A word about contracting

Just as I was beginning to think the calls I had placed yesterday and this morning for my weekly column of real estate news in Business in Vancouver were being ignored, the phone rang. I answered, keen for an interview.

It wasn't a call being returned, however, but a request for some work to be done. The caller had seen my profile in the writers' listings of the Professional Writers Association of Canada and was curious to know if I could spare some time this week for a project. The job would require copyediting and arranging some meeting notes for a tax and estate planning firm; the timeline would be fairly tight. What were my rates?

Ah, the rate question! PWAC offers some sample rates here, and I'm also mindful of comments by Regent College professor (and National Post contributor) John Stackhouse regarding fair payment for speakers when answering such questions. Since most of my work is for trade and business media, I usually cite PWAC's rates when asked what I charge corporate clients. Scaling my rate to the actual project comes next, depending on the scope and amount of work required and the potential difficulties and rewards the project offers.

Upon asking how much I would have to organize and copyedit, I was told 15 pages. Or possibly 15 documents. The caller wasn't sure which. What shape were the notes in? That wasn't clear, either. I asked if it would it be possible to see the material and provide an estimate. It wasn't a favoured option, but the caller would check and call me back in a few minutes with more information. The deadline was Thursday, I was told, so someone was needed to handle the project quickly. Give me a better sense of what the job required, I said, and I would gladly do what I could to assist at an appropriate rate.

I still haven't heard back, and that might be a good thing. A potential client shouldn't offer work without giving the contractor a fair chance to value it accurately and competitively. Similarly, a contractor shouldn't accept work without knowing that the clients has agreed to pay the price -- whether set in advance or not. Both parties deserve to know the other's terms and be willing to disclose their own. It's everyone's best chance at a fair deal, and a good working relationship.

Words to the future

One of the fascinating things for anyone who reads or works with words is the connections words can establish across centuries of experience. Phrases come back to us, recalling past experience, investing moments with new meaning, helping us find a place for ourselves in the world.

"The church where we go to now" -- to steal a phrase John Terpstra uses in several of his poems -- last night brought one such example. The pastor's text came from Acts 3:1-10, and in particular Acts 3:6: "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you." It's hardly the best-known text, but it resonates for me because it is reportedly the passage that sparked the dramatic conversion of one of my forebears, Samuel Vetch Bayard, 205-odd years ago. I struggled for a long time to figure out what his experience of that passage was, and though I will never know, I have been fortunate enough to discover documents in various archives that shed light on what his conversion to a religious life meant in practical terms for him (last night's message, which you can stream here or save, offers a contemporary take).

Without those documents, my understanding of my own context and even how to live a religious life in my own day would be a little less. While each of us must find a modus vivendi appropriate to our circumstances, words have an ability to develop long-term patterns of life that ultimately make for a living culture. Tradition, in this sense, is less the thing that binds us than the foundation we build upon. To quote Terpstra at length,

The church where we go to now
is, and is not, the church
of our fathers and mothers.
The old words do not come easily,
here, the songs have faded and frayed,
they have been crushed and ground
by the lives of our forebears,
the weight of history.

The preacher is not innocent.
She is both fearful and full of joy.
She would unburden us,
but the slim silver sliver that she guides
will prick
as it moves through,
and there is blood in the pattern,
the page, on the hand,
as well as healing,
just as there was for our mothers and fathers.

(from "Needlecraft," in Brendan Luck)

Journalism lends itself more often to cliché and stereotype than blood-threaded pages, but it's the blood that underlies even some of our most sluggish thoughts. Bringing it alive, infusing it with the energy of our own experience and insights is the challenge. Knowing our context is a starting point; now, what has it prepared us to do?

"ideas ... like locusts"

Just in from meetings where the questions people have been asking me for the past two weeks surfaced again: How do you figure out what to write? Where do you find ideas?

It's a question Leonard Cohen touched on in an interview earlier this summer, and whose answer singer-songwriter Tom Russell picks up on in his own thoughts last week about contemporary storytelling. Cohen observes,

These times are very difficult to write in because the slogans are really jamming the airwaves - it's something that goes beyond what has been called political correctness. It's a kind of tyranny of posture. Those ideas are swarming through the air like locusts. And it's difficult for a writer to determine what he really thinks about things.

A writer's wanderings through the world invites encounters with a mess of ideas, which may indeed be as daunting as a swarm of locusts without some attitude that puts the swarm into perspective. "All is vanity," and "This too shall pass," are helpful, but tend to disengagement rather than in-depth discernment. What's needed are questions that challenge our daily experience in and of the world, the lens through which we can focus on what's important.

This is lofty-sounding, and I don't pretend to always focus on what's most important; sometimes the less-important things provide a welcome diversion from the weightier topics. And sometimes, as a writer, taking the less-discerning route is a way to pay the bills. But it's not a recipe for satisfaction in the long term. And so the lighter assignments have to be taken with intent, knowing that they're just one component in an overall portfolio of work one is always developing.

So, how to see clearly and avoid being overcome by the devouring locusts? A good book that renews the mind is a start. One book worth mentioning in this context is Frederick Busch, A Dangerous Profession (1999). It's a reminder for writers, regardless of genre, to keep pushing their own boundaries. To be dangerous, writing (to quote the old saw about journalism) should "afflict the comfortable" -- and that includes the writers drifting to disengagement, especially in an age when information on the screens constantly demanding our attention.

Wanderings

"Not all those who wander are lost," runs the line by J.R.R. Tolkien, and which prefaces a friend's blog of travels through Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. It's an attractive thought, one that reminds us of the importance to the journey regardless of the end and indeed, the oft forgotten ancient idea that there's a great deal of importance in doing things which are ends in themselves -- things that create a space where we recreate and refresh and somehow transcend the everyday.

Stepping beyond Labour Day, past summer and into autumn, there's a lot of pressure to get on with life. But juggling the various sources of information available to me as a writer, insinuating themselves upon me or otherwise demanding attention, I crave just a little more of that time to wander: Surveying what's being done, what's on people's minds, the quirks and oddities of the world that people feel inclined to share, and the curiosity animating my own imagination. Wandering can be healthy exercise, and help us explore questions we may not even be aware we're asking.

As a new season begins, I hope to post with a little more regularity and share the discoveries I make in my own wanderings (between deadlines, of course).