I wasn't assuming another 6-8 hours in those numbers! I was assuming only another 1-2 hours extra for overhead to get the $35-$50 per writing hour / $.05 per word rate. Because yeah, the pro rate does assume you're a person who can reliably do a 2000 word story, start to finish, that fast. (Most pro writers don't write that fast and don't make a living wage on short stories these days.)
(If I was using my writing process for my last fest fic, I would be adding in another 60-80 hours, but that's why nobody is trying to make a living on yuletide fic.)
And that extra 1-2 hours overhead is not just planning/daydreaming time - it's time spent communicating with the client, including the initial negotiation and then getting the order and then billing; retrieving your payment from the client afterward (which is usually easy, but the ones where it isn't more than make up the time); doing the bookkeeping to track income and outlay and documenting that you did deliver the item as requested and dealing with your payment system and taxes and all of that; and doing the marketing/advertising/networking needed to get the clients in the first place; and so on.
For someone like a fanwriter or fanartist, btw, that 'marketing' section should also include things like keeping your writerly social media going. And a lot of people want to protest 'but I would be updating my social media anyway, so I can't factor that in as business labor' - well, you would probably be writing anyway, too. That doesn't make it any less part of the job of being a writer. This is why trying to monetize a hobby is always a mess. But if you were doing it full-time, you wouldn't have time to keep your social media going outside your 'writer time' without burning out, so you need to include it.
And yes, you should be factoring in daydreaming over dinner! If you were in a job where coming up with a new research avenue over dinner was part of your job, you would probably be in a job that was salaried, rather than hourly - with a yearly salary that's high enough to factor in that yes, you are almost definitely doing a lot of work outside your office hours.
(Unless you were an adjunct, in which case you'd be doing teaching work by the credit for starvation wages, coming home, collapsing, lamenting that you can't find the energy to do the research that would get you out of adjuncting, burning out, getting a government job, slowly realizing how much better life is when you can leave work at work, and eventually getting back to your research for fun. As an unpaid hobby. Because academia is also fucked.)
If you were a high-end lawyer who spent dinner strategizing about a case, you'd better believe you would call it a work dinner and billable hours.
If you're in an hourly job that expects you to be thinking about work outside the hours you're being paid for, your bosses are stealing your labor. *waves IWW membership card* *which is deepest red btw and they mail me awesome vintage-looking stamps to put on it every month*
I'm not saying that every time you think about a story, you need to go to a spreadsheet and track the hours. But I am saying that if you want to value your creative labor the way it should be valued, you need to factor daydreaming time into the wage you're paying yourself.
Sorry I am so strident about this - I spend a fair amount of time RL with people who are trying to make a go of it as freelance artists, and for awhile was helping someone run a con workshop on 'how to run your art like a business'. I have watched way too many talented artists refuse to believe that a rate that factors in all the work they actually do is a fair rate, and then burn out because to pay rent they're trying to do full-time at the drawing table with everything else squeezed into the corners and therefore can't get any of it done well, and then have a breakdown, lose their apartment and their cat, and quit art because clearly they fail at everything. It's a problem.
And it's so damn hard to convince people that "double your hourly rate for pen-to-paper + a little extra, to account for business overhead and general creative time" is reasonable, when it's usually lowballing it. And that's shitty. And I'm starting to see it happen with fannish writers too, and it's always the ones who are vulnerable and desperate and don't have the extra resilience to power through and figure it out.
no subject
(If I was using my writing process for my last fest fic, I would be adding in another 60-80 hours, but that's why nobody is trying to make a living on yuletide fic.)
And that extra 1-2 hours overhead is not just planning/daydreaming time - it's time spent communicating with the client, including the initial negotiation and then getting the order and then billing; retrieving your payment from the client afterward (which is usually easy, but the ones where it isn't more than make up the time); doing the bookkeeping to track income and outlay and documenting that you did deliver the item as requested and dealing with your payment system and taxes and all of that; and doing the marketing/advertising/networking needed to get the clients in the first place; and so on.
For someone like a fanwriter or fanartist, btw, that 'marketing' section should also include things like keeping your writerly social media going. And a lot of people want to protest 'but I would be updating my social media anyway, so I can't factor that in as business labor' - well, you would probably be writing anyway, too. That doesn't make it any less part of the job of being a writer. This is why trying to monetize a hobby is always a mess. But if you were doing it full-time, you wouldn't have time to keep your social media going outside your 'writer time' without burning out, so you need to include it.
And yes, you should be factoring in daydreaming over dinner! If you were in a job where coming up with a new research avenue over dinner was part of your job, you would probably be in a job that was salaried, rather than hourly - with a yearly salary that's high enough to factor in that yes, you are almost definitely doing a lot of work outside your office hours.
(Unless you were an adjunct, in which case you'd be doing teaching work by the credit for starvation wages, coming home, collapsing, lamenting that you can't find the energy to do the research that would get you out of adjuncting, burning out, getting a government job, slowly realizing how much better life is when you can leave work at work, and eventually getting back to your research for fun. As an unpaid hobby. Because academia is also fucked.)
If you were a high-end lawyer who spent dinner strategizing about a case, you'd better believe you would call it a work dinner and billable hours.
If you're in an hourly job that expects you to be thinking about work outside the hours you're being paid for, your bosses are stealing your labor. *waves IWW membership card* *which is deepest red btw and they mail me awesome vintage-looking stamps to put on it every month*
I'm not saying that every time you think about a story, you need to go to a spreadsheet and track the hours. But I am saying that if you want to value your creative labor the way it should be valued, you need to factor daydreaming time into the wage you're paying yourself.
Sorry I am so strident about this - I spend a fair amount of time RL with people who are trying to make a go of it as freelance artists, and for awhile was helping someone run a con workshop on 'how to run your art like a business'. I have watched way too many talented artists refuse to believe that a rate that factors in all the work they actually do is a fair rate, and then burn out because to pay rent they're trying to do full-time at the drawing table with everything else squeezed into the corners and therefore can't get any of it done well, and then have a breakdown, lose their apartment and their cat, and quit art because clearly they fail at everything. It's a problem.
And it's so damn hard to convince people that "double your hourly rate for pen-to-paper + a little extra, to account for business overhead and general creative time" is reasonable, when it's usually lowballing it. And that's shitty. And I'm starting to see it happen with fannish writers too, and it's always the ones who are vulnerable and desperate and don't have the extra resilience to power through and figure it out.