Read Your Own Contract

Well, that's not a brilliant piece of advice, nevertheless it's important. It's something I shied away from for years as I had brilliant people to do that for me - who could the discuss legalese in normal English. I look at a legal contract and it literally looks like streaming code from the Matrix. My instinct is to run and literally hide, put my fingers in my ears and start singing, do anything but have to sit down and read that!

But I've come to learn with time that part of owning your own creative authority, is also owning the business side. Show-Business, after all, right?

Well, today I sat down and read my contract on my adaptation job. I read it carefully, painful as it was, I just kept taking deep breaths and reading the same sentance over and over until it finally made sense (kind of like looking at the 3-D optical illusion - you stare long enough you finally see something.) Well, I found out that one of the numbers on my payments was wrong, and my agency didn't catch it (third pass on the contract, too). Now, they're brilliant too and probably would have caught it, but maybe not. And if no one did and I signed it - trouble. There's a certain feeling of empowerment when you call up and say - hey this number is wrong - and they say - hey, you're right.

Own your authority to be creative, and own your authority to deserve to earn. They're both equally important.