A few years back, David and I had just set up shop as music teachers and the new kids on the local gigging block. We had recently moved into the community, and were trying to make inroads: We did some advertising, we introduced ourselves at the local music shops (and spent money, too), we sent letters of introduction to [...]
Archive for September, 2008
Getting Gigs
Posted in Creative Communities, Music, Performing, tagged getting gigs on September 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I’ll Write This Post Tomorrow
Posted in Musing on Creativity, Writing, tagged deadlines, procrastination on September 9, 2008 | 3 Comments »
The best way I know to get all my housework done — vacuuming, kitchen floors, laundry, even the garden’s overdue weeding — is to give me a deadline. Not a housework deadline, a writing deadline. I don’t know what it is about writers and deadlines, but I fall smack in the middle of the stereotype. I’m anticipating [...]
Little Stuff, Big Problems
Posted in Business Issues, tagged small business permits, special permits for home businesses on September 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
We like to think of our homes as our castles, but when it comes to self-employment, we may need to think again, especially when our activities involve noise (garage bands, trumpet or drum practice), lots of people (rehearsals, recording studio business, music students, consulting clients, group classes in anything), or traffic (see prior list; add [...]
The Grass is NOT Always Greener
Posted in Business Issues, Freelancing on September 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This post is about the economic benefits of self-employment. Yes, you read that right. And no, I haven’t lost my mind. True, our incomes can fluctuate like a seismograph on a bad day in Iceland. And yes, we’ve got health insurance premiums and business insurance fees and business taxes and that damned Social Security self employment tax. My mother [...]
Everybody’s Famous in a Small Town
Posted in Creative Communities, Music, Performing, tagged Me and Julio on September 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Today, David and I got to play for an audience that included three cows and a goat. Sheffield, Massachusetts is one of the towns that borders on ours, and today was its annual town festival. We were one of a number of local groups asked to play for an hour, so we carted the electric piano and guitar over, dashed [...]
More Thoughts on “Can Do, Can’t Teach”
Posted in Teaching, tagged can do can't teach on September 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I ‘ve been thinking more about the whole “doing-teaching” thing, maybe because this week was the first week of the school year, and I’ve got a bunch of piano students trickling in after a summer spent doing everything under the sun — EXCEPT piano. Those of us who choose to teach — acting coaches, writing [...]
More on Exposure: When Working for Free Makes Sense
Posted in Business Issues, Freelancing on September 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Just yesterday I wrote what my blog software counts as 858 words (http://tinyurl.com/5o47ac) about how working for free — for so-called “exposure” – is not what you want to be doing when you’re trying to make a living at your craft. Ironically, no one paid me for the work of writing those words. So today I’m [...]
Deadly Exposure
Posted in Business Issues, Freelancing, tagged Freelancing on September 2, 2008 | 9 Comments »
I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of e-mails that begin: “Dear Karen, we’ve read your (pick one: blog, website, books, magazine articles, Internet stories) and we think it would be terrific if you wrote for us, too. We can’t pay anything, but we’ll include a link to Amazon for your books, and [...]
Sowing Seeds: An Artist’s Law of Attraction
Posted in Business Issues, Creative Communities, Freelancing, tagged Law of attraction, Sowing seeds, volunteering on September 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“Sowing Seeds” is a phrase David and I use to mean “put your energy out into the world.” Our expectation is that if we keep on doing our best work and putting it out there, that good things will come back to us. Call it the “Artist’s Law of Attraction.” We attract back to us the energy that we put [...]
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