Building a Sustainable Definition of Success, Cont.
A friend of mine is on the edge:
“Inevitably, it seems that these days someone is always annoyed with me and my inability to do things faster. And I’m annoyed with myself, but also my life at large… I have a new short film that I want to campaign around, but…. I have two porn films that I have the green light for, but…I have a literary agent but haven’t written any pages of my book-to-be… Teaching at Rutgers is taking up 20+ hours of my week, and I’m sinking under the pressure…I can’t get to my email in a timely way… I’m making enough money to live, but not enough to feel stable… I need to take up projects that will yield something more concrete (like cash) instead of prestige and good press clips… I think this is a cry for help.”
Yesterday I posted a link to Harlan Ellison rant about the expectation to get paid, and how, in the arts and entertainment world this is (sometimes) seen as being a bad sport, or worse.
I posted it because it reminded me an awful lot of the very good advice I got 20 years ago when I was getting ready to leave the photostudio where I had been an assistant and associate photographer and go out on my own. In my case the message was delivered sans crude language and abrasive demeaner (my mentor was/is a gentel and devote born again Christian, and yes he knows all about my films and thinks they’re great, ) but the message was the same — people are going to try and make you feel like you don’t deserve to get paid, don’t deserve to make a living because you’re doing something you love, and that’s bullshit.
He also told me that the quickest road to failure was to not charge enough. How much is enough? It’s actually pretty easy to figure out:
“Add it all up; your business expenses, your taxes, your rent, your car, your insurance, food, clothing, recreation, savings, all of it. Every penny that you spend/save, and every penny that you want to be able to spend/save. Don’t be stingy. Think about the houses that the people how are hiring you live in. Think about the cars they drive. That’s how much money you need.
“Now figure out how many days a month you can actually bill for. Not days you work, days you can bill for. Be conservative. If you’re a one-man band, every billable day is probably going to have two or three non-billable days of work to go with it.
“Now divide. There, that’s your dayrate. Not one penny less. That is your dayrate. If you charge one penny less, you are you own worse competition, and you can’t win.”
You can’t win, because unlike a factory that can just make more widgets, if you are an artist or writer can just make more hours.
If you’re not charging enough, the more you work the further behind you get, until one day you look around and say, “Fuck this. I am working too hard for too little. I can’t do this anymore” You quit, and all your talent, all your sacrifices, all the hours you’ve devoted to your dream are gone.
Which brings us back to the quote at the top of this post. The quote is excerpts from Audacia Ray’s latest blog entry at WakingVixen.com.
I met Dacia about two years ago, and it was clear to me that she was on her way to being one of the brightest lights in New York’s new wave of sex-positive thinkers. Since our first lunch together Dacia’s produced and directed an award-winning film, written a well-received book, completed a master’s degree at Columbia, helmed an award-winning magazine, and about a zillion other things. In short, Dacia isn’t just successful, Dacia is very nearly a force of nature.
But unlike a force of nature, human beings need to eat. Human beings need a warm, safe place to sleep. Human beings get sick and need to go the doctor. The fiercest storm can roar in, remake the world, and then blow itself out.
That fine if you’re a storm, but maybe not such a great strategy for a human being. Storms don’t have to think about where they want to be in a year, in five years, in twenty years. Human beings do. Most especially if you’re human being who wants to be an artist, writer, or other creative professional.
But I’ll save my thoughts on that for another post, a post tentively titled, “I’m Not Talking About Rockstars or Professional Athletes.”
June 11th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I know exactly what you mean. i feel …well, guilty isn’t the right word… but sometimes when people who don’t like their jobs see/hear me doing/talking about mine, it’s awkward. I think that maybe i feel a little sad for them. I’ve tried to keep my rates competitive while not screwing myself out of making a living, but when someone tries to wheedle me down, i politely, but happily, tell them to fuck off. The clients think that they’re ‘negotiating’, but it’s just being cheap. they’re not offering to give anything else up, they just want the same service for a lower cost. do they think that they could do that in a restaurant? at the grocery store? Um, NO. And that won’t float with me either. It is HARD to refuse work …until you sit down and do the math, like you included above. You eventually learn that if you take shitty jobs, you find yourself working at shitty jobs! (what a revelation) Bottom line, If you don’t establish a value for yourself, nobody else is going to pay you what you’re truly worth. (sorry for the rant, but you hit a nerve!)
June 11th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Hello JoAnna, and welcome!
I’ve always admired cooking and comedy because, unlike so many other forms of “art”, there is so little room either discipline to bullshit your audience. I ate your food. It tasted bad. I left hungry. You cooking sucks. The end. You told a joke. No one laughed. You told another. No one laughed then either. Get off the stage.
And yes, it is hard to turn down work, especially when things are tight. But that’s when it’s most important, which could take me into a long rant on the idea of living below your means as a way to commit to both artistic vision and financial success. But I’ll save that for another day!