The Daily Journal

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

There's a really lovely piece in today's WSJ: "The Power of Daily Writing." It's about a man who's been journaling since February 24, 1964.

His first entry began:

“I have decided to be a writer. I will it, thus: I am a writer. Now—by definition if for no other reason, writers are distinguished chiefly by the fact that they write. I must write—two hours a day until I finish school.”

On day 27 of my endeavor to blog every day this year (I already missed one day, but, oh, well), I've found the process to be most beneficial.

Here are a couple tips I'm learning along the way.

Start early

Do your writing early in the day. It's easier to access the unconscious that way. You will tend to write faster, better, and from the heart. As the day goes on, your willpower to resist revealing yourself grows stronger, and you lose your connect to the dreamscape of your psyche.

Make it matter

There's no point in writing every day if you do so without bravery. Write about things that make you feel imperiled. Make a fool out of yourself. Confess secrets. If you never risk anything, you're not evolving, and if you're not evolving, your wasting your time on this planet.

Experiment rigorously

Yesterday I posted a comic I drew on a dry erase board hanging in the garage. The comic took me maybe 20 minutes to do, and after I photographed it, I erased it. That allowed me to create, but in a way that seemed to use a different part of my brain. Because I write so much, seeing something externalized visually was newly cathartic. Also, I thought the comic was sort of embarrassing and crudely done, so it was good to share it, despite its lack of perfectness.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Drawing as Therapy

Haha I'm an artist

"Haha I'm an artist"

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I was having a hard time getting started writing today so I went in the garage and made this on the dry erase board.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

In the Depths of Winter

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. —Camus (via Clayton Cubitt)

About five days ago, I stopped eating sugar. I don't eat a lot of sugar, or sugar-like things, but I stopped it altogether. It was making me crazy, having all that crap in my system. Now I feel about 50% less insane.

Since, my dreams have been much more vivid. In most dreams, I'm dying. The cancer has returned, the cancer is in my heart, death is inevitable. The dreams aren't about "cancer" or, really, "death," for that matter. They're about dying. In the dreams, I'm always managing the process of my mortality.

The project upon which I'm spending most of my time is focused on a kind of resurrection. You go into your past, you dig up the bones, you sift through the dirt for whatever you've lost. You mourn, you wonder, you move on to the next hole. You get tired from the shoveling, but it seems like some part of it is worth it: the shedding, the unpacking, the letting go.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Work Advice from Halston

Halston.

"Halston."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I went and saw this Halston show today. Obviously: very fly. The thing that struck me, being in proximity to the pieces, is how relevant they are to what we're doing. The acronym: KISS. Translation: Keep It Simple Stupid.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Failure Is Inevitable

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

You said it, Backhoe Failure Meme Generator

Tragically, I forgot to blog yesterday. Originally, I set out to blog 365 days this year. Yesterday, I failed to do so. Although, after setting my goal for the year, I realized it was a leap year, so I can still blog 365 times this year. Regardless, I failed in the consecutive department. Disappointing.

Relapse is part of recovery

I guess addicts use this to differentiate between I AM WINNING and I AM FAILING. The truth is that you're probably doing either neither or both at any given time. I figured I would probably forget or fail to blog at least one day this year. And that's exactly what happened. It's not an anomaly. It's an inevitability. Accept it.

Success happens when you set yourself for it

I set myself up to fail. I didn't automate my blogging. I didn't pick a daily time to do it or pick a daily time by which to do it by. A couple times, I almost forgot. A pattern emerged of nearly not doing it, and I didn't act quickly enough to change the pattern. If I'd decided to, say, blog every day right after I woke up, or blog every day by noon, or had the word BLOG tattooed to my forehead, I wouldn't have fallen from my consecutive days perch after 21 days.

Meditate on mindfulness

I've had a good amount of success in the past from meditating. Just 10 minutes a day, prone wherever, thinking as hard as I can about nothing. This is a way to give your mind a break and reset itself so it doesn't go careening off the side of the road and run into a tree and eject you into a lake. I resumed meditation today. I will meditate 10 minutes a day. You should, too.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Automate Everything!

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I've become oddly obsessed with automating shit in my life lately. Oddly because I'm not a robot, and I mostly think the whole quantification hack zone is a bog of absurdity. That said, I've had wild success improving my credit rating over the last several years in part due to automation. In 2010, I actually didn't have a credit score. I didn't have credit cards, and I guess this just meant I was not even in the credit zone. But in part because I went from paying bills late to auto-bill pay, I now have a credit rating of like 758 or something. You know, it changes a little, but it's somewhere around there. How great! How unlike me. Credit card companies now up my credit limit. Who would've thought such a thing was possible.

In any case, for the last couple weeks I've been walking around trying to automate other shit in my life. For example, last year was a real failure in terms of body management. Like, I worked out inconsistently and I followed a good diet inconsistently and I did these exercises I have to do inconsistently. This isn't good because I don't want to get sick again, and it means sometimes I feel like shit and sometimes I don't, but mostly it means that I feel like I don't have any control over anything, most importantly the meat within which I'm encased. So this week I prepaid and prescheduled some Pilates classes, and I'm hoping that will help. I also walk. Which is better than you'd think. If you can manage to get yourself out of the house.

Thanks to my friend Damon Brown for mentioning this blog in his Inc. column recently: "5 Simple Ways to Kill Procrastination Today." I was entranced with this line by James Clear: "Find ways to automate your behavior beforehand rather than relying on willpower in the moment." Willpower is like trying to harness the wind, so I guess I'm trying to take the guesswork out of everything. But I have to say, I am currently failing at taking the guesswork out of writing or creative production, which feels like herding chickens, only the chickens are made of words, and they are covered in a thick sheen of Crisco. In addition, I failed to get a Forbes post up last week. Admitting this is me trying to shame myself into getting it done. 

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

How to Blog Every Day

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I almost forgot to blog today. In fact, I was in bed when I realized I had not yet blogged. So I got out of bed to blog.

Some days, I write a "B" in ink on my left hand to remind myself not to forget to blog.

I'm blogging 366 days this year. It's only day 20, and I have 346 more to go. (It's a leap year.)

It appears that I've been following Rule #12 of Manifesto of a Doer, which I discovered on This Isn't Happiness today.

To wit:

"Sprint. Rest. Sprint. Rest. Human's get more done in bursts followed by rest. Getting things done isn't about who does the longest hours, but who does the smartest hours."

Lately, I've been very, very smart.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Walking Is Like Meditating

Walk

"Walk"

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I went for a walk today because I try and do a walk almost every day and many days I fail but I keep trying. On Friday and Saturday I got a lot of work done on this book proposal I'm working on and Sunday I had a headache so bad that I spent the day in bed. By Monday the headache was lingering around the edges and then leaving.

Today was the first time that my head didn't feel like splitting open like Zeus birthing Athena straight from his skull which must've been painful for him but thankfully Hephaestus was there to help him and I almost had like a hangover from the headache.

Eventually I decided to go for a walk where there were clouds and trees and some otters that barked and hissed at me from under a bridge while I half-dangled myself over it to watch them.

I get some of my best thinking done when I am walking, I think. At this point I was able to go through the part of the book proposal I'd done piece by piece and put it together like a quilt and better visualize how it works as a totality.

I wondered while I walked home if you can think more clearly in this situation because everything shifts in perspective and you are not the god in front of the machine but the tiny figure moving through the world which is so very very big.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

This Is for the Ladies

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Yesterday, I blogged about art, and the other day I came across this comic I did years ago, "My, My American Bukkake Too."

There's a "My, My American Bukkake" comic I did somewhere, I just need to find it. Then I should scan it and upload it.

I can't really draw, so I made this comic using photos I took on the set of a bukkake porn movie shoot that I went to in the San Fernando Valley.

Reading the comic today is pretty weird. It's sort of terrifying, and in a way still totally relevant, and makes me appreciate my ability at that time to not really give a fuck.

There's this idea floating around that women aren't funny -- at least in part because they're not willing to make themselves look stupid.

Sometimes, I suffer from this problem. I know there are times when I've done improv and hesitated because I was thinking, Are my pants going to fall down if I do that? Or some shit like that. That gap = awkwardness = The Not Funny Valley.

After I took the photos from the bukkake shoot, I uploaded them onto my computer, and I ran them through this Photoshop process called Stamp, and then I did what I referred to at the time as "messing with them," which is to say I took out some of the white, and I shaped some of the shapes, and I added back some of the black. Then I added the text. And, voila, a comic.

Of course, today, I can see all the things I would've done differently. The images are sort of too small and squished in some ways, and the white on black writing is practically unreadable, and I don't like how some of the prose is sort of poetry-ish.

But whatever. When it comes to bukkake comics, it is what it is.

I think if a young female journalist asked me for advice -- mostly, I just hear from guys in India who want to be porn stars -- I would tell her to make a lot of mistakes in public.

Be dramatic. Do insane things. Imperil yourself. Lose your mind.

Don't be this guy. Be this guy.

Or, better yet, be this chick.

Stop worrying about content and what your dipshit peers will think and who you may or may not offend on social media and whether or not someone will google you in the future and give you or not give you a job because those jobs will kill your soul anyway.

All of those things are things you don't need in your life. They are the things that come from without, not from within. And that's what matters: What's inside of you. That is the stuff of you.

Everything else is bullshit and a waste of time in a short road that we call life that dead ends in the cul de sac of death.

Go bravely to it, not as a coward.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

The Artist

My art.

"My art."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Years ago, I did some comics that were in some anthologies. I made this drawing on a dry erase board last year. I should make more comics. It's a good way to think more about images, and less about words.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

What It's Like to Be a Writer

Aries is best.

"Aries is best."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Fail, fail, fail, fail, avoid, avoid, walk, eat, nap (briefly), google, Twitter, Facebook, google, Twitter, Facebook, blog, rage, eat, weep, listen to music, watch TV, sleep, try, try, try, try, frustrate, cajole, negotiate, dwell, ruminate, have an idea, reject the idea, write, have an idea, reject the idea, write, write, write, delete, have an idea, talk on the phone, Instagram, surf, walk, eat, sulk, lie on the floor, feel dramatic, read This Isn't Happiness, have an idea, write, delete, delete, delete, stare, dissociate, read The Smoking Gun, self-flagellate, give up, recommit, sigh, feel ambivalent, feel dizzy, go to bed, eat, go to Pilates, run errands, pray, stare at small bronze ram with little curved horns, read horoscope, review writing, decide to write a novel, decide not to write a novel, give up, try, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, go to bed, eat, watch TV, talk to shrink, fall asleep, open mind, catastrophize, walk, feel determined, feel unsure, feel cocky, renounce writing, text someone, call someone, feel zen, watch a movie, pass out, get up, do it wrong, try again, do it wrong, try again, do it wrong, become enraged, try again, do the opposite, think counterintuitively, wonder if has got it, think maybe has got it, feels like has got it, isn't sure, checks, sees has got it, knows has got it, week ends.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

The Three Secrets to Creative Success

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

How to get creative? It's not easy! Here's how three recent movies I saw can inspire you to become a better creator.

Be ruthless

You know the "family" scene near the end of "Sicario"? The one where something unspeakably bad happens? That's how you should be: ruthless. You will only succeed in realizing your creative dreams if you annihilate anything that stands in the way of realizing your goals.

Be crazy

In "Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story," a crazy children's book author and artistic pervert reveals that growing up under Hitler, turning into a completely anxious person, and taking a lifetime to locate your homeland is the key to being an imaginative maverick.

Be alone

The fact of the matter is that if Matt Damon had never become "The Martian," he never would've had the experience of growing potatoes in his own fecal matter. To really focus on your best use, it's important that you give yourself the time and space, both mental and physical, to really hone in on your creativity and express yourself fully.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

How to Answer Emails Efficiently and Effectively

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I keep getting these emails from men who want to be porn stars.

I want job more many so my choice in porn star job in I'm interested

I don't know what to tell them.

I want to became a pornstar kindly reply me soon my contct no is [redacted]

They always sound so desperate.

my name is [redacted] iam india from lucknow
i want to work pron films. plz help me i like sex

A lot of them are from faraway places.

I LIKE DOW SEX HOT I LOOK GIRL FOR SEX

Half the time I don't know what they're talking about.

Hi
How i can to be a ponostara

Maybe they just want to feel less alone.

i can do any work regarding sex and dirty sex ,i m clumsy too about sex , becouse in sex , i cant imagine in sex time , what i m doing ,sucking pussy is my best ,secondly whatever girl women wants from my side

Maybe they want to feel like they're a part of something.

i want to join this group

Maybe they want to escape their lives.

i join in porn star male passive partener i need fully money so plz mail me

What am I supposed to say to them?

Message: hello,
i want join porn videos plz contact me
this is my dreams and i want my father is heard patios i don't have money pls pls pls contact me ?

This is their American dream.

HI MY SELF [redacted] . IM FROM PAKISTAN . I DON' KNOW WHAT HAPPENING TO ME WHEN EVER I FUCKED A WOMEN SHE WANT AGAIN AN AGAIN AND SHE LIKE MY COMPANY . SO MAY BE I THINK I MADE THIS TYPE OF JOB .SO THATS WHY I WANT TO JOIN YOUR TEAM . PLEASE CAN YOU GIVE ME ONE CHANCE THEN I WILL PROOF MY SELF. THATS MY CONTACT NO [redacted] .THANKS ALOT

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

The Best Notebook That Fits in Your Pocket

Gotta go.

"Gotta go."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Lately, I've gotten really into these Moleskine notebooks. I like them because they come in cool colors, they fit in the palm of your hand or your back pocket, the hard covers make it easier to write in than notebooks with soft covers, and they have a little elastic waistband around the end so your pages won't get all squished. Throw one in your vehicle's storage compartment so you'll always have one on hand.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Finding Sources That Aren't Full of Shit

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Awhile ago, I interviewed Bay Area entrepreneur Cal Caliente about his Slomocup, a cup that can be used for drinking, well, anything -- or, you know, lean.

We've kept in touch since, and every once in while, when I have a question, I'll ask Cal for his insider knowledge.

For example, recently I read online that people were purportedly butt chugging lean. Was this true? I wondered. Are people really butt chugging lean? I had to know. I poked around online, but I couldn't figure out if butt chugging lean was a real thing or a hoax.

"do people really butt chug lean?" I DM'd Cal on Twitter.

"Lol wow," he responded. "Probably kids." He added, "16-."

Generally speaking, I've found that, whenever possible, journalists should avoid entering through the front door. Don't interview the CEO; seek out the janitor. Most publicists are professional cockblockers; cuntblock them and forge your own path. The appropriate channels are the death of true exploration; zigzag to create new connections in unlikely places.

The side door is the only way to figure out if you've got a story -- or if it's full of shit.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Procrastinate Better!

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about in medias res journalism that I'm working on improving my blogging game at Forbes, where I've been underperforming.

As a Forbes blogger, I'm required to post a minimum of five times a month. For several reasons, I was procrastinating, waiting until the final days of the month, and then doing them all at once.

Here are some ways I'm resolving my procrastination problem:

Set the bar low

I've asked myself to publish one post a week this month. That's very doable. So far, I'm on track.

Make yourself accountable

This blog helps me hold myself accountable. Without it, the failure is private. With it, procrastination will lead to public humiliation. Faced with a choice between doing it and admitting to not doing it, I'd rather just get it done.

Figure out what your procrastination is telling you

I really enjoyed a recent post by my friend Damon Brown at Inc.: "Why Procrastination Is the Key to Your Business." Typically, we pathologize procrastination. Damon suggests otherwise:

Procrastination is usually viewed as the absence of work (and, therefore, the loss of profit and productivity), but what if it was a compass to your true calling?

Damon says you should ask yourself: "What are you doing now that you're doing to prevent you from going back to the work you claim to enjoy?"

For me, the answer is: blogging.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Eat It, Wear It, Write It

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

The other day I wrote about undertaking in medias res journalism. On Friday, I posted that piece on my Forbes blog: "I Tried the Best Burger in America." I'd say I wrote about 80% of that post on my iPhone while I was sitting at the bar in the restaurant. Then I added in some details, cut some stuff, and smoothed some sentences before uploading it.

Here's what worked:

It helped me focus on the narrative

And that, of course, was the moment at which the doors opened, and we rushed inside like the pack of carnivores that we were.

It helped me focus on the details

At the grill, a young woman with a face like a sphynx started laying out thick bacon slabs and perfectly formed burgers.

It helped me focus on how I felt

 At Au Cheval, one doesn’t so much eat one’s burger as attack it.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

This Horse Is Taking a Piss

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Titles. They're important! Yesterday, I wrote about how I like doing series and find they're more likely to be successful because you don't have to spend so much time recruiting new readers because you have regularly returning readers, and it occurred to me that I'd titled the series you're reading right now "365 Days of Blogging," which is quite possibly the worst title ever. It tells you only about the process of the series and nothing about the content of the series, which is how to be a better freelancer.

So, I'm going to retitle my 365 Days of Blogging in 2016 project "Flogging the Freelancer." I picked this title for several reasons. It was either the first thing or one of the first things that popped into my head, and I'm a big fan of going with your first impulse, unless your first impulse is, "Drink that bottle of Clorox bleach." I also like the word "flogging," which, according to the dictionary, means "to beat or whip (someone) severely," which works well because freelancing is like beating yourself severely on your way to success, which is great if you're a sadist, a masochist, or a switch-hitter. Also: alliteration! I'm a fan.

Here are the three S's of titling:

Steal!

My epic longform investigation of how the Great Recession impacted the adult film industry, "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?", is a revision of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", a movie based on a novel about a dance marathon during the Great Depression.

Short!

"A Girl and a .22" is a Forbes post that I wrote about learning how to shoot a gun and how it helped me overcome something horrible from my past. The title's juxtaposition of femininity (girl) and masculinity (gun) creates a curiosity-inspiring pull for potential readers.

Shock!

I wrote a very odd, surrealistic short story over a decade ago now called "Gangbang Tango." At least for awhile, the story ranked high on Google searches for my name. I'm not sure why, but I assume because people google "gangbang" and who could resist clicking on that.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

How to Get People to Click on Your Links

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

At certain points in my life, I've been paid by big companies to help drive traffic to their websites. At Forbes, contributers like me (aka bloggers) are paid by how many people read our blog in a given month. Here's a look at how I've helped generate traffic for my most-read Forbes posts.

1. The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star, 1,869,326 views

"The most difficult part about being a male porn star is the hard-on."

This is my most-read post on Forbes for several reasons: it's provocative, it's apparently something men around the world sit around googling every day, and it's informative. The title is a sex joke (see: "hardest"). The subject is catchy (see: "porn"). The take is original (see: what could possibly difficult about being paid to have sex with women for a living?). Plus: screw aggregation. I actually bothered to do some original reporting.

2. What Porn Stars Do When the Porn Industry Shuts Down, 1,037,780 views

"There is so much more to this job than just having sex on camera."

Provocative. Original reporting. Googleable. This post did better than I thought it would. Every time there was a moratorium on shooting in the industry, that fact would be blared across national news sites, but no one seemed to be wondering what the hell the performers, crew members, and producers were doing to keep themselves afloat when they couldn't work. It's not enough to get the story. Get the story behind the story.

3. Why You Shouldn't Be a Writer, 351,413 views

"Just because you can write doesn’t mean you should."

Writing is like photography. Everyone who picks up a camera thinks: Oh, I can be a photographer! You can take a picture, but that doesn't make you a photographer. It just makes you a person with a camera. Nowadays, anyone who can string a few words together can declare themselves a writer, but writing doesn't make you a writer. In this case, I spoke truth to the lie. Sometimes being willing to let people hate you is the answer.

4. How to Sell Yourself, 348,705 views

"Think of 'you' as a superhero version of yourself."

This post could've been titled, "How to Be a Hustler." Apparently, most people suck at selling themselves. They don't have enough distance or objectivity or shamelessness to turn themselves into their own used car salesman. People need help. Readers like to take something away from whatever they read, whether it's an emotional experience, a new insight, or interesting information. This post is "service-y." Be of service.

5. How Much Do Strippers Make?, 340,403 views

"[W]hen it comes to talking income there’s a general tendency amongst strippers to stay vague."

This post was part of a series of posts that I did on the strip club economy. I like doing series. (You're reading one now!) It keeps readers coming back for more. This technique was also successful when I did The Letters Project, which people loved. A clever, unicorn-like series can help you keep your readers returning.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Stay in Your Lane

Liz.

"Liz."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

At one point in my career, I started describing myself as a "photographer."

I am not a "photographer." I am a "writer."

Stay in your lane.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.