I'm baking chocolate-peanut butter chip cookies right now and contemplating my next freelance career move. Do I pursue an invitation to write a "sure-to-be-Hollywood-blockbuster," including an all-expenses paid trip to the Caribbean to meet with the client? Do I trust in those repeat clients who have proven themselves awesome beyond belief and thoroughly non-delusional? Or do I say "Pshaw! Who writes those Benjamin Moore paint color names? I want a gig like that!"
Don't laugh. I've always wanted to be the one who gets paid to come up with names for paint colors or nail polish shades. Someone does it, right? Why can't it be me?
They're not marketing to the right audience. When was the last time you witnessed a man standing at the paint sample cards for an hour? For longer than it took to belch up his last chili cheese dog? The same people picking out these shades are the same ones buying romance and beyond, which is my polite term for Fifty Shades. What woman wouldn't want to paint her office Cabana Boy Six Pack or Warrior's Kiss or Latte with McDreamy or Chest Hair at Dawn or A Sexy Brit's "Hello"? Seriously, I could go on all day.
On a not-entirely unrelated topic, these paint samples are great writing tools. I keep a stack of them in my drawer just in case my brain is selecting stale descriptors of color--but only when writing in a woman's point of view. My heroes can't differentiate sea-foam green from their own moldy bread, and I like them that way.
If you weren't busy being fabulous at your day job, what dream-job would you have?
Bookbinder. Or maybe some other type of craft involving paper. Certainly not a future forward or lucrative job. Probably why I'm a writer. 😛
I want to be paid to read books.
@Todd...would that also not make you a glue-sniffer? Old archival buildings must be heaven for you.
@Charles...Hey, I have that gig! Sometimes, though, on books I would have put down a gazillion times, I still have to push through. My favorites are the ones I wouldn't have ever picked up that change me somehow 🙂