Faster, freelancer! Write! Write!

              Speed. It’s a big part of freelancing. The creative manager won’t come right out and say it, and the ECD gets all mealy-mouthed when asked about the actual deadline, but it’s understood: the clock is ticking and your day rate is killing them. It took me awhile to realize this – mostly because I’m not as swift as I’d like – but I’ve become increasingly aware of how these circumstances affect the work.

            Let me say, I’ve surprised myself over the past year. I’ve come through under ridiculous deadlines. When one job overlapped with another, I adapted, learned to double dip, and came through. Maybe, at one time, I was a long distance runner, but now I’m sprinting and turning in stellar times. 

            Invariably, however, the dust settles. And when it does, I look back on the work and am disappointed. Despite having solved someone’s problem, I’m not left with much to be proud of. The victory was shallow.

            I’ve come to the conclusion that anyone can work quickly, especially if there’s a fair amount of experience to draw upon. When we need to knock it out, we stop thinking about creating something original and go to the well, pull something up, redress it and call it something different. We try very hard to convince ourselves that it’s a new thought, but, ultimately, there it is –– the idea that was done before.

            Early on in my career, I remember hearing that when Jerry Della Femina was asked how he stayed fresh, he reflected that the hardest thing about being accomplished and experienced is to never forget how you got there, to always remember how strenuous it was to come up with a truly original idea. It stuck with me, because I guess I had been thinking that once we’ve paid our dues, things would get easier. They don’t get easier.  

            So now what? Move even faster? Move so fast that I don’t have time to realize that I don’t have enough time?

            No. I simply have to keep looking for something that is sustainable, circumstances where great gets time to break out, where I learn the choreography so well that I start to improvise and go here and go there until I land on a step that is so surprising and so cool that it doesn’t seem possible that I could have landed on it. I need to find a way to get my best done.

            Of course that won’t be easy. More often than not, it’s the fast-talkers up at the mic of our industry. But it’s like technology. Faster doesn’t mean more fulfilling. I know that now, looking back. Sometimes, it’s just how a control freak monopolizes a conversation. Or caffeine gets your lips flapping.
            I have to try, though. Last week I transplanted a little pine tree –– one of those dwarfish Christmas trees. The back of the shrub was bare and skeletal. It’s the part of me that hasn’t been getting sun and it happens to be the part from which I get the most satisfaction. So I found another spot and turned it around.