Finding the balance

I’m in that exciting and sort of terrifying phase directly after a bunch of assignments are down and before the next several have been deemed worthy by almighty Zeus (all editors are Zeus … you knew that, right?). Which means I’m in full-on pitch mode, hunting down stories, gently (or not so gently) jabbing Zeuses in the ribs, committing myself in print to wild adventures that give me a surge of writerly adrenaline and give me that queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’ve noticed this cycle in the past few years. I’ll have a crazy thought in the shower (“man, wouldn’t it be something if I just went to Medellin?”). Which becomes a self-dare that I immediately back down from. Only it lingers. And then, just hypothetically, I sit down and figure out how it might play out. Which gives life to a little rush of ego that forces my hand swiftly to the mouse to purchase plane tickets. All of it followed by the oh my god fear of actually doing whatever it is I’ve  just committed myself to. My method of digging up stories, in other words, is pretty much the same method frat guys use to goad each other into doing coke.

So that’s where I am right now. If you’re doing this freelance thing for a living, the idea is that you’re always supposed to have work. You’re supposed to get the timing down just right so that new stories get off the ground just as old ones are being edited. That’s a hell of a hard balance to find. For example, my last round of pitches netted a story that came in at 1500 words. Cool. And then another pitch I’d sent out months before came back with an exciting 2500 word assignment. Groovy! And then another of the pitches from that latest round came back with a 3000 word story. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a hell of a nice problem to have. But all of a sudden I’m drowning in work. My brother was visiting, we had plans, and it led to a lot of stress and plenty of long nights.

So how do I avoid that? Is it possible to avoid that? Isn’t that sort of thing good for the writerly constitution. Answers: I don’t know, ditto, and no. More on that in a minute.

One obvious way to gain some stability is to land regular assignments from a handful of editors. I’m just starting this freelance thing, so I’m just now etching the mortal contact information of immortal Zueses into my little black book (should I drop the Zeus thing?).

Another sort of obvious approach (though this might be tougher) is to not be so jr. high excited about every story idea I start to develop. I don’t mean I shouldn’t be excited about every story (Christ, easier ways to make a buck, you know?). But I think I need to learn to prioritize pitches. I need to sit down with the, say, five ideas I’m developing. Maybe two of those stories are time sensitive, either because of the subject or because I’m working around a contact’s schedule. Okay, this is easy, give those priority. Send them out and wait a spell. That, of course, is the tricky part: how do I resist sending out the other three with the same urgency just because I’ve got a few days of down time?

So far I haven’t been able to do that. Sending ideas into the abyss of blind submissions is sort of like putting a note in a bottle and hucking it into the ocean. There’s some initial excitement, some hope, possibility. But then it’s like, wait, that’s a big damn ocean. And then the doubt sets in. And if I’m sitting on three other pitches in a moment of doubt it’s tough not to load those into their own bottles. And maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world, but it means I need to be prepared for the possibility of having a lot of work all at once. Again, worse problems to have. And I don’t mean to sound whiny. But when it starts to feel like a piece might be suffering, might be getting short shrift, then I’m not meeting my obligations to Zeus or (and I’m going to get hokey here, but also serious) to myself. I want to be a writer known for busting my ass, for working harder than the next guy, for delivering the best possible writing I’m capable of. And I want to have time to get inside a story, to approach it from a few directions, to find the spirit in the thing and figure out the best way to bring that to the fore. I need to maintain a work schedule that allows me to do that.

Anyway, short story long, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. But I’m doing it, and it’s working out, and as much as an equilibrium is possible in this gig, I’m going to find it. I’ll let you know when I do. Hail Zeus.