It's hysterical

My friend Clayton Cubitt launched his Hysterical Literature site today, and it includes an essay I wrote: "The Last Real Porn Star."

This is the number of people who have watched a video of porn star Stoya read an excerpt from Supervert's Necrophilia Variations: 6,986,096.

Stoya is not: naked, having sex, in a porn movie.

She is: reading a book.

By the time you read this, over 7 million people will have watched Stoya read a book.

"We were at a party, you and I," Stoya reads, and everybody listens.

This is not a reinvention story

I've switched beats at Forbes, and it's been pretty rewarding so far. I wrote about the process:

The week before that I took a pole dancing class and discovered that I would make a terrible stripper: “Gyms for Women Sell More Than Fitness.”

Today, I interviewed a porn lawyer, talked to a co-founder of Taser, and set up a meeting with a molecular mixologist.

I plan to talk to the guy holding the sign on the corner with the reference to the Bible on it, but I haven’t done that yet.

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Medium

I wrote a piece on Medium about when my brain got squishy.

You realize there is a problem when you cannot sort the laundry.

Picture it:

There you are, in the laundry room.

The laundry basket is full of dirty laundry.

You look out the window.

It’s:

1. overcast
2. the sky is a pale blue with cloud streaking across it
3. it’s raining and you’re wondering if the roof is going to start leaking again

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How much can you make?

Stripper, Las Vegas, Nevada

"3) How much can a contributor make? As I’ve written, a writer who attracts 1 million unique visitors a month for 12 consecutive months, with a solid base of repeat visitors, can earn a six-figure annual income. That’s not easy to accomplish. In 2012, only the second year of our model, two contributors topped $100,000. We had a few at $75,000 and $50,000, and 25 hit the $35,000 mark. There is a long tail at $10,000. Using their individual data dashboard, a contributor can track how they’re doing in real time. For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the average full-time reporter or correspondent’s salary at $45,270. Remember, being a contributor (many have worked for major national and regional news brands) is a freelance job, with considerable freedom to publish content for others." -- "Inside Forbes: Amid the Finger Pointing, Journalists Need to Explore New Payment Models"

The plight of the unreal writer

Pavilion, Chicago, Illinois

"Yet I don’t feel like a real writer. Both a screenplay based on a true story and a novel based on my own early life came grinding to a halt. Without being egotistical, I’ve been around long enough to know they are both excellent topics, great stories. But I just freeze up after three chapters or a couple of acts. I can’t seem to keep going. The bio-novel made me incredibly anxious, bringing up memories I don’t want to deal with but must to get them on the page. So I tried it as nonfiction, a pop-culture documentary, switching the focus somewhat and looking at events from a more journalistic angle. Nup." -- "Is Journalism Killing My Creativity?"

Opium

"For all its drawbacks, opium had one beneficial effect for De Quincey, that of acting as the ice-axe to free the frozen sea within him." -- "The Addicted Life of Thomas De Quincy" via Arts & Letters Daily

The great freelancing debate

You know what's embarrassing? Watching this debate over freelancing for free. Which started here. Had an orgy here. And reached its peak here with this interesting insight c/o Felix Salmon:

"Digital journalism isn’t really about writing, any more — not in the manner that freelance print journalists understand it, anyway. Instead, it’s more about reading, and aggregating, and working in teams; doing all the work that used to happen in old print-magazine offices, but doing it on a vastly compressed timescale."

I was in Boca Raton, Florida, when the whole thing went down. (Which, of course, is a ridiculous thing to say: "I was in Boca Raton, Florida, when [FILL IN THE BLANK].") Everyone where I was in Boca was rich. Actually, I realized, they weren't rich. They were wealthy. "What do all these people do?" someone asked me at some point. I had no answer. They drove convertible Bentleys and had young men in white shorts set up beach chairs for them and stayed out of the water when the lifeguard saw sharks. Observing the wealthy in their native habitat, it occurred to me what the wealthy want: For the time between when they want something and when that want is sated to be as short as possible. That is wealth. To buy that which cannot be bought: time.

Mostly, though, reading over the freelance debate, I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed for the freelancers who couldn't decide whether or not freelancing for free meant they were worthless. I was embarrassed for the editors publicly admitting how poorly they paid their contractors without admitting how embarrassed they were by their actions. Embarrassed by what the internet has become -- a red light district in which the whores pretend they're not whores by fucking for cheap.

You know what else is embarrassing? I wrote a piece for The Daily Beast back in October, and I still haven't been paid for it. $300. I email, I ask, I remind, and they haven't paid it yet. That's embarrassing. Embarrassing for the woman in accounts payable who has to deal with it. Embarrassing for Tina Brown, whose 2011 salary was estimated by the NYT to be $700,000. Embarrassing for freelancers for whom there are no solutions, just more humiliation.

Five days

   American Apparel, Chicago, Illinois
I'm doing a five-part series on my Forbes blog this week about how to get a freelance job in five days. Join me, won't you?

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On writing

Graffiti, Chicago, Illinois

"But writing a novel is an inherently strange exercise. It’s surreal to work for years and years on a project very few people have seen. Sometimes I feel like I’m in the grips of an incredibly intricate and time-consuming delusion. So it’s comforting to know that some of the novelists who inspire me also, of necessity, take their time." -- "Some Company for Slow Writers," Maud Newton

On the list

What Amelia said.

It all falls apart

ALPHABET from Mihaly Szilagyi on Vimeo.
Love this video of exploding letters! It's inspiring for those of us who are writers. Nothing like the metaphorical writ real. 
 
Found on swissmiss.

Interview with a female skydiving instructor

I finished off this year of my Forbes blog with an inspiring interview. The post is part of a series I started this year: "Hey, [Your Name Here], How'd You Get That Job?" So far, I've interviewed an adult movie editor, a death revolutionary, a young entrepreneur, and a blogger.

I'd spent some time looking around for my next subject online, and I think I'd decided a woman who was gutsy enough to jump out of airplanes would probably have something to teach young women about overcoming fear in the professional and personal realms.

Here's my favorite quote from skydiving instructor Jen Sharp, who you see in the photo above (taken by Emily Royal) free falling and working on a laptop at the same time:

"Skydiving makes me feel both vulnerable and powerful at the same time."

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Be more creative now

If you're looking to get inspired on how to get more creative in 2013, I recommend The Oatmeal's "Some Thoughts and Musings About Making Things for the Web."

There's been quite a bit of back and forth debate lately over whether The Oatmeal is a comic god or an SEO hack, but I think he's great.

He's prone to bleeding in public, which, of course, is a good thing.

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What do you want to be when you grow up?

Without a doubt, the blockbuster post of my Forbes blog this year was: "The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star."

Because I've worked previously in helping entertainment sites generate more traffic, I tend to have a sense of what will get a lot of clicks and what won't. But I really had no idea this post would become my most popular post of the year and the third most popular post in the section where my blog resides on Forbes.com.

I was surprised and continue to be surprised by the amount of traffic the post gets. So far, it has over 300,000 views, and it's the all-time most popular post on my blog.

Originally, the post was simply a series of quotes from the male porn stars I'd interviewed, but my smart editor pushed me to expand it and present it as a series of work tips.

I'm sure my failure to fully understand the popularity of the post has to do with the fact that I'm not a man. I think the subject matter appeals in a way that I simply cannot comprehend. But I wrote a post pondering that question: "Why Men Want to Be Porn Stars."

In an era in which “The End of Men” is being heralded, you can imagine the appeal of the male porn star fantasy to the Average Joe. The job of the Male Porn Star is unequivocally, undeniably male — so literally, one depends on one’s manhood to do it. This is what you are paid for as a male porn star: to be a man.

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On writing books

[via this isn't happiness]

That's a wrap

Check out my "30 Days of Freelancing" series on Forbes:

At some point, I read a quote from Andy Warhol that I loved:

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

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Marathon

Are you following my "30 Days of Freelancing" series on Forbes?

It's like a marathon, and I'm a sprinter.

Check it out.

[IMAGE]

7 habits

Freelancer? Independent contractor? I've got "7 Habits of Highly Effective Freelancers":

4. Diversify yourself.

I’m a journalist. I’m a pundit. I’m a copywriter. I’m a photographer. I’m a blogger. Who are you today?

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I get email

You beast.  You lovely monster.  The three-headed gatekeeper of dreamlands.  I'm tempted to run from your nasty spell and cry myself silly until I don't believe in you anymore.  But you have seduced me with your conviction.  There is no arguing with your fervor.

My wife just came in and saw that paragraph and I'm sure freaked out a tiny bit as she calmly asked, "Who are you writing?"

I quickly explained how I read your article about why not to be a writer and how powerful and terrifying it was and that I needed to write you for my own sake and that it was not a love letter.  

She said as she smiled sweetly, "I know."

What does she know?  That I shouldn't be a writer?  That she thinks it's cute that I'm playing my writing games on the computer late at night?  That it actually is a love letter but not to susannahbreslin@gmail.com but to myself?

Well thank you Susannah Breslin for sliding a broken plate full of rusty knife points and dirty glass shards onto my seat cushion just as I was sitting down.

You are absolutely right.  I shouldn't be a writer.    

And yet, who should?

[redacted]

Diary of a freelancer

I'll be doing a new series on my Forbes blog this month: "30 Days of Freelancing."

I decided to do the series for a couple of reasons.

1) I didn't feel like I was getting enough done, and I wanted to get a bit more meta about the process.

2) I was focusing on getting less done, and I wanted a forum where I could explore that.

Those two things seem contradictory, but this is the nature of human existence.

Have you heard of the slow food movement? It’s part of the slow movement. Apparently, there’s something called the slow work movement. Pete Bacevice is its philosopher.

I decide I’m a recovering workaholic. The slow work movement will be my Alcoholics Anonymous. I will take 30 days to become a slower worker.

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