Finished my day of corporate work. Needed to do something from a mag. Went to grab a drink. Got a great line in my head to kick off an entirely different article. Procrastinated from the thing I was supposed to be doing by writing the frame for the other piece, which I’ve just done a count on and discovered it’s ~50% of what I’m supposed to file, and it all came out in about ten minutes. And it all works.
I’m not sure other writers have this problem, but one thing I’ve never been able to shake is a nagging feeling that if I don’t spend enough time on something, I’m somehow cheating the recipient out of their money, regardless of the quality of what I produce.
Of course, when you’ve been doing this for 25+ years, people are paying for your experience – your ability to craft a story. My editors couldn’t give the tiniest shit if I spend five hours or five minutes on a piece if it’s good.
@craiggrannell Yes; this is a facet of imposter syndrome, and pretty much all writers experience at some point and to some degree. Sometimes it seems to me that the more "successful" a writer is, the more imposter syndrome eats at them.
@medievalist Yep. I’d not really tied it to that, but of course it’s the same thing. I wasn’t educated in writing – I just fell into it. So I still live in the certainty that at some point, I’ll be ‘found out’, as though 25 years of experience in the field is somehow worthless.
My wife, with slight exasperation, reminds me of this now and again. And then my brain resets and goes into anxiety mode. But what if THIS TIME they find me out?
@craiggrannell That's an interesting thought. I used to write for so many outlets that I sort of assigned a standard amount of work effort and average the pay across projects. In some cases, as with the Economist, I might do 15 interviews for a story and spend 20–30 hours writing it, but they paid commensurately. In others, it was one or two interviews (or none) and a few hours of writing.
@glennf I have averages knocking around too – ideally, I don’t want to spend more than X hours/days doing work I’m being paid £Y for. Even so, if I blaze through something and it’s good, the nagging doubt creeps in.
Someone else responded that it’s part of imposter syndrome, and that sounds about right. Close to a quarter century doing this stuff and still my brain’s all “Yeah, but what if THIS TIME they find you out?”
@craiggrannell It's true! Although based on my work in the 90s, I should probably make $200/hour for my time today and I am…not near that. That's not for a 40-hour week (I always factor in overhead). But let's say 25 hours of very productive billable time should be ~1,250 hours of work a year…
@craiggrannell Because you live in the glorious land of socialized medicine, retirement benefits, and mandatory paid vacations (not sure how that would work for a freelancer, though). We work probably 1/3rd of the year to pay healthcare costs, insurance and out of pocket. I know you pay, too, but it's scaled maybe more appropriately within taxation.
@glennf Freelancers don’t get paid vacations nor things like parental leave. When the govt tried to ‘equalise’ the National Insurance Contributions, I wrote to my (Tory) MP, saying I thought this was a GREAT idea and adding that I assumed this would mean equal benefits for people like me, who got no paternity leave when my daughter was born. Alas, my timing was such that the policy was dropped before he replied, and he was all I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS.
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