When Breaking Up is Easy to Do

What I’m reading downstairs: The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
What’s on the iPod: Mercury by Scott Blasey

Sometimes, making those tough decisions becomes that much easier. I’d been building toward cutting a client loose for a variety of reasons (not just price), and I’d resolved to do so within the next few weeks. Then a minor event – let’s call it the last straw – caused me to pull the plug entirely.

They are lovely people. However, lovely people are not always the key to a great client/writer relationship. They have to have projects that don’t compromise our standards, they should be clear in what they want, and they should pay us respectably and without argument. When even one of those factors is missing, it can be a deal breaker.

In this case, they were nice, but that nice exterior masked a cheap, somewhat devious interior. They originally argued my price – rather, they decided to state firmly that they were paying $XX for something I’d charged at $XXX, and something they’d agreed to at $XXX. It was the first time we parted ways. They came back contrite. I agreed at my rate, but I wasn’t sure.

Seems I was right to doubt. Since then, they have used a number of shallow, tired tricks to avoid paying my invoice. They avoided paying for one project because, as they claim, it was unusable. I asked for proof. I saw that a lead was rewritten (using the same facts I’d used) and that a few sentences were changed – again, style changes. And they used the “poor grammar” line, pointing to my starting a sentence with the word “And” as proof. Since I’m not prone to letting people argue about the legitimacy of grammar usage because they want to avoid a bill, I was done.

They weren’t the only problem children. In each case, I learned to hear what wasn’t being said and to trust my instincts. Here’s how you know the client’s unhappiness has a deeper, more sinister foundation:

They ask you to rewrite someone else’s work. Yes, they did. They wanted me to make an article for a nationally recognized publication from one source. I said no and lost their number.

They don’t give you enough direction. Links are great, but if they’re not giving you anything beyond “Here’s an interesting link”, you can’t know what they want. If they’re not willing to put more work into telling you what they’re after, you’re never going to please them.

They question your capabilities. One client argued that my writing was “unprofessional” and that they had to revise endlessly to “fix” it. I held my tongue and went over the copy, editing out the mistakes that were just edited in. And I sent it back with a note that it should read better now, not mentioning the tongue-lashing I’d received. And then I cut them loose.

They start nitpicking. “Your grammar and sentence structure are weak.” This must be the catch-phrase for every deadbeat client. They toss this out as justification for not paying, but not once have I received any real proof to back up their accusations. I’ve been called on the carpet for starting a sentence with “But”, “And”, and in one case was brutally told off because I used “possessing” as a verb. Uh….

They decide to scrap your project and give you a new one. And watch their heads explode when you bill them for the scrapped project. My most recent encounter involved a project based on one Internet link. I wrote from the facts stated in the supplied link, and I added the company’s own, stated stand. They argued it wasn’t factual (it was) and that it wasn’t their stand (when their prior emails clearly stated the same stand). They said “Just write about this instead.” Nothing doing. I sent them the final invoice and ignored their pleas to return.

Writers, when have you found it easy to break up with a client? What was the situation?