Scott Adkins Doesn't See Freelancing as a Route to Wealth | Big Think

Scott Adkins Doesn't See Freelancing as a Route to Wealth

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“I don’t actually have any expectation to make money as a playwright until I’m really, really old.”

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Scott Adkins:

Scott Adkins is the co-founder of the Brooklyn Writers Space, Room 58 and Sock Monkey Press. The Brooklyn Writers Space is a shared writing space for writers in Brooklyn. It opened in 2003 and has served over 600 writers in Brooklyn. Room 58 opened May 2007 and is designed for journalists. Sock Monkey Press publishes The Reader, an anthology grown from the Brooklyn Writers Space Reading Series. He hosts the monthly Brooklyn Writers Space Reading Series at Book Court. He is a writer with an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College. His work has appeared in many venues in the New York downtown theater scene. From 1996 – 2002 he worked for Scudder Stevens, and Clark which became Zurich Investments and finally became Deutsche Bank. He started as a temp and then became the E-Business Manager (VP) from 1999-2002 for the Scudder Offshore Funds and Threadneedle Investments (UK).

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What skills do freelancers need to develop during the recession?

Scott Adkins: I really don’t know. I feel like it’s not a skill as much as an ability to think critically and seriously about what’s going on around people and I’m thinking about the new generation coming out of universities currently. Their computer skills are already inherent and so older freelancers will need to continue to keep up with their technological skills and ability to work with the internet and be able to work electronically in general with their clients.

I think that’s just a productivity issue but possibly skills that would be more relative would be the ability to seek out work, to create work for themselves, to create their own micro economy for themselves. I feel like that’s possibly something that I’ve done for myself in order to maintain a career as a playwright. I don’t actually have any expectation to make money as a playwright until I’m really, really old, hopefully. But I’ve created a day to day existence that sort of fits into a model, so it’s need based thinking, it’s rethinking what my expectations are for myself and how I would like to exist day to day, and I think that’s an important skill to have like being able to say I don’t want to get on a train everyday and go to work for somebody. I want to work for myself and this is how I’d like to see my day structured.

Question: Can freelancers really work from any location?

Scott Adkins: Absolutely. I work everywhere. It’s amazing what we can do now, from working with an iTouch you can do so much work to working on your laptop. I have my entire business on a laptop. Everything’s here, all my plays, everything. Photos of my children, whatever. It’s completely self contained and virtual, so I can sit down and do my work anywhere. The existence of the Writers Space is interesting because people actually make that a destination workplace. So we have roughly 160 to a 170 members a quarter and people come and do their work there but they also do some work at home and do some work in the coffee shops or wherever. So, it’s sort of like another place for them to put in their mix of locations to do their work. Technology is amazing right now in terms of wireless technology being readily available, predominantly free and accessible and it does enable you to do things anywhere.