Writing through grief and resentment
Hi Friend,
Eight years ago, my dad died.
It was sudden. Unexpected, at least by his loved ones. A massive heart attack while he was helping a friend repair a roof and that was it. Two weeks later he was supposed to have gone in for knee surgery, which he was afraid of. He was worried the doctors would give him anesthesia and he wouldn’t wake up.
He didn’t give them the chance.
It was a Friday afternoon when I got the news. I was working in my office, trying to get a profile written before calling it a week. My roommates were in the dining room, chatting. I was annoyed because their voices were loud and enthusiastic, which disrupted my concentration, although maybe I was really annoyed because they were finished for the week and I was still slogging through a profile for a client I had grown to resent.
Figuring I deserved a break, I checked my voice mail and heard a message to call home.
It was clear from the first moment that something was wrong. When I greeted my mom, she couldn’t place my voice. Her usual “Hi sweetie,” was replaced with “Who is this?”
She sounded exhausted. Deflated. Like she had just lived five lives in one afternoon and it just didn’t feel worth it.
When she realized it was me, she asked if my roommates were home, told me to go be with them. I demanded she tell me what was going on. As I walked to the dining room, brain swirling with all the possibilities of what she might say, she told me.
“Your dad’s dead. He’s had a heart attack.”
Or something like that. I don’t remember the exact order the information came out. What I do remember is my legs giving out from under me, just before I made it to the dining room. Me collapsing to the floor. My roommates rushing over to me but my dog with his four legs and lower center of gravity beating them to it. Him jumping on me with his full 70 pounds and furiously licking my face, as though if he could just clean up my tears, I would stop crying and everything would be okay. One roommate grabbing the phone because I just couldn’t find words through my sobs and the other hugging me while trying in vain to keep my dog off me.
And then, shock.
After giving myself a day to process, I flew back to my home town. I told my clients what was going on and pushed back some deadlines.
But one client I thought I could continue working for. The one with the profile.
Actually, it was a series of profiles for an advertorial magazine. The kind that make it look like everything is a neutrally-written profile except for the little “advertorial” warning written in small print. The kind that the profile subject has paid piles of money for so they can show off to their friends and families that they’ve been featured in a magazine.
My client was the magazine publisher. I was to interview and write profiles of a series of small business owners, touting their “innovation,” and “use of technology” or whatever buzzwords were popular at the time.
They had a publication deadline coming up very quickly and the whole magazine had to be ready to go. I didn’t want to lose the contract, even though I was starting to hate it, because I needed the money. And, I rationalized, the work would be a good distraction. It would provide me with moments of normalcy during the most emotionally devastating period of my life.
Except, of course, that’s not what happened.
The profiles weren’t a necessary break from the insanity of grief, they were a distraction from processing. An obligation at the end of an already long and taxing day. I spent my days grieving, planning a memorial, comforting my mom and sister, crying, and then my nights in bed responding to requests for revisions on profiles of people I could not have cared less about.
“Who do they think they are?” I asked myself as I lay in bed reading yet another angry email on my laptop. “People are dying and they’re fighting over a single word, acting like my writing is terrible. Demanding more of me. They think what they do is so important. They’re not saving lives, they’re not even really making the world a better place. They’re just a bunch of egos with too much money.” (If you haven’t figured it out, this is not a healthy mindset in which to work.)
My writing that week was some of the worst I’ve ever done. Likely worse than my essays in grade 8 English class on The Outsiders (I’d imagine, I’ve never revisited them). The clients were probably right to complain—they likely paid a lot of money for these advertorials, thousands of dollars more than I received. They had a right to demand their expectations be met.
But I wasn’t in the frame of mind to do it. I hadn’t been from the start.
The contract originally came in at a time I needed it, badly. But the pay was abysmal. $115 per profile, typically around 500-1,000 words each. Initially, they wanted me to to visit each company profiled in person, but with time spent emailing the profile subjects to set up a time, driving to the business locations, interviewing business owners, touring facilities, writing and then revising the articles, the hourly rate would have been far less than minimum wage. Factor in the cost of gas and I may as well have been paying them to publish my writing.
I convinced the magazine to let me simply interview the profile subjects over the phone, but the hourly rate for each individual profile still fell abysmally low. I resented being paid so little when the magazine was likely earning a lot of money off my content. I resented the profile subjects for being so nitpicky about their profiles, for being so negative about everything I wrote. For expecting miracles, especially when some of them were so unwilling to give me their time (one had refused to give me more than 15 minutes to interview him but demanded a unique and insightful profile of a business that seemed exactly like every other business in his category).
And so, wrapped in my little cocoon of resentement and grief (the dominant emotion changing based on my specific activity at the time), I attempted to write and revise profiles while also navigating my dad’s death.
A few days after I returned to my home following my dad’s memorial, the magazine company fired me. The profile subjects weren’t happy. They had too many complaints about my writing and it wasn’t worth it to continue on.
Though I was relieved to be done with that company, I was also annoyed with myself that I had given up time that should have been spent processing and grieving to a contract I wound up not getting paid for (they paid me for a couple of completed profiles, but not the rest).
I was also angry at myself for not having been more professional. Why couldn’t I dig down deep and find the ability to write interesting and engaging profiles of small business owners? Was I such a terrible writer that I couldn’t find a way to write compelling content while dealing with my own personal issues?
The thing is, resentment is a terrible emotion to have with a client. My grief amplified and crystallized my frustrations about the project, but it was more a flashpoint than a cause. I was already annoyed at the expectations put on me for what felt like very low pay.
It’s important when we start feeling resentful to explore where those feelings come from. They come from a real place, but unless we explore their origins we’ll repeatedly find ourselves in similar situations. Much of the time, resentment with clients comes from a few places:
They’re paying too little (or not on time)
They’re demanding too much
Their expectations are unreasonable
What I should have done, rather than blame the client for their behaviour or myself for my inability to write during a time no one should be expected to work, was explore why I felt resentful and how I could use my feelings to make different decisions in the future.
My resentment stemmed from feeling I was being paid very little for work that would likely make other people a lot of money, both the magazine and those profiled. The profile subjects were allowed to make demands of me because they paid a third-party (the magazine) for the advertorials. The writing was outsourced to me. There was no reason for them not to be picky with my writing, they paid the same amount no matter how much work I put in. I had no power because the people criticizing my writing weren’t the people paying me. And the magazine had no incentive to pay me more, there were plenty of writers willing to work for that low amount.
The thing about resentment is that it will often come to a head at a terrible time, or at the very least a wildly inconvenient time. Much like with other relationships, resentment against clients grows unchecked. Unless we communicate our needs or change our behaviours, the resentment festers and builds. And while I know there are many terrible clients out there treating freelancers horridly, we can only control our actions and behaviours. Not theirs.
This means changing how we operate before the resentment takes a firm hold. And that means taking responsibility for our role in the client relationship. Often when resentment takes form it’s because we’ve allowed a boundary of ours to be violated, whether we intended to or not.
If you’re starting to feel resentment towards a client, reflect on it. Ask yourself where it’s coming from, what it would take to make you feel less resentful—if anything—and what you can do to avoid this situation in the future.
If you’re not being paid enough on a contract, demand more on the next. If the client pushes for additional work, implement a clause in your agreement that charges more for scope creep. Figure out why you’re feeling resentful and build boundaries to protect yourself. Stick with those boundaries.
Listen to your gut. If your gut tells you to let go of a client, honour your needs and let go.
When my mom died in June I took time off from all work, except marking the SFU course I instruct (because it truly does give me joy). I took the time to grieve and sit with the emotions and not worry about making clients happy when all I felt was overwhelming sadness. It didn’t make the grief any easier but it did mean I wasn’t also dealing with a ton of additional unnecessary stress at the same time.
So maybe take time off after loved ones have died. Unless you’re Joan Didion writing The Year of Magical Thinking. Then fly at it. (If you’re experiencing grief or looking for something to read, I highly recommend that book.)
Here’s to your continued freelance success,
Heidi