Editor’s Note: This is a guest blog post by Laura Orsini.

Prosperity takes many forms, from money to love to relationships. A prosperity mindset is one in which we embrace abundance, welcoming it into our lives with open arms, as opposed to a lack mindset in which we worry about not having enough, not doing enough, not being good enough. However much we work at overcoming our lack perspectives, occasionally our human nature takes over and we fall into that feeling of uneasiness, worry, or fear. This lack perspective can rear its annoying little head in many different ways:

• “If you succeed, I’ll fail.”
• “If someone hires you as a speaker, they won’t consider me.”
• “If people buy your book, they won’t buy mine.”
• “Other people in my industry are a threat to me.”

You can more than likely add your own favorites to this list.

One place this shows up is at networking events where we’re not the only one there who does what we do. I know this gremlin firsthand! As a self-publishing consultant, I work on many different aspects of writing with my author clients, from editing to building the book to marketing. It’s not a terribly crowded field (like, say real estate or financial planning), so when I attended a networking event recently and someone else there described themselves as doing more or less what I do, I panicked! Wait – that’s my bailiwick and you’re not one of the three other people in town I know who do this!

It turns out the woman was new in town, and she also was fairly new in her business. I’m celebrating 10 years in business this year, so I’ve got some time, experience, and credibility on my side at this stage in my career – things this other woman likely did not have.

But the problem wasn’t my level of experience vs. her level of experience. It was the mindset that let me go there in the first place. Where does this nonsense come from? As noted above, it arises from our human nature and the gremlins in our heads that tell us we’re not good enough. It comes from fear that the Universe shares our lack perspective and the failure to realize that there’s more than enough for all of us – whether in the form of money, clients, or opportunities.

1. BREATHE

What can we do when these unwanted thoughts wash over us – particularly at a function like a networking mixer? First of all, we can just stop and take a giant, deep breath. Then another. And another still, until we feel the stress beginning to dissipate.

2. ADOPT AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE

Next up, we can find a space of gratitude. Seriously? you might be thinking. “I’ve just had to follow another life coach who had an awesome 30-second intro and mine sucked! You want me to be grateful?” Yeppers. Grateful. If you calm down and breathe a minute, you probably won’t have to think too hard to come up with something for which you are grateful.

What’s the point? Gratitude refocuses our thoughts, moving them out of that lack perspective, which enables us to instead concentrate on what we DO have. In doing this, we can reconnect with our innate prosperity consciousness and more easily embrace and attract the abundance we seek.

3. KNOW HOW YOU’RE DIFFERENT

On a more practical level, it never hurts to be prepared for an occasion when you need to differentiate yourself from the others in your industry, such as at a networking mixer. In order to do so, it might help to begin by answering a few questions as honestly as possible:

• How are you different from the others who do what you do?
• What skill/hobby/expertise do you have that (virtually) no one else in your industry has?
• What is different about the way you deliver your product/service than everyone else in your industry?
• Who are your mentors and how do they stand apart from the others in their areas of specialization?
• If you had to choose one word to describe yourself, which word would you choose? Why that word? How is that word important to your clients/customers?
• What are the benefits your clients/customers get by using your products/services? Note: benefits are different from features – these are not the deliverables themselves, but the way the deliverable helps the client/customer.

Example: My clients experience the validation, sense of accomplishment, and increased credibility that authoring a book affords them – and they learn to think like marketers so that they can make more sales.

4. REPLACE THE NEGATIVE THOUGHTS WITH A POSITIVE AFFIRMATION

Lastly, as soon as you feel those doubts and worries creeping up on you, recognize them and head them off. Right now, while you’re in a neutral state of mind, think of a few affirmations you can use to replace the negative thoughts. One that always works for me, whether I’m running late or have been waiting longer than usual for a payment from a client, is: Everything is perfect exactly as it is. Repeating this sentence a couple times out loud never fails to calm me down and remind me that it’s an abundant, beautiful Universe – and as soon as I get my thoughts back in alignment with that concept, everything will be fine.

Laura Orsini is a self-publishing consultant based in Phoenix, Arizona. She works primarily with socially conscious speakers, authors, and coaches. 

Laura is the creator and host of the upcoming Author Blog Challenge, set to begin June 2.The challenge is open to all authors, authors-in-process, and would-be authors. Please check out the website and share the info with the authors in your life.

Whole 9 recently featured a three-part blog post with various fitness experts, strength and conditioning coaches and athletes weighing in on their top five foundational movements. (You can read it here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.) It made me think about what five movements I consider the top five most essential exercise movements, and here’s what I decided.

• Sprints: Picking up the pace has many practical applications, including running away from predators and catching the next bus down the corner. Plus it benefits your cardiovascular system, builds fast-twitch muscle fibers, and even improves endurance. And who doesn’t love a nice endorphin rush?

• Deadlifts: Because lifting things up and putting them down is an essential skill in life. Helping someone move is a really obvious example.

• Swings: With a dumbbell or a kettlebell, doesn’t matter to me. This is a really great exercise for hip mobility.

• Body rows: Because they help with scapular stability, build a strong back, and are a lot of fun.

• Lunges: Single-leg exercises are essential, and lunges incorporate almost the entire lower body. I always throw in wrestling shots, too, which I consider an appropriate lunge variation with some explosiveness added.

I totally wanted to add planks and some squat variations in there, too, but limiting it to five made it hard. I also noticed I picked exercises I’m particularly good at (with the exception of lunges), which made me wonder if I was biased in favor of things I like to do. However, looking at my own workout today, I noticed I did some rowing, shoulder presses, squats, deadlifts, clean and jerks and dips.. only one of the five exercises above. This exercise has made me think about some of my own goals and choices.

What would you pick? Feel free to zap me a message, or leave your thoughts in the comments.

My top 17 favorite posts from the past week! Well, they’re not all from the past week. But the older ones aren’t time-sensitive, either. So there.

Awesome People and Things

• Feats of Memory Anyone Can Do. We love all things Joshua Foer, including this brilliant TED talk.

• Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Oh yeah, and speaking of memory, Google makes you stupid. (We love Google too, though.)

• George Lucas’ Revenge on Rich Neighbors. Me likey.

• A Credo For Making It Happen. Now, in SoundCloud. Listen & be inspired. Danielle LaPorte rocks. Period.

• A Nerd’s Guide to Healthy Drinking. Awesome. But I’m still dying to know which is the least healthy option: a beer or a soda?

• The Big Five Personality Test. So apparently I’m very extroverted, open to new experiences, somewhat anxious, neither organized or disorganized, and find it easy to express irritation with others. Sounds right. How about you?

Fitness

• DIY Prozac: The Problem With Health and Fitness Research. Interesting insights on fitness writing, accountability and critical thinking.

• Olympic Weightlifting For Sports is Greg Everett’s new book… now available for pre-order.

• Is Less Really More? Is 80% good enough? And should we really train like professional athletes if we’re not? Great post by Clifton Harski.

• 5 Great In-Season Lower-Body Strength Exercises That Won’t Make You Sore. Squatting heavy makes grappling suck the next day; Eric Cressey read my mind with this post. He’s good at that.

• The 9 Mistakes Writers Make: And How to Avoid Them. Jodi Helmer is pure awesome, and this is great info distilled from the ASJA conference, in a pretty infographic.

• When An Editor Is Not That Into You: Writing for Magazines Edition. A nice universal translator.

• 7 Screaming Red Flags That You’re Not Cut Out For Freelance Writing. Not to discourage you, or anything!

• How To Filter Out Problem Editorial Clients. Don’t work with these people. No, really.

• How A Book Is Born. ”Well, when an author loves an editor very, very much…” Another great infographic.

• Brave Blogger Confronts Evil Newspaper Editor Who Plagiarized His Post. Being old does not give you an excuse to steal.

• Does Job Hopping Hurt Your Hiring Chances? New Study Says It Doesn’t. Another reason to quit that job you hate.

Editor’s Note: This is a follow-up post to Cooking With Medusa: Musings on Memory, Gender & Visualization. 

I have the worst memory. My knowledge of names and faces is pretty much non-existent. This made teaching middle school particularly challenging, but I compensated by taking Polaroid photos of my students and engaging in some rote memorization. (I also had some great software which allowed me to make seating charts with photos. Thank God for technology.) I wrote briefly in my last post about having to report on an event where I had to memorize the names and faces of sixteen competitors. I made flash cards. I still failed. When I went to hear author Joshua Foer speak in New York, along with Newsweek writer Rob Verger, I actually confused the two–even though I’d seen this weird photo montage Josh had on his website, and I’d even shown my brother a video of his appearance on The Colbert Report the night before.

So when I began reading Foer’s book, Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, I was more than a little skeptical. Not because the techniques included in Foer’s book weren’t plausible–they clearly worked for him, as he became the U.S. Memory Champion by accident–but because I wasn’t certain they would work for me.

Moonwalking With Einstein is far from a how-to guide on memorization techniques. Instead, Foer weaves a fascinating account of the names and faces (no pun intended) of those with astounding abilities and those sorely lacking in memorization (including an amnesiac who can’t remember that he can’t remember). He describes ancient memorization techniques, and provides a glimpse into his own participatory journey into this eccentric world.

Foer’s storytelling ability is incredibly engaging, and covers far more ground than just memorization tactics. He delves into the education system, the dangers of externalized sources of memory, and people who are wired just a little bit different–including memorization gurus, people with exceptional skills, and those with so-called disorders like synesthesia (which I totally wish I had, by the way).

The material presented is thought-provoking and stimulating, but I also found it challenging to relate to. First of all, the guy’s a Yale graduate, and clearly brilliant–perhaps not the ideal person to convince me that “anyone” can learn to memorize the order of a deck of playing cards, a series of random words or numbers, or even names and faces. Second, almost every character in the book is male. To be fair, a disproportionate number of memory champions are men, and Foer has stated that women who do win memory championships often quit competing. Instead they tend to do something sensible, like going to grad school or getting a job or pursuing another activity. Foer chose to focus on the men in his book because they are repeat offenders, and perhaps offered the more interesting narrative.

Still, I wondered whether visualization would be as easy, on the whole, for women as it is for men. Foer often talks about creating some very saucy mnemonic images, and I’ve always heard that men are far more visual than women as an excuse for the astronomical sale of pornography. And although I’ve never been officially diagnosed with prosopagnosia (a.k.a. face blindness) and can recognize those close to me (unlike a friend with the disorder, who has photos of his kids on his desktop to remember what they look like), I do occasionally have trouble differentiating between similar looking characters in movies. I wasn’t sure the technique Foer delves into, which relies on visualization, would actually work for me.

My other misgiving was about coming up with creative visualizations to remember names of people I met. While I have no problem with anybody visualizing anything they want to in their spare time (and it’s none of my business anyway), I do wonder whether using mnemonic images could create weird vibes. For example, say I meet someone else with my exact name, Yael Grauer. Most people can’t properly pronounce either my first or last name, instead referring to me as “Yell Growler.” If someone visualizes me yelling and growling in order to remember my name, are they going to treat me any differently with that association of me in their mind? What if they respond to their association of me rather than me as a person? I prefer to think I’m rather pleasant. And what if people in Minnesota, who can actually pronounce my name because it sounds like Joe Mauer, somehow start associating me with baseball? I hate baseball. I can see where this is going. And although I’d feel pleased if people remembered by name, I hope I never find out if they visualized me yelling, growling OR playing baseball in order to get there. Could using these types of mnemonic devices have any negative cognitive consequences?  (At least he didn’t recommend using someone’s name in a sentence fifteen times in a row. Most of those people are slimy marketers, and I want to slap them. Look at me yelling and growling.)

Anyway, I decided to ignore this possibility, and to simply come up with images that I felt okay with. The technique, called the ‘memory palace’ or ‘method of loci,’ involves creating images along various areas in a building you know well, such as your childhood home. Each image represents something you wish to remember: a topic in a sermon, an item on a grocery list, or anything else you wish to  memorize. The method of loci is described in various ancient Roman rhetorical treatises, such as Cicero’s De Oratore, Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria and the Rhetorica ad Herennium. You simply associate each item you want to remember with an image of an object along the mental walk. Making the images stinky, enormous, raunchy or bizarre improves your ability to memorize them.

I decided to test this technique out the day after I heard Foer speak. I was visiting Marcelo Garcia’s Academy, and knew I wanted to review the gym in a blog post… so I decided to create images in my mind’s eye for each of the things that stood out to me while I was visiting. Despite my inability to remember faces and desire to keep this exercise G-rated, I managed to come up with three images that are still in my head. First, the building I was in got visibly taller. It was pretty cool how that happened, like an elevator to the sky. Next, hundreds of eyeballs appeared on the walls. Finally, the building filled with smoke.

I didn’t even try to come up with images to memorize the techniques presented. It is hard enough, in a new academy, to follow along at all. I wasn’t convinced that trying to transpose additional images wouldn’t create confusion.

When I had a chance to sit down and compose my blog post, I was pleased to realize that I remembered the three images well.  However, I’d totally forgotten what they meant. I knew the eyeballs represented the watchful eyes of the many assistant instructors at the Academy, which is always helpful. But what was the building becoming taller? Eventually I remembered that this was the way I remembered the expansive technique. And finally, the smoke. What could smoke mean? I knew I’d wanted to write about the positive vibe in the gym, and remembered not knowing how to create an image for ‘vibe.’ So I changed the word to atmosphere, and decided to use smoke to symbolize that. Although I’m convinced that Foer is a genius (and I’m certainly not), and that I had the added disadvantage of both my limitation in this area and my self-imposed handicap of keeping my images pure, the technique still worked for me.

So if you thought of reading the book, but were hesitant because it’s all about dudes and these techniques couldn’t possibly work for you, I’d urge you to pick up a copy. Your memory and visualization skills (or lack thereof) can’t possibly be worse than mine, and so you may pick up a trick or two without having to suffer through one of those vomit-inducing self-help books on memory. (Yes, visualizing vomit is okay in my book. What?! Even babies vomit!)

I want to write more about Foer’s thoughts on deliberate practice and overcoming plateaus, and on the curious amount of athletes who participate in these memory competitions, but I’m hoping to get an interview with him for the Performance Menu, as I’m sure his analysis would trump my speculation if I do manage to set this up. The only problem is that he changed his website, and I swear there was info on there on who his publicist was, but it’s mysteriously disappeared…and I can’t remember. Oh, the irony.

In the meantime, check out his website for videos, articles, and more. And if you’ve read the book (or even if you haven’t read it), feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment.

It started out innocently enough. A potential client liked my work, and had one of his employees contact me to see if I’d be interested in meeting to discuss some potential projects he wanted my help on. Several weeks after the initial meeting, he contacted me needed some emergency last-minute work done. He told me the terms over the phone and asked to meet in person the next day.

I’d had some misgivings about the client in the first place for various reasons, and a second red flag was when I learned he’d fired the full-time employee working on the project. My third red flag was when it took him five hours in our in-person meeting to explain what he wanted, and all I had walking out of that meeting was an outline I’d created myself. Start-up companies are often very disorganized, but this was excessive.

Still, I proceeded against my better judgement. I created a shared Google doc so that he could observe my work in real time, due to the time crunch, so that I could immediately make corrections. We didn’t have the luxury of a prolonged revision process.

I spent six hours putting together the manual, as requested, based on the outline I’d painstakingly compiled amidst a chaotic environment with constant interruptions. And I got feedback asking for more pages of information, though I had no idea what else to include, and for images, though copyright was an issue and we’d never discussed procuring images in our scope of work meeting.

My concerns and questions were never addressed, but were instead greeted with hostility. And so it was that midway through the project, the client decided to complete it himself. I was actually relieved at this point, and let him know that I’d simply bill him for the work I’d completed up until that point.

His response was, ”Bill? Are you kidding? For what? You did not provide me with any services. Good luck with your bill-sending exercise. All further emails will be automatically deleted.”

Fighting Back

I am a proud member of the National Writers Union, and so I contacted their grievance division to try to determine my best next step. After trying to contact the guy, who did not respond, they advised me to take the matter to Minnesota Conciliation Court (i.e. Small Clams Court.) and provided me with some advice on how to handle the Conciliation Court process.

Filing the claim was pretty easy. I simply contacted the Conciliation Court office in the county in which I was filing the claim (which was in his city, not mine). All I needed was my name and address, the name and address of the defendant’s office (or home address if it’s an individual), the amount of the claim (in my case, $845), the reason for the claim, the date it arose, and a very brief description. I also had to pay a $75 filing fee, but was told it would be added to the claim.

The Court took care of it from there, setting an actual date and time, and notifying the defendant by first class mail. Many cases are settled at this point, outside of court, but mine was not.

Luckily, the defendant did not file a counterclaim. I really did feel like I could expect anything, but did not have to deal with this particular possibility.

Gathering Evidence

My next step was to put together my case for the judge or, as they sometimes call him in small claims court, referee. This is very similar to providing information for fact-checkers when writing an article. I wrote my case out clearly on an index card, so I could summarize it in just a few sentences. I  put an asterisk next to each item, to remind myself to gather evidence for each claim. For example, the guy actually accused me of cutting and pasting from documents that he sent me, so I printed out copies of all of the documents that he sent me, most of which were highly irrelevant, and of the actual manual I had written. I put together a copy of text messages we’d sent one another, in case he tried to say that we never actually met. I put together a copy of correspondence between his coworker and I, in which I was told the company was looking for a writer to work on contract (in case he tried to pretend I had offered to work on spec or for free.) I put together screenshots of our discussion on the work I had completed, where he told me I needed to make additions and I asked him what else to include. I included a copy of the actual invoice I had sent.

Then I made three copies of the entire packet–one for me, one for the referee, and one for the deadbeat client–in case he claimed to never have seen the documents–which he did end up doing.

I was hoping to find some case law on quantum meruit, a Latin term meaning “as much as he deserved” which refers to the actual value of services performed. When no written contract exists, or when the amount due for work performed is in question, the judge calculates the amount due based on the time the project took, the usual rate of pay or customary charge, by implying a contract existed. A paper contract is always preferable, but was something I made the amateur mistake of ignoring because I was absolutely confident in my ability to rock this project, and in the integrity of the client. My bad.

I did not have to subpoena any witnesses, which costs $16.00 per person, plus a $20.00 witness fee and a travel fee calculated at 28 cents a mile. I also would have had to fill out an affidavit of service and sign it before a notary. Luckily, I had no witnesses to subpoena and so did not have to deal with the hassle.

After compiling all of the paperwork mentioned above, I put it in three manilla folders and moved on with my life, since there were several months until the court date and I had lots of fun projects with paying clients. I can’t say I wasn’t worried, though. What if the judge automatically sided with the guy since, well, he’s a CEO and they’d likely both be male and I felt like a powerless little girl? What if he asked to see a written contract we didn’t have? (The guy actually had the nerve to send me an e-mail saying, “File away. Make sure you show them the contract.”) Would the judge hear me out and see my paper trail? Would I get to speak without jerkface interrupting me?

In some ways, though, I felt that there was some value just in trying, despite the result. To advocate for myself and really put it out there that no, it’s not okay to hire me to do work and then not pay me for what I did… just like it’s not okay to go to a restaurant and order a burger and decide not to pay for it because you only ate half and changed your mind midway through and decided you wanted to go home and cook yourself and didn’t have a written contract. (I, myself, once decided not to use a web designer after she had begun her project–and I paid her for the work she had done until that point, even though I never saw it, let alone used it.) And so I realized I’d already won even if I lost the case. At least I’d inconvenience my deadbeat client and show him that if you mess with a National Writer’s Union member, you’ll end up in small claims court! It’s still nice to get money owed to you, though.

My Day In Court

My boyfriend was cool enough to go to court with me, which helped take my  mind off of all the things that could go wrong. Of course, he’d get me there on time and help me maintain my composure. To prepare, I tried on my court outfit and reviewed my case. The day of, I put on makeup and my fancy suit and pearls. My deadbeat client took forever to get there, which made me a bit nervous. What if he’d hired one of the fancy lawyers in the room? Turns out that he was just incredibly late. I was pretty stunned when he arrived and was wearing a red long-sleeve shirt and khaki pants. But even if he had brought a fancy lawyer, it’s worth noting that the judge wasn’t too impressed by fancy lawyers and was incredibly fair.

In addition to looking like he worked at Target, the guy also had no paperwork with him. The judge was super impressed by the sheer amount of paperwork I provided and that I brought up case law on quantum meruit. The defendant was smug and self-righteous, even prompting the judge at one point to tell him that if he had anger issues with me he needed to take it up with me outside of the court. The guy also flat out lied about multiple things and then backpedaled, lost his temper and got in the judge’s face. Classy.

I was very glad that I brought tons of paperwork, because when the defendant tried to lie under oath (which he did repeatedly), I had the documentation to prove it. For example, when he tried to pretend he had written the manual which I wrote, I had his time-stamped comments on the Google doc to prove him wrong.

After seeing that things weren’t going his way, he said he was going to appeal. The judge basically said, “Good luck with that, because you brought no paperwork.” We saw him as we were leaving, and he screamed, “Good luck collecting!” to me as his elevator door closed. Despite that, I was still pretty stoked that I presented my case well, maintained my composure and presumably got the judge on my side. And though this was about justice and collecting payment due to me, and I prefer smooth, seamless interactions with clients, I have to admit that it was pretty nice seeing the guy who’d wasted so much of my time visibly rattled.

Then What?

But next was the waiting game, as this judge in particular said he would mail his decisions to people and not announce them right away. It was supposed to get to me by a certain date, but did not. When I called, I was told the judge took it under advisement, which meant he had 3 more months. Why the BLEEP would he take it under advisement when his mind was already made up? And he even asked me not to leave any paperwork, which made me wonder if he could’ve changed his mind or forgotten the case or something.

A couple of weeks later, I received a letter stating that the judge decided my client owed payment for the time I spent preparing the material, but not for the travel time. I had originally invoiced $390 for preparing the material, $325 for the meeting, and $130 for the travel time, for a total of $845. The judge stated that the defendant owed me a total of $500, plus $75 for the filing fee.

Thinking he had made a mathematical error (since $845 minus $130 is not $500, but rather $715), I wrote a letter to the judge, who said that it was not in error but he simply decided upon the figure based on the merits of the case. My next order of business was to try to collect payment… but first I had to make sure my client wasn’t going to appeal this to district court.

Appealing the decision is $320, or $420 if he wants a jury trial. Any lawyer would cost more than the judgement. Most lawyers charge $100+/hour, and anything involving district court would obviously take more than 3 hours. When you have someone who clearly has a ton of money but doesn’t want to even pay people he has hired, you never really know how things will pan out, but luckily, he did not appeal.

Where’s The Money?

The next step after winning a court case is pursuing payment. Many people who win cases in small claims court never even see a dime. I wanted to at least try my hardest. My first step was to obtain a money judgement. This began by having the Conciliation Court transcribe the judgement to the District Court. This actually puts a lien on the client’s property, which doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll ever get paid (especially if they do not sell their home or have other liens ahead of yours), but it’s something. Next, I had to obtain the judgement debtor’s assets, such as bank accounts. I had no idea where he banked, because he never paid me, so I had no canceled checks. So I filled out an Order for Disclosure from the court, which required the debtor to disclose what assets he has. I had to track down the home address for this, which took a little bit of elbow grease. The form cost $5.00 for the Court to mail to his home and $5.00 to mail to his place of business.

Next, I had to wait for the form to be returned to me. If it was not received within 16 days, my next step was to fill out an Affidavit in Support of an Order to Show Cause. This would require the guy to appear in court to fill out the form (or explain why he couldn’t fill it out). The order needs to be personally served by someone not interested in the case. It can be served by the County Sheriff for a fee. If the judgement debtor doesn’t come to court, the judge can issue an order for a Writ of Attachment, which is a warrant for the debtor’s arrest for civil contempt of court. It costs $55, and the Writ is held on file in the chance that the debtor is arrested or detained–again, no guarantees there–in which case they must fill out the form before being released from custody.

If the form is filled out, or if you find the debtor’s assets (bank account, employment, etc.), you can actually put a levy on the bank account or garnish their wages. You need a Writ of Execution for this, though, which costs $55 and is served by the Sheriff of the county where the debtor works or bank account is located. Having the papers served is an additional fee, and garnishing wages requires an additional form, a ten-day notice of intent to garnish. That needs to be served via certified mail (an additional fee). The good news is that any collection fees paid to the Court or Sheriff’s Office by the judgement creditor are added to the judgement and owed by the debtor–but again, there is no guarantee they will get paid.

Luckily for me, I received a check for $575 from the deadbeat client. This entire process was very time-consuming. I’d originally invoiced him on August 5th, and didn’t see a dime until the following May. In addition to the $75 in court fees (which he did pay), I also had to pay $40 for the transcript of judgement, $10 for the order of disclosure ($5 each for his work and home), and $5 to file a partial satisfaction of judgement. The guy has refused to pay this additional $55 owed (what a surprise!), and because it would cost me an additional $55 to seek wage garnishment, I have decided to simply drop it–though the court records will indicate he never paid in full, and the amount still owed will be reflected as unpaid on his credit report.

Lessons Learned

• Always get a contract in writing, no matter what. Not that this will stop deadbeats from being deadbeats, but it could help further down the road. The contract in question should also explain what will happen if a project is not completed to the client’s satisfaction. Some people use kill fees, and some do not. Regardless, these details should be hammered out ahead of time–no matter what the timeline is.

• Trust your intuition on seemingly sketchy clients, and red flags. I wish I would have, as I’d rather spend the time working with one of the many amazing clients I have who manage projects well, explain clearly what they’re looking for, and love the work I do as much as I love doing it.

• Don’t be afraid to pursue pay for work completed. The National Writers Union (United Auto Workers Local 1981, AFL-CIO) is a great resource for this. The ASJA also has a grievance division for writers. Writers Weekly has a Whispers and Warnings section. And many professional organizations informally warn each other about these types of clients. Also, Kelly James-Enger, an amazing lawyer-turned-writer, has a template for a “pay-or-die” letter on her blog.

• Consider seeking payment, or at least partial payment, up front. Most of my clients are magazines, and not corporate clients, so this is not something I’m accustomed to…but maybe that should change! I tend to be very informal in my business meetings, often bringing baked goods to share and sealing deals with handshakes or hugs, but I’m coming to learn that no matter how much confidence I have in my work or how much benefit of the doubt I want to give my client, that this is not always the best idea! And while a simple project description via e-mail can serve as a contract, you can easily whip a more formal one up on sites such as Our Deal.

• Standing up for yourself is worth it! In this instance, I risked losing $75 to earn the $845 due to me. I came out with $445 I otherwise would not have gotten, but it felt good to stand up for myself, and $445 is a month’s rent!

Resources

• National Writers Union Grievance Assistance
• ASJA Grievance Self-Help
• Writers Weekly Whispers and Warnings
• Freelancers Union–Get Paid, Not Played
• 5 Ways To Avoid Getting Stiffed

Questions?

Leave them in the comments!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Did you know that the holiday was originally created by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and declared an official national holiday by then-President Woodrow Wilson in 1914? I was surprised to learn Jarvis ended up opposing her holiday for its overt commercialism, even going so far as getting arrested for disturbing the peace while protesting against this commercialism. Jarvis felt that greeting cards were “a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.” She even said she wished she “would have never started the day because it became so out of control…” Jarvis, who never had any children, felt that mothers should be honored with a single white carnation and a personal letter. She even went so far as to regularly threaten to sue people who she felt misused the holiday, stating that she owned the copyright. She spent her inheritance fighting the commercialization, and died penniless in a Pennsylvania mental institution.

Prior to Anna Jarvis’ efforts, poet Julia Ward Howe suggested a Mother’s Day for Peace. She wrote a Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870 as a reaction to the Franco-Prussian War and American Civil War. The proclamation lives on in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition. Here it is:

Mother’s Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace, Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient And at the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

It only took a whirlwind week and a half of travel to completely throw me off of my game, and I’ve been playing catch-up ever since.

In light of that, please enjoy this travel mix I put together a couple years ago… back when it was free to upload songs to 8Tracks, even without buying them!

I used to post mixes more regularly, with a different theme each month. Let me know if this is something you’re interested in seeing more of!

And since the quote on the image here is hard to read, here it is:

“I see my path but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I am going is what inspires me to travel it.” -Rosalia de Castro.

Travel Tunes from YaelWrites.com from yaelgrauer on 8tracks.

So often when we set a goal for ourselves, we forget about the journey. Our eyes are firmly fixed on the task we’re setting out to accomplish. We create outlines and design complicated routines to follow. And sometimes, we forget that the road ahead is messy. It’s filled with detours and setbacks and surprises. It’s a rare accomplishment that neatly follows our carefully laid plans.

In my past life as a teacher, I learned the importance of using assessments to guide instruction. If students were struggling with a specific area, we’d spend more time on it…instead of just marching on forward because that’s how I’d written my lesson plans. Likewise, if they were breezing through something, we’d run through it quickly instead of spending the allotted time on it because that’s how I’d decided things should go. Everything was in a constant state of flux, and a skilled teacher would modify classes accordingly.

How can we do this for ourselves? We adjust what we’re doing on the way to accomplish our goals based on all of the factors we have going on at the time. This means that we don’t power on through a workout if we’re incapable of doing it for whatever reason, and we consider deviating from our carefully laid out training schedule if circumstances in our own life demand our presence at an event we just don’t want to miss.

For me it means that I don’t adopt stringent diets, but take a more measured approach, allowing myself to indulge in chai lattes now and again. It means I take time out to play, even if it’ll take a bit longer to accomplish what I set out to do in the gym, because I want to have fun along the way. And it means that I continually assess and reassess my priorities–not to ignore my goals and just do whatever, but to make sure I have the level of balance I need, and that I’m giving myself a chance both to accomplish what I set out to do and and to not miss all of the beauty along the way.

What do you do to ensure that you enjoy the ride?

(And now, Alan Watts.)

I receive requests to write for free on a fairly regular basis. This is something my friends and students at various writing workshops I’ve taught regularly ask me about as well. The answer is almost always a definitive no, but there are always a few exceptions. If you’re contemplating seeking out free work, here are some questions to ask yourself.

Are you trying to save a few bucks by trying to get writers to help build your brand or business, while offering nothing in return?

If so, then you should probably  rethink your business model.

An obvious exception to this would be the non-profit organization looking for people to write on a volunteer basis about issues they feel strongly about. (Note: not making money doesn’t make you a non-profit organization.)

If you are offering exposure in return for writing, is this actually legitimate exposure?

Some people will write guest blog posts in exchange for a backlink from a legitimate site with a lot of readers and a high Alexa ranking. And they’ll  do this for a specific reason: to promote their book or product or event, to reach potential paying clients looking for coaching or a course they offer, or to build their Alexa ranking (assuming your site’s ranking is higher than theirs.)

This is totally different from offering people “clips” or “exposure” which you tell them will lead to paid writing opportunities (it doesn’t) or trying to convince people that a content mill-esque site will give them legitimacy (it won’t). Seriously, editors are not scouring the web looking to hire people who write for free on your site–I promise. And there are actually a lot of editors who will refuse to accept ANY work from content mill writers.

Also, if your site is riddled with ads and affiliate links and is no fun to look at, you’re probably not doing anybody any favors, including your writers.

Are you offering people future paid work in exchange for free work now?

Is that a guaranteed offer in writing? I didn’t think so.

Are you asking for any type of commitment?

Asking people to commit to a certain amount of posts or hours when they are working for free is pretty lame.

Are you paying some of your writers and not others?

Then you’re pretty much telling the person you’re asking to work for free that their work isn’t as good as that of your “real” writers. No matter how good the exposure or opportunity is, that’s a bit insulting.

And paying some writers double or triple the amount that you pay other writers for the same work is also pretty lame, though it does lead to some interesting conversations when content mill writers working for pennies a word learn that the same company is offering people a much larger amount to another writer for the same work.

Would you be insulted if someone asked the same from you?

If you would get angry or upset if someone asked you to do the same thing… then don’t ask someone else to do it. This is always a good rule of thumb.

Last but not least…

If you do find someone who wants to write for you because they consider the exchange mutually beneficial, remember that they’re still working for free. Not requiring endless rewrites, communicating with them quickly, correcting errors on your site as requested, offering a 2-3 sentence byline with a nice backlink to their site (using the anchor text they ask for), being grateful, etc… is always a nice courtesy.

Did I miss anything? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Welcome to this week’s Variety Hour! Here’s my selection of posts for the week. I’m still clearing out open browsers, so expect a much larger list next week.

Words Fail

• R.I.P. Adam Yauch.

• R.I.P. Maurice Sendak.

Wordsmithy

• As Long As My Child Does Something That Makes Him Happy and Wins The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, I’ll be Proud. From the Onion.

• The Difference Between Editing and Proofreading. A nice little infographic.

Women Get Paid Less Than Men

• Women Get Paid Less for the Same Work. Rachel Maddow explains.

• Male-female Income Disparity in the U.S. Wikipedia explains.

• CNN Fact-Checks Rachel Maddow Feud Over Gender Pay Gap: Determines Maddow Right. Booyah.

Shameless Self-Promotion

• Where Creativity and Sport Intersect: A Conversation with Jonah Lehrer. It’ll cost you two bucks, but I promise it’s well worth it.

• Prospect Sergio Pettis in ‘No Rush’ to Join UFC. My video interview with MMA fighter Sergio “the Phenom” Pettis following his victory over Chris Haney at  NAFC: Colosseum in Milwaukee, WI.