The Money Talks, Day Two: Hourly Rates, Calculation and Confirmation. And Confusion.

As many people have chronicled, freelancing means you are not only your own boss, you are your own accountant, secretary, marketing director, manager, public relations assistant, customer service representative, and intern. You are also that guy who is totally useless but who is so distinctly socially unnerving that no one questions the reason he is ever issued a paycheck. You are generally that guy when no one else is watching (which is what makes you different from that guy) but still. But you know you have moments when you wake up in the morning all cockeyed and unshowered and wander over to your desk vaguely scratching at your armpit and smiling in a vaguely disturbing way at the dream you sort of half-remember. That guy’s in there.

Assorted Professions Hours

Now, I am not going to calculate the value of those professions’ time. Especially creepy guy, because whatever he makes, it’s too much. Furthermore, if we actually figured out an hourly rate for each of those professions, we would discover something we had suspected all along but refused to say aloud in hopes that we were wrong. But we weren’t wrong, were we? No. For we are Legion. Or something. What was I saying?

Oh, yes. Whatever the combined total of the hourly rate for those professions is, you can’t afford it. That’s right. You can’t afford you. You will never, ever be paid enough. This is the fact of freelancing. Welcome to the party. Your much-needed booze is at the bar, where it’s supposed to be, but you probably can’t afford anything, so it’s good that the pub only serves theoretical internet booze, and not the real stuff, or you’d be sadly staring at a bottle of Glenfiddich about now wondering why at least the boss part of you doesn’t get paid a decent wage.

So let us abandon the battle of paying those professions a reasonable wage. In fact, we shall not pay them a wage at all. We shall instead double the wage we pay ourselves for our actual profession. Because let’s face it, you will never, in all your time as a freelancer, be able to issue an invoice that states someone owes you for accounting that you did for your own business. Although that would be a more honest way to go about it, sadly, that is not the way of the world. Which is why we are the Rogue.

Freelancer Hours

You don’t get paid at all for Assorted Professions hours. That sucks. So how much do you get paid for the Freelancer Hours?

Remember the first day of the Money Talks, where we figured out how much money I had to make daily? It was about $230. We’re going to round that number up to a solid $300 a day. Theoretically, I would work an eight-hour day, which would give me an hourly rate of about $35. Except that’s not at all what I need to make by the hour. Because of the Assorted Professions, who all need to get paid too.

Half your day is going to be taken up with work that is not Freelancer work (we’re going to discuss this more tomorrow, but assume for the moment that I am correct. Go on. It won’t hurt you). Therefore you need to make double your hourly rate every time you do billable Freelance work. Half for the Freelancer, half for the Assorted Professions. I told you they were never going to make anywhere near enough money.

So $300, divided by four hours now, is $75 an hour. Which, as it happens, is in fact my rate.

However - and here’s the kicker - this is actually a bad way to calculate an hourly rate. This is a fantastic way to confirm that your hourly rate is in fact going to work for you, but it’s a lousy way to calculate one. Note: do not calculate your hourly rate off of the money you’d like to make. You will screw yourself, because you can come up with a budget (dinglefrapp, for those of you still with me) that is astronomical and justify just about any hourly rate in the world. Which is lovely, but totally useless when it comes to setting a rate that people will pay.

Although I double-dog dare you to try quoting someone a rate of $1,200 an hour and try to justify it by explaining that your Dinglefrapp Plus demands that hourly rate. Go on. I’ll wait. Meanwhile, the rest of us will calculate an hourly rate the normal way, and confirm it with the strategy I just defined.

The Simple Way to Pick an Hourly Rate

Ask around.

I know. It sounds so dumb. I wish I could say “climb a the tall mountain beyond the sunset. You will see a man by a tree. Do not speak to him, or he will kill you. Instead, walk around the tree and talk to the toad on the ground. Say, “Potato salad.” The toad will open his mouth, revealing a pebble shaped like a pomegranate seed (or possibly an actual, fossilized pomegranate seed). Take the pomegranate seed to the original statue of Persephone and stick it into the stone pomegranate in her hand. Then do the hokey-pokey. A dove will fly out of her hair and tattoo a number into your forehead with its beak. That number is the rate you should charge all and sundry for the services you perform.”

I cannot say this. (Actually, I can, I just did. But I lied.) Ask around. Ask every freelancer in your profession you can get your hands on. If they won’t tell you how much they charge - and this is the really smart bit - ASK THE PEOPLE WHO HIRE FREELANCERS. Ask marketing directors, PR people, corporations with a lot of output, hit up every contact you have and ask them how much they paid by the hour.

You will mostly get project quotes, not hourly quotes. That’s fine. Figure out how long it would take you to do the project, divide those hours by the total project quote, and you will have an hourly rate. Yes, I know. You’d think they’d encrypt this information or something, but no, it’s just basic division.

For freelance copywriters, I found that a standard basic industry rate ranged from $50 to $150 per hour. Most of the people up past $100 are seriously famous copywriters like Bob Bly, and I am nowhere near Bob Bly. I’m also not bottom of the barrel. So I was dealing with somewhere between $50 and $100, and guess where I wound up? That’s right. $75 an hour.

And then I made myself a dinglefrapp, and confirmed that $75 an hour was going to meet all my needs.

For the Clever People

Some of y’all are doing the math right now and saying, wait a second. $75 an hour times 8 hours in a workday times 40 hours a week times 50 working weeks in the year IS A SHIT-TON OF MONEY, DUDE. (And by ’shit-ton’ we mean ‘$120,000′. You totally DO NOT MAKE THAT MUCH MONEY.

True. I don’t. Well done, mathematicians. But you have forgotten something, have you not?

Assorted Professions also need TIME.

Tune in tomorrow, where I will thwart you number-people yet again.

Subscribe. I have a bad taste in my mouth from all the math.

Good Editors are Overrated

Usually, when I write copy, there’s a built in editor. This editor is generally referred to as ‘the client’ and really hates it when you make editor jokes at his expense. You are not allowed to get all huffy and ‘artistic’ (which we evidently pronounce with extra ‘ee’ in our ‘tis’, the better to demonstrate the sarcasm that those quotation marks imply) with the editor, because you are not William Faulkner with a brilliant new style of prose and the editor does not have to keep the comma where it is lest the millennium go out having never seen sound, fury, or absurdly long run-on sentences. The client is an uber-editor, and even if he is wrong, he still gets to make the change. Why? It’s his copy. He paid for it. He gets to be the editor.

Self-editing

When I write my own copy, I get to be my own editor. This sounds delightful. Theoretically, myself-as-editor would simply pound myself-as-writer manfully upon the back, offer writer-self a cigar and an inch of good whiskey, and tout me as the greatest thing in English literature since the invention of the word ‘coitus’. Editor-self would overflow with praise for the superbly chosen verb in paragraph three, which so perfectly expresses the unique qualities of my character, and writer-self would shake her head modestly and say, “Well, really, it’s the simplest thing in the world to choose the right words for yourself, but try doing it for another character.” And editor-self and writer-self would share a hearty understanding chuckle, and settle back in large armchairs, loosening their ties.

I am not sure why all my editor-fantasies take place in the roaring twenties, but they do. I believe Dorothy Parker is to blame. I keep thinking of her and Robert Benchley and their editor hatred, and their tiny office of which she said, “One square inch less and it would have constituted adultery.”

Editing

My fantasy, sadly, is not true. I blame myself for not smoking cigars. I cannot edit my own work because I never know if it’s any good. I need an editor. I need at least one other person to bounce a few words off of, else I start to get metaphysical. Is this a good word or a bad word? Is there really a good and a bad? Is there such a thing as a word, if you really think about it? Does the word ‘word’ really connote wordiness if it has to define itself? If you eat a hot dog with no bun, is that an inappropriate breakfast? Who shot JFK? Do my shoulders look square in this shirt? Does one really need to put pants on in order to get the mail? Why is it that you can never use the word ‘biscuit’ in a solemn context? (Try it: the biscuit died horribly in a brutal Nazi attack. Somehow still funny. I do not know why this should be. What is funny, anyway? Is humor simply the rubber glove we put on before the prostate exam?) And on and on it goes.

I need an editor. A good editor steers me clear of words like ‘prostate’, provides a deadline, and fine-hones the edge of prose. When I write something passable, the editor asks that it be made tighter, a little funnier, a little more professional, a little more excited, a little more cowbell. The editor is like that guy who wanders into the kitchen just before a perfectly delicious soup is about to be served out, tastes it, and asks mildly, “Don’t you think just a tad more salt?” (Or tarragon, or whatever. The bastard always knows what the damn soup needs.) Whereupon the cook tastes it, knows that the soup is quite good, but that, damn the man, he’s right. Tarragon it is.

No one at the table would have ever known the difference, but the cook knows, and the guy knows, and since the guy is the one holding the cook’s prize collection of anteater skulls hostage, the cook does what the guy says, secretly resenting him for being right.

Picking an editor.

When it comes to editors, you have three options: good, bad, and average. We’ve already covered bad editors – they’re your clients. Now, you say, using the power of logic at your command, clearly good is better than average, you need not tell me why. Carry on! For I shall find myself a good editor forthwith. But I say unto you Nay, my friends. Nay not. For the good editor will lead you astray.

Good editors

Good editors are scary. Good editors are people who have seen prose that would level mountains in their day, prose that would make Attila weep and Mussolini reach for his handkerchief. Good editors have a fiendish command of grammar and syntax and can recite (with footnotes) any section of the Chicago Manual of Style in a three part harmony while juggling particularly slippery koi fish with their toes. Good editors will, ruthlessly, make your copy as good as it can possibly be without an angel appearing in the blue heavens wielding a trumpet like it means it this time.

Nobody wants to hand their work over to a good editor.

Now, the good editor will make the copy spectacular, it’s true. The trouble is, the good editor is a judgmental bastard. The good editor knows the difference between splendid prose and mediocre prose and he knows with meticulous precision exactly where you fall on that scale, and I will tell you right now it is not where you wanted to be.

The good editor is that friend who, when confronted with the age-old question about the jeans and the relative corpulence of one’s gluteus maximus, will respond not with the gentle, “A little, yeah,” but with “if you simply set aside half an hour a day for exercise for perhaps six months the extra four and a three-eighths inches of flesh on your hips would diminish and the jeans would look quite nice, I believe, at that point. Tell you what, go off for six months and try it and let me take a look at what we’ve got then.”

What we will have then is a fat rear and a couple hundred empty pints of Ben & Jerry’s. You don’t want to ask that friend about your butt. You don’t want to give them the shot. Good editors, I am firmly convinced, get fewer clients than average editors, because good editors do not make their writers want to stab themselves in the face before they would offer up writing to be criticized.

Average editors

Average editors, on the other hand, don’t always know exactly what’s wrong with the writing. They might say it feels a little too moody, or a little off in this section, or that this seems redundant. They don’t know the answer, and they can’t give you any advice on how to avoid getting there, but they can usually point to the section that’s not working, and they can tell you why.

Average editors fix things halfway. They offer a sentence difference that communicates better than your original, but their sample sentence is blessedly mediocre. This gives you, the writer, the chance to translate, to reassert yourself as a master of the craft. The average editor is basically the sidekick to any hero. Remember how Robin would say “Holy Onion Rings in Special Sauce, Batman!” and then Batman would suddenly realize that the answer to everyone’s problems, particularly the Joker’s, was a deep-fried onion ring of crispy goodness? That’s what the average editor does. The average editor does not save the world. The average editor merely offers the random expostulation that somehow triggers Batman into action.

I have an average editor. She’s a great woman, and very smart, but she doesn’t know more than I do about my craft. She can just see it from a different angle, and she can tell me if it looks fat. Which, apparently, it does. I’m going to go fix that. My way. My way, I should tell you, does not involve a half-hour of daily exercise. It does, however, involve onion rings. And Bon Jovi. Aw yeah.

Good editors never let you listen to Bon Jovi.

“Subscribe here and now and in the afterlife in butterscotch heaven, Batman!”

War on English: Homophones Their/They’re/There

They lurk in the silent places. You cannot hear them coming. They are wily and crafty, and if there is anything a rogue fears, it is wit and guile in beings that have no right to it, and an evil intent behind using them, besides. Also, words that sound like OTHER words, which is what homophones are. Such sneakiness is reserved for members of the Rogue Guild, and no others.

It is the evilest of intent behind the homophone. It seeks to sunder the meaning from a word and render it laughable. And it is laughable. I, for one, will mock it roundly. Commencing thusly.

There their they’re

A devilish trio, these, and perhaps the most notorious of the homophonic coven of havoc. The young folk in particular are guilty of mistaking any one of these for its evil sibling, relying on the sound to convey the purpose. This is a mistake, for anyone knows that if you give a homophone a vowel he will go and take the whole goddamn phonic, and there is no dealing with a word like that.

Their

Their is possessive, clutching subjects to itself. “That’s their box of half-eaten Spam and no, I don’t know why” or “Their children sneeze too loudly.” Grabby little word, their, always taking hold of objects and giving them up to unseen persons. Accusatory, too, pinning the blame elsewhere. This may be why their is rarely mistaken for its fellows, though its fellows are often mistaken for it (goes round and round your head like a bad night on Vicoden and Guiness, doesn’t it). Also, it’s hardest to spell.

They’re

They’re is a riotous word, a contraction in fact, a gleeful shortening of ‘they are’. It chatters incessantly. It wants to spill the secrets. They’re is, in fact, a gossip of a high order. “They’re going to the movies and they’re sitting in the back row.” “They’re coming, hide the marshmallows.” “They’re going to smell like tuna now, you watch.” They’re confuses the hell out of most people, perhaps because of the chattering, or the apostrophe. It’s hard to tell.

There

There is the most distant of the three, quiet and placid. It can be found, often, over there, in a place that is not this place. It is perhaps the most deadly of the three, for it is easiest to spell, and most frequently is taken for the other two. “There is a house,” it says softly, “over there.” And just as you look to see what it meant, it’s off taking they’re’s place in a description of the previous evening’s antics.

They’re taking their tares there.

Everyone got that? Good. What about this one?

Their taking there tares they’re.

See the problem? See how it just DOESN’T MAKE SENSE? The homophones are silent and deadly, like certain kinds of gas (hm, second fart joke in as many days. I should never have read that Mike Myers interview). They will stink up your writing like nothing else. We shall be adding more soon.

5 Smart Things to Do When You’re Going to Abandon Your Blog for a Time

In advance, I realize I have done none of these things. However, as the wise man said, sometimes we only know what we should have done in retrospect. Of course, the other wise man said, Try not. Do or do not. There is no try. And I think we can all agree that wise men who are puppets beat out wise men who are men any day. Therefore, here’s all the stuff I should have done before taking a leave of absence from the pub.

1. Tell people.

This is smart in most situations. Not, obviously, if you intend to rip off a bank. Or throw a surprise party. Or fart in a crowded elevator. Or if you see Sally Bowles’ mother on the street directly after seeing Sally herself in one of the most dazzling burlesque reviews in the German World War II circuit. In those situations, as Ms. Bowles tells us, mum’s the word. However, if you are about to disappear off the face of the earth and you don’t want to stand your bloggers up, you should probably let them know about it.

Did the rogue do this? No.

2. Plan posts for the nonce.

Nonce is an amazing word, and we should use it more often. For one thing, it rhymes with ‘sconce,’ another delightful word and surprisingly lovely decoration not often encouraged by today’s overhead-light loving set. For another, ‘nonce’ indicates ‘for the duration’ in a much more pleasing, romantic way. If I had planned posts, ‘for the nonce’ would have described my absence beautifully. For the nonce, please enjoy these delightful posts I have prepared with my own two delicate hands for you, I might have said. And you would have swooned both at the lusciousness of my prose and the exquisite construction of my posts, and not noticed my absence in the comments at all.

What actually happened was more like ‘while you fucking left us’. As in, ‘while you fucking left us, there was nothing to read and we contemplated drinking all your booze and peeing in the corners of the pub.’ You don’t say stuff like that with ‘for the nonce.’ Try it. ‘For the nonce, please enjoy trashing my pub.’ It doesn’t work.

Did the rogue plan for the nonce? No, she fucking left you.

3. Ask someone to blogsit.

This is a cooler way, I think, of saying ‘guest post’. It’s more or less the same theory as house-sitting. You get to come in, make use of my space in whatever way so pleases you, and as long as you don’t annoy my neighbors or burn the place down, I’ll thank you for keeping an eye on things and making sure Brett keeps his kilt right where it’s supposed to be.

Guest posts also neatly eliminate the necessity for number two, if you are so inclined. You can even still use ‘nonce’. Try it. ‘For the nonce, please enjoy the verbal stylings of my friend King Writacular.’ Works a treat.

Did the rogue ask someone to blogsit? No, because the rogue does not ask nicely. After the rogue was done asking, her intended guest-poster was weeping in a puddle of jam and eggnog. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.

4. Plan something really cool for your comeback.

If Cher went on tour again (and oh, you know she will) and she didn’t bust out the most ridiculous outfits you had yet laid your eyes on, would you not be horribly disappointed in Cher? Would you not demand something with absurd amounts of fringe and a hat to make the good women who attend horse races cringe? So would I. Similarly, your return to the blogging stage ought to come with sparkles and spangles and other sp- beginning words. Spaghetti comes to mind. Your reappearance should be dripping in spaghetti. The oft-cited Incident of Calvin & Hobbes would not have been the glory that it was without the spaghetti, nor would it have required capitals.

The Spaghetti Return. That’s what your blog comeback should be. Or spork. Ooh, sporks. Spinach? No. Definitely not spinach. I hereby forbid everyone from returning to blogging with the word ‘spinach’ in their post.

Did the rogue use the word ‘spinach’ in her comeback post? She did.

5. Become Cap’n On It.

I have a devil duck whose name is Cap’n Onit. This is neither here nor there, but I feel you should know that the name has been put to good use. Once he conquered Florence (true story). At any rate, the name Cap’n Onit arose because, as the name implies, he always was.

On it. He was always on it. Keep up, people.

Which is what you should be when you return to blogland. Every day a new post, every day new glories. Which is the single only item on this list to which I shall be adhering. Since it is also the last item on this list, I shall feel I have done well. I am Cap’n Onit, people. New blog posts all the week, including tomorrow an entry into the War on English, because we all know the bloodshed between the grammarians and the text-messagers is what pays the electric bill around here.

Is the rogue on it? She SO is.

One extra special bonus DON’T for leaving your blog.

DON’T come back to blogging, post one tantalizing promise-I’m-back post, and then disappear for another week.

Did the rogue – shut up. I don’t want to play this game anymore.

Subscribe. I’m back.

Dirty Laundry in the Writing Room

I figured out why I couldn’t write. It was because of all the goddamn laundry strewn across my computer.

I used to have a fantasy about this, actually. I had this awesome writer’s fantasy that I would string up a clothesline in a room, and clip pieces of my novel to it, and move them around in a cool and artistic way, and that other people would come into my room and be all impressed by it. I’d stand there in between the clotheslines, looking contemplative, moving one section to another part of the clothesline, and sip a glass of whiskey looking wise and put-upon, grumbling how no one understands artists. It was a good dream. Very Warhol-esqure of me.

The execution turned out to be a little bit sloppier and a hell of a lot less productive. Also, it did not involve me looking wise and contemplative, and there was no whiskey to be seen. It was a raging failure. I am never going to get to be Hemingway this way, people. Seriously.

I have personal issues. I am not going to talk about them here, because come on, y’all come for the funny and the occasional misuse of the word ‘mojo’ (are there any wrong uses for that word, really? I think not). Let us just say these were personal issues worthy of being called dirty laundry. In fact, they might even be worthy of being called dirty underwear. Oh, yes. That kind.

I didn’t realize it, but these issues were aggravating my writer’s block. I had the giant writer’s block (which, if you’ve never seen it, actually looks like one of those wooden child’s blocks with an A and a T and a duck and a 6 and a flower and a 4 on its various sides, except that it weighs a ton and every half an hour or so, a little jester-type creature pings out of the top of it and bitch-slaps you). On top of the giant writer’s block, I had laundry. You would think that the laundry would merely be a minor annoyance, but you would have underestimated the jester. The jester used the laundry for cover. He would hide beneath it and stealth bitch-slap me before I ever saw him coming, and then he would duck behind a pair of jeans and use a wayward thong to block my return blow, all the while saying unkind and unfounded things about my relationship with sheep.

Now, I made an error. My thought was if I could beat the writer’s block, then I would have time to deal with the laundry. This was stupid of me. The writer’s block, you see, looks like a more daunting task, but the laundry nags and nags at you until you can’t focus on getting rid of the writer’s block. Dealing with writer’s block when you have dirty laundry is something like trying to meditate on an anthill. It can be done, I’m sure, but it’s dumb when you could just move your butt on over to a hill with no ants in it.

So I took the weekend off. I neglected the blog (my apologies, all). I stopped beating my head against my web copy. I went out, talked to the people I needed to talk to, resolved some issues, and wandered out toward Sunday evening feeling pretty damn good about life. I scrubbed all my laundry up, y’all. No skid marks on my skivvies. Bleach and fabric softener and those useless little dryer sheets (what do those even DO, besides stick to your sheets and scare the bejeezus out of you when you slide into your freshly made bed?). Everything was shiny and clean and hung up and smelling faintly of lavender.

Then I went to tackle the writer’s block. Without any laundry to hide behind, that jester didn’t have a chance. I snatched his grinning little face out of the air the second he appeared, and then I ate him.

Yes. I ate him. What? He deserved it. Sheep, my left pinkie toe.

Now the writer’s block is no more, and my laundry is done, and I am here to tell you that unresolved issues make your writing suck.

Also, that jesters evidently taste like chicken. Or chicken tastes of jesters. Whichever.

Subscribe. I’ll make a vegetarian of you yet.

Sonnets Are Sexy

This is true. Nothing you say will deter me on this point. There is nothing sexier than the rhyme and meter of a sonnet, particularly when transposed to the modern day. I am about to make a point on writing in general and how you can take a little lesson from the sonnet when you feel all restricted about the structure many of us are forced to follow when writing, say, guest posts, or articles, or web copy chock full of keywords.

Before I do that, however, I must prove my point. To wit: three modern sonnets that are sexy as hell. None of them are Shakespeare. I figure you had enough of high school when you were in high school. Won’t make you do that again, much as we do love Big Willie. Plus, I doubt any of you are writing in Old Elizabethan English, because if you were, I would have to skewer you for using creative spelling. I realize there wasn’t a formal dictionary in Shakespeare’s day, so I would not dream to correct the Bard himself. Or Milton, for that matter. If I see anyone who was born past 1933 appending extra ‘e’s to words whence they do not belong (yeah, that’s right, I said whence) I will hurt them badly, and dance upon their grave here in blogland, under the heading “The Vanquished Terrorists of English.”

Why 1933? First person who can tell me gets a pony.

Right. So. Modern Sonnets. I defy you not to get all hot and bothered by the time you’ve finished these.

Sonnet

This is for the afternoon we lay in the leaves
After it had been winter for half a year,
And I kissed you and unbuttoned your jeans
And touched you and made you smile, my dear.
And of all the good things that love means,
One of them is to touch you there
And make you smile, among the leaves,
And feel your wetness and your sweet short hair,
And kiss your breasts and put my tongue
Into the delirium between your soft pale thighs,
Because the winter has been much too long
And soon will come again, when this love dies.
I will hear sermons preached, and some of them be true,
But I will not regret that afternoon with you.

C.B. Trail

Yeah, you thought you’d be bored by now, didn’t you? Suckers. I started you off with the easy one. Here’s another one, by the good Kim Addonizio.

First Poem for You

I like to touch your tattoos in complete
darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of
where they are, know by heart the neat
lines of lightning pulsing just above
your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue
swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent
twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you
to me, taking you until we’re spent
and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss
the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until
you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists
or turns to pain between us, they will still
be there. Such permanence is terrifying.
So I touch them in the dark, but touch them, trying.

Kim Addonizio

You and I both know I’ve already won this bet, but here’s one more, not specifically about sex, just to bring home the point that sonnets are sexy regardless of subject matter.

The Desire Manuscripts
V. In the Mourning Fields
(The Aeneid, Book Six)

The world below is starless, stark and deep,
and while you lay beside me, my golden bough,
plunged in the shadowy marsh of sleep,

I read about the infernal realm, and how
a soldier walked forth in the House of Dis
while still alive, breaking an eternal law

by braving death’s kingdom, a vast abyss,
the ground sunken in fog - eerie, treacherous -
guarded by a mad beast, three-throated Cerberus.

Tonight I read about us - foundering, hopeless -
in the Mourning Fields and the myrtle grove,
wandering on separate paths, lost in darkness.

It is written that we were consumed by love,
here on earth, a pitiless world above.

Edward Hirsch

(Note to the authors of all these poems - I am not intending to disrespect your copyright laws, just sharing the love. If you want me to take ‘em down, by all means, say the word. I linked people to Amazon for your books, though. Trying to increase the poetry readers in the world. Don’t hate me.)

Now then.

What the hell do sonnets have to do with copywriting?

The English majors among you are just itching to get down to the comment box, where you are going to inform me that none of the above are technical sonnets, because they casually break some rules of strict meter. Hate to ruin your fun, but this is about to be my point, and I need it to prove to you that the sexiness of sonnets is relevant, so you’re out of luck. Feel free to rant anyway, it’s just that you’re going to sound silly now. Sorry ’bout that.

The above sonnets continue to follow the basic rules of sonnets - fourteen lines, specific rhyme scheme, and more or less correct meter. The reason the poets get away with breaking some of the rules is because they are versed enough (heh, writing puns) in the rules of a sonnet to break them, gently, so that neither you nor I notice until we go back and start counting off syllables on our fingers. Which brings me to my first point.

You can break the rules if you know what the rules are.

In copywriting, there are basic rules. One of the obvious ones is: Use correct grammar. However, this rule can be broken, and not even the immense wrath of the Rogue will befall you, if you know what you are about when you use incorrect grammar. For example, I can say the following:

Sonnets bring with the sexy, dudes.

And none of you are going to freak out, though ‘bringing with’ is not a recognizable thing to do with sexy under anyone’s formal rules of grammar. This is slang, and it is used for comedic purposes, and I am allowed to do it because I know what I’m doing. If my entire blog post were composed of slang like that, you would all want to beat me over the head and tie me to my skateboard and send me rolling back down the hill to groovyville where I would belong. Since I do know what I’m doing, you just rolled your eyes and let me be. See how you’re still reading? You wouldn’t be, if I didn’t know what the rules were. You’d be all pissed at me, and you’d leave and never come back, and I’d be sad, because then who would debate gender bias in my comments? The pixies, that’s who. And they don’t even have genders.

You can break the standard rules. You can put more text on a web page than is recommended if you know what you’re doing. You can break rules of grammar, of sentence structure, and of formality. You cannot do any of that if you don’t know what the rules are to begin with. You will sound like an idiot, and you will sound like an idiot who does not know what he is doing. If I misuse grammar on this blog, you all know that I either did it because it’s a casual turn of phrase used conversationally (because this is a pub, not the platform of the inaugural address) or because I am being hilarious.

Laugh it up, denizens. Ain’t nothin’ but a butter biscuit.

If you sound like you are following the rules, you are going to bore us all.

One of the things I love about Addonzio’s sonnet is that I damn well did not realize it was a sonnet until I hit the last rhyming stanza. That is some skills, y’all. (Looky there, did it again. Breaking rules left and right today. I must be a grammatical genius.) The best sonnets are not so obviously sonnets that they beat you over the head with it. Poets should not so painstakingly follow the rules of sonneting that doing so compromises the flow of their language.

Same holds true for copywriting. If you are writing a keyword-rich article, and someone tells you the best length for a paragraph is 200 words and the optimal number of times you can use the keyword is once per paragraph, you are going to sound a damn fool if you adhere to those rules so strictly that it compromises the copywriting. This is a rookie mistake. There’s a lot of copywriting strewn about the web right now that is technically correct. Problem is, it sounds dumb. None of the writers is paying attention to the way it sounds. They’re too busy trying to get the right number of words in the paragraph.

Listen to the way your writing sounds. Read it out loud if you have to. (Note: I would not entirely recommend reading those sonnets out loud at the office. Just a small piece of advice from me to you. Unless you work in a sex shop or something. In which case, I just upped your chances of selling something battery-powered. You’re welcome.) If your writing would sound better if you bent one of the formal rules of your chosen genre, then by all means, bend it. Wrench it sideways. Contort it into Cirque de Soleil. Then read it out loud again. If it sounds good, I guarantee you no one is going to care that you broke a formal rule.

Why? They won’t even notice you have broken it. It’s crazy how that works. If you are skilled enough, your bent rule will sound so natural that unless you have the anal editor from doom on your hands, they won’t pay your contorted, backbending, pretzel-twisted rule any mind at all. And even then, evil editors from doom often know from good writing.

Sonnets are crazy sexy.

Just felt like reiterating that. If you want your copywriting, or any other kind of writing, to be crazy sexy in a similar fashion, though not so rhymey, go ahead and bend a few rules.

Go learn what the rules are first, though. You cannot gently bend rules if you don’t know what they are. You are liable to bend something else by accident, like a gerund. And nobody likes a bent gerund, do they?

Subscribe. I’m bringing sexy sonnets back.

eBooks and How to Shun Them

I have been resisting the eBooks. Mostly this is because I am inclined to write them as though they were some new invention of the Apple folks, like the iPod or the iPhone or the iWantToSeeTheLetterICapitalizedAgainFortheLoveofMoses. I consider the e-something revolution to be akin to the i-something revolution, and no good can come of this, people. It was only a matter of time before people were sending text messages and emails saying things like ‘i lost my monkey.’ Do we really want this to happen to the beloved e? I ask you.

Not that ‘e’ needs to be capitalized as often as ‘i’, but it is a slippery downward slope we’re walking. eventually it’ll be ‘a’, and then ‘u’, and - OH MY GODS it’s starting already! Did you SEE that?

Right. So. The eBooks. I was holding to my righteous stance, here, people. It was blasphemous. An INTERNET book? No pages to twitch? No smooth paper, no old typewriter style font set? No resting book on knees while consuming prolific amounts of cheese and chocolate? Oh, no. I was pure. Steadfast in my love of the smell of leather and old ink. Devoted to the path of good.

The Temptation of the Rogue

Nick Cernis came out with the delightfully named Todoodlist, which sounds simultaneously like a fun organizational tool and an cyborg titillator, a la Jude Law in A.I. I don’t know that Nick particularly wants that association, but it is there, in my head. Nick’s promotion of this eBook indicates that there is a chapter entitled, and I would not joke about this, Zen Kitten in a Box. Who am I to resist a Zen Kitten, much less one enboxed? I ask you. The Todoodlist also affects to help you “embrace simplicity, rid your life of complexity, (hm, lost me a bit there, chaos being so much a part of the rogue life) AND “discover fun new ways to be productive with paper.” Oh, sweet monkey G. PAPER? Stuff I can do with PAPER? And a ZEN KITTEN? Wants it, the precious.

I resisted the Todoodlist, standing reeling in the desert heat, my mind yearning to give in.

The Pen Men have Writing for the Web, a guide for people who want to launch a writing career. Um, yeah, say you. Aren’t you doing that? Wouldn’t this be old news for you? Yes. Yes it would. It attests to my love of the Men when I say that a) I suspect they have been holding out on me advice-wise and know something that I do not, which is why everyone loves them more than me, including me and b) that it would be worth the money just for an enjoyable read, even if I have already done everything they know how to do. The book is for new writers who need a break getting into the industry, and I wanted a piece of that, because I prey upon the weak and the innocent. Well played, Men. Well played indeed.

I shunned the lures of the Men - O! the Men! - certain I would be rewarded for my steadfastness. My skin was peeling away in the heat and I was too exhausted to breathe.

Christine O’Kelly has How I Built a Profitable Freelance Business for Under $50, and if there is anything the rogue is a sucker for, it is things that cost less than $50. I thought this would be an easy resist, since a title like that tends to scream scam (sorry, Christine) but unfortunately, the delightful Dave Navarro of Rock Your Day wrote a review that said, in essence ‘page 17 got me more clients than I could shake an Italian sausage at,’ and I thought damn you, Navarro. Now I am Pandora’s box level curious. What the hell is on page 17?

With a superhuman effort, I did not ask to see what was on page 17, and the Devil let me be, bleeding, sunburned, and delirious, crawling on my knees out of the desert.

And then the Magdalene came.

Naomi Dunford, of IttyBiz, is releasing her eBook today. I do not know what it is about. I suspect it is how to run a kick-ass small business, which is what I hired her to tell me how to do in the first place. She’s really great at it. Naomi is a behaloed goddess of get-shit-done, and she does not beat around the bush when she is telling you what is smart, and what is not, and which is which, and how she knows, and why it will work, and why you should just do what she says, seriously, because it works, damn it. She is fantastic at small business advice, and she has, apparently, written it down. How can I resist the glory that is my ultimate nemesis in BOOK form? It is the two things I love most, nemeses and books, in one shining body of glory. How can I resist her?

I can’t. I am falling from grace. I’m totally buying it. And all the rest of them, actually. If I’m going to fall, I am falling hard. You should come with me. I hear it’s heaven for climate, hell for company.

Addendum. Her eBook is on SEO, and now I need it even more, because I am damned if I understand SEO at all. Sweet Christ. It’s like she KNEW. Here’s the link to SEO School.

Subscribe. I promise never to pretend to be major religious figures again. Well. Maybe Kali. She’s kind of awesome.

Phoning it in.

Can’t talk. Writing. Back tomorrow.

“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.”

- Neil Gaiman

Mourning Grovers.

I’m sure everyone’s wondering what the hell happened to me this morning. Me too. I am wondering. You see, when I first moved into my new house, I was delighted to find there was wireless all around me. One in particular was very strong. It was called Grovers. I loved Grovers. My desk corner lived and basked in the glow of Grovers’ free wireless. And it was good.

About a month later, someone got greedy. Some other dude started to download tons of stuff off Grovers. He was the kind of guy Napster worried about, and Grovers slowed to a crawl. I was sad. The owner of Grovers was sad. And he put a lock on it.

Now, I respect that. If you are freelining off someone else’s wireless, it is common courtesy to not use it for crazy downloads. For one thing, then the owner catches on right quick. I kind of want to catch downloading dude and give him some rogue lessons, because even I knew what he was up to, and I suck at technology. Every time Grovers’ owner and I would be happily checking our email on the speedy Grovers wireless and suddenly, without warning, everything started to freeze up, we knew he was there. Not subtle. Bad form.

So Grovers’ owner putting a lock on his wireless was the only smart thing for him to do. The sad thing was, this left me without wireless. Which is when I discovered something about my new house.

No wireless box.

I couldn’t get the wireless. There may be a box hidden somewhere, but it might be up in the boarded up haunted attic. It might be in my neighbor’s side of the house, since I’m in one half a duplex. Figures. I get the giant ugly water heater, he gets the wireless box. ‘Course, I got the claw-footed bathtub, and I think really nothing trumps the claw-footed bathtub. Unless it’s a butler like Jeeves, but that’s a dream I fear I shall never realize.

Oh, Jeeves. Why do you not appear every morning with a cup of the revitalizing liquid to soothe my pain? You would fix the wireless, Jeeves, I know you would.

Here’s the problem with a Rogue with no wireless: I’m a horrible insomniac. I do some of my best work between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. Guess when the internet cafes close down? No, really. Guess. I want you to.

So I have to solve the wireless problem. Five hours of lost potential work time isn’t acceptable, and (just to bring it back around to you people) it often means that I can’t put up a new blog post on time. Last night, I spent two hours trying to get the measly linksys signal I can sometimes tap into to work. No dice. Either I’ll have to get dial-up or I’ll have to go bang on my neighbor’s door and see if we can’t share his wireless box, and he might be one of those guys who isn’t inclined to share. Though he’s kind enough to share his secondhand pot smoke with me on a regular basis through the wall, so maybe I’ll get lucky.

Anyway. That’s what happened to the blog posting. I’ll write it earlier today and get it up before the cafe shuts down.

Twitter. The Honeymoon is Over.

After the ridiculous lovefest that was yesterday’s post, I feel I owe everyone a round of snark. So we set forth into the anticlimactic linkfest that was Twitter.

Everyone was talking about the Twitter. I read the Wired article and made a noise that sounded very much like “Pleh.” I read the New York Times article and felt justified in my snobbery (bless you, NY Times, for indulging my superiority complex). And then I got to blogging, and it all went to hell in a handbasket. James and Harry were talking about giving in to the Twitter. Naomi was talking about how NOT to use Twitter, and when Naomi lays down a gauntlet like that, you are honor-bound to pick it up and smite her briskly across the face with it. In the most loving way possible.

The point is, while I may not be a sucker for the printed media, I am evidently easily persuaded by the digital bloggery. Twitter became that guy in your class who you hadn’t thought was cute until you realized everyone else had a crush on him. I caved. To Twitter I went.

In the Beginning

All was sweetness and light. Twitter said delightfully funny things, it introduced me to all the people it knew. We talked for ages, in little 140-letter vignettes. The Twitter cared about my business and helped promote my blog - so sweet. The Twitter wrote me haikus. It is possible this is because the Twitter was incapable of sonnets, but I was not to be troubled by such trifles. I was enamored. I braided daisies into crowns and sang love songs, people. The Twitter was so good to me.

Then There Was Turmoil

Twitter stopped communicating with me. Someone would send me a message and three minutes later I’d get it. I would find myself with only part of a haiku that I was sure had a preceding part, but I couldn’t find it, and Twitter couldn’t find it, and the Tweet ‘and then fell off a snow bank’ really needs an introduction. I realized very suddenly that Twitter possibly had a drug problem, or was off its medication. I would have been concerned, but the other problem was that I was getting tired of the Twitter. Its conversation had ceased to sparkle. It was repeating stories it had told on our first date. It was boring me to tears.

Then There Was Smiting.

Twitter started to boot me randomly out of the house. Other people too. The Tweet galaxy was all full of people calling into the blackness. “Hello! Are you there? I’m not there. I’m here.” We began to sound like bad Emily Dickenson imitators. “I’m Tweeting - in the Twhirl. Are you - Tweeting here - like me? Are we both - fucked - and speaking - to no one? - Stupid Twitter. I - want bacon.” Then Twitter got all passive-aggressive decided it couldn’t handle my shenanigans and wiped all my old Tweets, which was really just uncalled for. It started to play games with my head, and then I would yell, and it would go off and sulk and not talk to me for days, and we continued in this destructive cycle, neither of us willing to admit that we were just not meant to be. No we were not.

Then There Was the Flood.

I dumped the Twitter. We had a lovely little affair, but it was just one of those things. Just one of those nights. Just one of those magic flights. And now I’ve begun to quote Cole Porter, which just goes to show how damaging this relationship was. It hurts a little still. Inside.

I may sometimes go back to the Twitter, but it will only be to use it shamelessly for blog promotion. Yes, it’s cruel to do to an old flame, especially when you know it secretly still wants you, and you know perfectly well it can’t have you back. That is just the way it is, though.

On another note: Heading over to the Twitter randomly for the first time in about a week, I discovered that James does not, apparently, love me every day. Why, James? How can this be so? What day was ever a wrong one with me?

That’s the other thing about Twitter. It’ll rat you out. Is it any wonder I dumped it?

Subscribe. Lambasting to be continued.