I love those assignments, Paula! Right now I have a regular assignment that’s going off the rails — I contacted seven people for interviews. Only one responded with actual feedback (emailed interviews). Two others have promised, the rest have ignored.

Free publicity seems to be a scary thing these days.

One of my clients has a quick turn-around time, so I’ve literally had times where I nab an assignment, do the interview(s) the same day, write and turn it in the next day and it’s on the client’s site by the following morning. I’d bee sitting on an idea to pitch them that would be best run in late December. Then in this morning’s email I saw a press release that tied perfectly into my idea, so I dashed off a three sentence query—noting that I won’t be available to work on it next week even if I can land an interview for this week. She replied within about two minutes saying, “Great. After Thanksgiving is fine.”

They pay about 3 weeks after invoice, so that one article alone should cover all of my gift-giving expenses this holiday season.