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3 ways out of the declining writing market
A friend of mine was a thriving freelance writer looking to escape. His situation made me think of my own experiences with freelancing. Rates were always low, competition was always cutthroat, and clients rarely ever saw value in hiring somebody creative. Now, AI has blown the door open. Fortunately, writing generally is also a great…
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Most things won’t go anywhere…
So you need to either commit to making an important project go somewhere by promoting it constantly. Or you need to use it as a reason to make more work. If a hypothetical 10% of your work goes somewhere, then making 10 projects mean one goes somewhere. But if you make 100 projects, then you…
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The timeline of change
A lot of change happens on its own timeline. You can push, pull, and prod at it, and yet rushing it is like honking your car’s horn in gridlock traffic. Most times it just takes the time it takes. There are still many decisions in your control: What’s not in your control is when the…
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Momentum
Before Terry Crews became an actor, and after he played in the NFL, he took on gigs to make ends meet. One of these was as a security guard on movie sets, where he worked 12-hour shifts. While he didn’t have time to go to the gym, he improvised. He jogged in place for an…
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What’s your work worth?
Not to everybody else. Not to the marketplace. To you. Does it provide purpose? Does it bring you pride? Does it give you energy for everything else in your life? “Your art is already doing a lot for you,” Beth Pickens writes in Make Your Art No Matter What. “Can you consider the radical proposal…
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Pay to play vs. paid to play
At a conference, one person will pay $20,000 to get on stage and speak. Another person doing the same thing will get paid $20,000. What does the second person have that the first person doesn’t? There are at least three things: In other words, the organizers of the conference recognize the second person as a…
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No optimism, no business
“It is your optimism, your belief, that created the shop and that keeps it alive. Should you lose that, then the business is done,” Peter Miller writes in Shopkeeping. He opened his self-titled bookstore in Seattle in 1979. If you read Peter’s book, you’ll quickly find that shopkeeping is a craft just like any other…
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Desire vs. drive
A desire passes. “Oh, that is so cool,” you say. A strong desire may even consume your mind for a few days, but eventually you forget about it. A drive is more like a compulsion. “I need to do that,” or “It has to be this way,” and you can’t stop thinking about it for…
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The two wolves
Nearly a decade ago, I shared a parable at Lifehacker: The native american grandfather tells his grandson that there are two wolves inside of him, fighting for control. One wolf, is the wolf of love, peace, and kindness. The other wolf is a wolf of greed, hatred, and corruption. The grandson asks, “Which wolf will…
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The sign vs. the signal
The person running a motel can hang a sign saying, “luxury hotel,” at the front. That doesn’t mean anything if nothing about the motel changes. The description doesn’t match the product, and people will quickly see through that. The person running a luxury hotel doesn’t have to hang a sign saying anything. They can just…