Andrew pointed at his mouth as he spoke. “The next time someone comes for you, stand down and let me deal with it. Do you understand?” “If it means losing you, then no,” Neil said. “I hate you,” Andrew said casually. He took a long drag from his cigarette and flicked it off the roof. “You were supposed to be a side effect of the drugs.”
Artists, writers, creators of all stripes: read this. And bookmark it… because you may need to read it repeatedly. It’s on correctly valuing your work. (Pricing, too, yeah. But the issue of value comes first.)
My mentor asked me to decide how much I hoped to earn in terms of my
salary, and to price my work accordingly. I did it the other way around.
I worked out how much I wanted to earn from each individual piece (and
other stuff that I can’t tell you about yet), then I added up how much I
would likely earn over the course of a year and then once I saw the
total I decided that it was way too much, that I didn’t need that much
and that I didn’t deserve that much, so I’d just have to earn less.
Seriously.
And the worst part was that I didn’t see anything wrong with this. In
fact, I thought that earning a good salary for my work was somehow
unfair to the rest of the world. So I reduced the price of the thing I
can’t tell you about yet and went into my meeting with a nice clear idea
of how to avoid earning more than I felt I deserved.
I’m not even joking.
So there we were in our meeting and my mentor patiently listened to
my stream of ideas and plans and hopes and fears about where I want to
take my work and how I want to develop the business side of things.
Once I’d stopped for breath, my mentor told me that she thought my
pricing was too low. I explained that I didn’t think it was. She told me
again, that it was indeed way to low, and I explained that pricing it
higher wouldn’t be fair to people who wanted to buy it. Then she said
something that made absolutely no sense to me. She asked if my feelings
about pricing were somehow connected to something within me, or more
specifically if my feelings towards the people who buy my work were
fulfilling some need within me.
I had absolutely no idea what the hell she was on about. Remember, I
teach this stuff. I am a master at pointing out the root of my students’
issues and creative barriers and I could sort of see what she might be
getting at and why what she said might have meant something to someone
else, but I really had no idea what relevance it had to me.
Until the train ride home.
Here’s what I realised about myself.
I feel bad about people paying for my work because I think that the
people who buy and even those who appreciate my work are somehow being
duped. I keep feeling that at some point I am going to be found out to
be an imposter. I feel bad when my work is considered valuable.
There.
Issue number one; I do not trust or value my talent.
And there’s more.
I worry that I am somehow going to get into trouble for showing off.
I feel that if I openly value my work then people might not like me.
I know.
Issue number two; please like me, please like me, please, please like me…
In a culture where there’s so much pressure to undervalue one’s work because so many people are getting the idea that as much stuff as possible should be free for the taking from the people who create it, this kind of self-examination is vital.
“I feel bad about people paying for my work because I think that the
people who buy and even those who appreciate my work are somehow being
duped.”
It hurts us because it’s so true. This pretty much explains my entire approach to pricing The Foxhole Court and my reluctance to make the books available in print.
“neil josten?? nah what jerk what a — [trips] [hundreds of thousands of photos of neil spill out of jacket] w-what a fcking asshole i these aren’t mine I’m just [gathering them up frantically sweating] listen I just listen fuck [thousands of pictures of neil scatter across the floor] shit fuck I’m holding them for a friend just listen”
“Kevin sank back onto the cushion, but he was paying more attention to Riko than where he was going. He ended up with his tight pressed against Neil’s, hard enough Neil could feel him trembling. ”
It feels like this is a relict from when Nora still planned on them as the main ship (if I understood correctly that this was the one ship she went back to to write it out and write the other one in???)
roland was #1 andreil shipper, I love it also, clarkequeengriffin and I were discussing about the first trip to Columbia a bunch of days ago, because she wondered how come andrew had been okay with what went down with nicky and neil, considering that he had almost stabbed him after the rape joke. is it because he had a goal in mind so it was okay to bend his morals? was he too drugged to care? had he not seen what happened at all? questions.
2015: Man-on-man marriage
2017: Man-on-child marriage
2019: Man-on-dog marriage
2021: Man-on-car marriage
2023: Hopefully the world ends by then tbh
Two consenting adults, be they man and woman, man and man, woman and woman, or any other combination not specified by the above, are now granted the right (as they always should have had) to enter a legally binding contract and obtain all its attached benefits.
Children cannot give consent. Children cannot legally sign contracts. Children cannot get married.
Animals cannot give consent. Animals cannot legally sign contracts. Animals cannot get married.
Optimus Prime is a sentient being and leader of the entire Autobot race and I don’t think you have any place telling him who his people can and cannot marry. If he is okay with Rewind and Chromedome or Astoria and Powerglide then you need to step off.
WELL SAID
It’s very easy to make Gracie’s mistake here if you persist in thinking of marriage as “a man and his chosen marriage object” rather than, you know, “two people choosing to marry each other.”
Says something about how some people view heterosexual marriage.
DING DING DING DING DING we have a winner.
None of these people have ever expressed a worry that dogs will start wanting to marry men, or that houseplants will start wanting to marry cars.
This way of thinking only makes sense if your view of straight marriage depends on “man actively choosing, woman passively chosen” and gay marriage only fits into your worldview as the distortion “man actively choosing wrong thing,” as though it’s a Sesame Street comedy sketch with Mr. Noodle trying to marry a pocket watch by mistake, presumably with his pants on his head.
Interestingly enough, I’ve never heard someone warn us about women wanting to marry anything, either.
thank you for that mental image. and yes, this is exactly right. i’ve never seen any anti-marriage assholes talk about what they’re afraid WOMEN will do.
It’s very easy to make Gracie’s mistake here if you persist in thinking of marriage as “a man and his chosen marriage object” rather than, you know, “two people choosing to marry each other.”
This, holy shit, yes. Literally until now I never understood how people couldn’t understand “can’t enter into a legally binding contract” when it came to children, animals, whatever. And now it’s clear as fucking day. And even grosser than I realized.
Yep, so much of the fundamentalist christian world view makes so much more sense when you realize they have no concept of consent.
