Door Number One
By Sutton Stokes
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Born American, and first generation on one parent's side, I was raised on a heady brew of myths and convictions about the possibility of self-invention, reinvention, and starting over fresh.
Most of us know the basic idea. Medical degree from the old country not valid here? Buy a secondhand coffee grinder and rise to the top of an empire of airport-lobby espresso-cart franchises.
Born in a log cabin? Study hard and become president.
Getting restless managing the paint factory? Walk out and head for the literary salons of Greenwich Village.
So it was that in March, after a lifetime of avoiding the inevitable, I hung up the day job and committed to supporting myself as a freelance writer. This was not an entirely drastic move. My three years as a researcher at a university education department had involved a great deal of writing and editing. Along the way, my work had seen print in the form of the occasional freelance music review or essay. Still, none of this felt as satisfying as—I imagined—it would feel to be able to say that I make my living as a writer.
The freelance part is born of necessity. Namely, after a year of applying to "no experience required," "entry-level" reporting and staff-writing jobs, I have learned just how many resumes cross the desks of hiring editors in this tight job market. It's only reasonable that their culling process eliminates those of us with no journalism degrees, no journalism internships, and mainly college journalism experience. Frustrating, but reasonable.
A year ago, or even six months ago, I considered this circumstance an insurmountable barrier to making my living as a writer.This is because I was a bit of a snob, and until recently never considered the possibility of writing anything other than highly literary journalism—well, maybe a little journalistic literature here and there, just to make ends meet. This tells you how rude my awakening would have been, had I ever actually gotten one of those cub reporter jobs. Still, at least that job title would have made me feel I was getting closer to my goal.
I rethought my prejudices early this year, after a bleak period of unemployment and an even bleaker temp job with a financial services company.
I realized a couple of things.
First, as a general rule, no one was going to treat me like a writer if I didn't start doing so myself.
Second, as picturesque as the stories are of the Kafkas and Eliots and Williams's, who led literary double lives while holding down grim, workaday jobs, lifestyles such as theirs wouldn't be compatible with the type of work I hope one day to do.
In short, I realized, if I wanted to be a writer, I needed to start living like one. And if I wanted to grow as a writer, I needed to take whatever steps I could that would allow me some measure of control over the rhythm of my days, weeks, and years. Anything else would be wheel-spinning.
But how to make my bread-and-butter money along the way, in such a famously low-paid pursuit?
Commercial copywriting had been suggested to me here and again over the years. Feeling that there couldn't possibly be any satisfaction to such work, I’d never considered it. This time around, I pulled out a phone book. I knew that writing for an ad agency probably wasn't an option for me, since I have no background in sales or marketing, but I do have a background in education. I decided that the first phase of my reinvention would be as a freelance writer specializing in education.
The yellow pages held forty-one entries that sounded promising. I opened a spreadsheet on my computer and started making a list.
That was a month ago. Now, after 207 cold calls, 111 emails, and a dozen mailings of requested portfolio materials, I think I'm starting to get a feel for this whole self-reinvention thing. As a future project, the idea felt bold, romantic, and glorious, perhaps because I was looking past the process and toward the fantasized result.
The process, meanwhile, turns out to be unpredictable in ways that can leave you feeling desperate and sweaty.
Take Mrs. Tremayne, who called me late one Friday evening to talk about some graphic design work for her new coffee shop.
Mrs. Tremayne had been one of my cold calls. As with most of those calls, I didn't speak with Mrs. Tremayne personally, but instead left a message. Out of all of those messages and calls, there had been perhaps a dozen flickerings of faint interest, and exactly three returned calls.
Needless to say, then, I was surprised to hear from Mrs. Tremayne.
I was also surprised to hear her mention a coffee shop, since I'd built my cold-call list around the field of education. But Mrs. Tremayne wasn't calling regarding her educational consulting business, she was calling about her new coffee shop. Once I got past this confusion and understood that she was calling to offer me work, my heart soared.
"Do you do graphic design work?" she asked.
My heart sank.
I don’t, I told her. My heart kept sinking as Mrs. Tremayne went on to explain that she and her husband just needed a designer to help them finalize their coffee shop's logo. It didn’t sound like this was a project I could even pretend to be qualified for. Still, I decided to let it play out a little longer.
"Well,
I don't do design work, but I know a couple of designers I can check with,
see what their schedules are looking like…" I know exactly
one graphic designer, from bartending with her at a local arts center.
Then, I asked Mrs. Tremayne the money question (or what seemed, in my
limited experience, like the money question): was she planning any marketing
pieces for the restaurant, like brochures, mailings, or ads?
"Well, yes, actually. We're trying to get concessions inside stadiums and malls, and we'll need a whole promo packet. Why? Can you help with that?"
I assured her that I could, and we arranged a meeting for the following Friday.
Hanging up the phone, I felt less like a writer and more like the mastermind in a heist movie. All I needed was the naked light bulb hanging over my desk in the corner of a dingy warehouse space, with crates of ill-gotten equipment piled behind me and a diverse crew of professional criminals looking on. Who was I, after all, to help with a coffee shop's marketing campaign?
In the final analysis, I've decided, it's the answers to questions like this one that are the key to the whole self-invention process. I'm at a crossroads. I can decide that of course Mrs. Tremayne is lucky to have found me, or I can decide that since I didn't know at the age of eighteen that this is what I wanted to do, since I didn't major in communications, since I don't have a piece of paper proving that I understand teasers versus benefits, or the difference between net cost and net unduplicated audience, that I'm just wasting Mrs. Tremayne's time.
I'll take door number one, for now. After all, if I lose my nerve so early in the game, just imagine what they'll say back at the paint factory.
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Sutton Stokes is based in Baltimore, where he writes, messes around with an old sailboat, and maintains the website www.marginrelease.net. He can be reached at sutton@marginrelease.net.
©
2004 Me Three