying gig that does pay in exposure or portfolio boosts there are one hundred more PIE gigs that aren’t worth the aluminum tin they came in. One telltale sign a PIE gig is half-baked: You