So, you turned the work in on time. Or your book or photo or article has been published — and the expected checks and statements haven’t arrived. The path from submission to payment can be labyrinthine, but for the purposes of this article (getting paid what’s due), we’re going to skip through all of those gnarly [...]
Archive for November, 2008
Show Me the Money: Getting What’s Due
Posted in Business Issues, Copyrights and Contracts, Freelancing on November 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Show Me The Money: Proactive Defense
Posted in Business Issues, Freelancing, tagged contracts, payment on November 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
So you’ve got a new gig, and you have checked the ad pages (the magazine looks healthy) and the place’s reputation (you haven’t learned of any problems from colleagues). What next? Sorry to say, icky business stuff. None of us likes this part. We want to believe that if we do the work and the work meets the [...]
Show Me the Money: Avoiding Problem Payers
Posted in Business Issues, Freelancing on November 26, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I tend to believe that prevention is the best cure for a whole raft of problems in life, including hypothermia, jet lag, and deadbeat clients. I’m not going to claim that every deadbeat wears a neon sign, but some of them do give us plenty of warning. It’s our job to heed it. Keep tabs on your regular [...]
Show Me The Money: Intro
Posted in Business Issues, Freelancing on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“Short on Cash? The 10 Bills You MUST PAY NOW — and Three You Can Let Slide” I’m sure you’ve read some variant of the above article in the last couple of months. In this economy, a lot of folks are strapped for cash, so prioritizing bills makes sense if you can’t pay them all [...]
Silver Linings in Stormy Clouds
Posted in Business Issues, Freelancing, tagged freelance strategies, recession on November 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I’ve been getting a lot of hits on some of my recent posts focusing on the economy: http://createworklive.com/2008/11/17/magazine-death-pool-i-couldnt-make-this-stuff-up/ http://createworklive.com/2008/11/15/carnage-in-the-publishing-world/ The volume and interest in these topics have gotten me thinking more about what’s going on and how to make the best of it. Here’s how I see it: It’s going to be tough to get [...]
The Best Career Decision I Ever Made
Posted in Freelancing, Musing on Creativity on November 21, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I still remember my parents’ reactions, 30 years ago, when I declared I was going to major in piano. You would have thought I had announced a death. And in a way, I had: My decision was seen as nothing less than career suicide. I had started out as a pre-med, not so much because I [...]
Update on Lori Hall Steele
Posted in Uncategorized on November 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Many of you responded to the blogathon to help writer Lori Hall Steele, who was paralyzed with a mysterious nerve disorder earlier in the year. Lori Hall Steele died yesterday at the age of 44. Here is a link to her obituary. http://www.record-eagle.com/local/local_story_325105009.html Please know that your contribtutions have helped save her house for her family, [...]
Surviving the Recession
Posted in Business Issues, Freelancing on November 20, 2008 | 3 Comments »
The economic gurus seem to have a time-warped idea of what constitutes a recession: By the time they get around to declaring that we’re really and truly in one, it seems that they’ve missed the boat. Sort of like the weatherman who finally tells you it’s going to rain when your umbrella is already inside-out and you’re soaked to [...]
Magazine Death Pool: I Couldn’t Make this Stuff Up
Posted in Uncategorized on November 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
More bad news on the magazine front (in case you thought my previous post – http://createworklive.com/2008/11/15/carnage-in-the-publishing-world/ — was too negative). http://www.magazinedeathpool.com/magazine_death_pool/ The problem, in my view, is that these magazines may be failing in part because of the economy, and in part because of competition from the Internet, but the Internet isn’t really going to [...]
Travels: San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize
Posted in Travel Writing, tagged Belize, San Pedro on November 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Here in New England, it happens in November: The sky slams shut, a gray curtain descends, and the trees turn into scraggly brown sticks. (In the interest of accuracy, I should report that there are two white pines and at least a half dozen paper birches in view outside my window; the overall effect is, nonetheless, brown sticks.) [...]
