The Response Your Freelance Writing Business Doesn’t Need

Today. Vote. Got it? If you don’t, you lose all right to complain, in my opinion.

Had a great weekend, one in which I was able to meet Joy Drohan. She was in the area with her children for a sports event, and we met for lunch afterward. What a great person! Joy is someone who has shown herself to be smart and savvy when it comes to building her business. She’s a great person, too. Thanks for meeting up with me, Joy! Would love to make it a habit.

After meeting with Joy, I started thinking about how some people just have the right attitude and approach to the freelance writing career. Joy does. So what’s the right attitude? It’s business. It’s not personal. You go about your day doing your best, you deal with difficult people gracefully, and you refuse the entangled emotional arguments.

That’s how it should be, right? Business is not personal.

Ah, but plenty of people don’t get that memo.

It’s understandable that some writers — particularly those who have just started and have little experience dealing with customers — would take things to heart or lash out when calm is required. There’s a learning curve to this business ownership thing. I know one of my very first disagreements with a client (back when I was working from a DOS operating system) wasn’t my finest hour. In a negotiation, I allowed his words to get to me. Instead of seeing his diminishing of my role in what would have been a good project as  a negotiating tactic, I cut ties with him with an emotional “how dare you” style response.

Yes, a bad way to handle it.

[bctt tweet=”In #freelancewriting, defensiveness can hurt your business.” username=”LoriWidmer”]

Yet I’m not alone. Recently, I was reminded that not everyone understands that professional approaches, even in the toughest situations, are always better.

It was a tweet, actually, and I didn’t see the tweet. I saw several responses that referred to someone else’s tweet — someone I knew ages ago and hadn’t seen in a while on social media.

There’s a reason for that, I now know. I was blocked by the tweeter.

When did that happen? Hard to say. When someone on the periphery of your life goes absent, you don’t always notice right away.

But I can trace the blocking to a single event. I know because it’s one of maybe two times I’d interacted with the person, and the first time was to offer help. The second time was to disagree with them publicly (but tactfully).

I won’t go into much detail as I don’t call people out generally (it’s not professional), but here’s what the tweeter did that was more than a little reactionary:

• Considered my “I don’t agree with this stance and here’s why” statement an attack
• Had a lot of supporters let me have it publicly, thinking a disagreement was a war instead of discuss two sides of an issue
• Had supporters emailing me privately to yell at me for being so mean (seriously wasn’t being mean — just an opposing opinion)

And apparently, I was blocked out of the tweeter’s life as a result.

That’s fine. I wish that person well. Always have. I’m not one to carry arguments forward, particularly when it’s merely a matter of a dissenting opinion. We have far too much of that happening right now in politics. I won’t vilify. I can’t. It’s a person I just didn’t agree with on one particular point. That’s the extent of it.

While this was a mild case of someone just having an emotional reaction to being disagreed with openly, I’ve had plenty of cases in which potential clients have acted in the most unprofessional ways you can imagine. Some of the more memorable include:

• The client who lambasted me for “lying” when I’d superimposed a page count number (and he had the attached file and could have easily checked). His response when I pointed out the error was “No worries.” No apology, just “I’m not angry anymore” kind of response.
• The client who sent a scathing email and called me “unprofessional” for not agreeing to write something for half the money we’d agreed to (contractually).
• The client said my editing was “terrible” because his “in-house editor” said it was (and didn’t explain why this “editor” wasn’t hired over me). This was as the invoice arrived in his in box.

What was my response to these things?

Nothing. In fact, with the first one, I finished the job and lost his contact info after he paid.

The second one got no response at all. I will not get into a back-and-forth, nor will I go into defense mode. You, the writer, never win.

The third one got a response that stuck right to the facts — here’s what you owe me. The work was completed, you had a chance to review at every step of the project, and you didn’t. Therefore, the work must have been acceptable. Please use one of the three methods listed to remit payment.

Could I have let them have it? I was certainly justified in every case. I could have dropped the first client immediately, but I don’t quit projects. It was more than halfway through, too.

I could have let the second client have it for scheduling no fewer than 12 conferences calls that they never showed up for. And I could have billed for my lost time.

I could have let loose on the third client for the inability to stick to the process I’d laid out, thus making my work harder when he rejected all my edits in the review process.

But what would doing so in any case have proven?

It would have shown that I didn’t have a sound business approach. Ranting on clients — even the ones who may deserve it — means you’ve just given them a reason to trash your name to other potential clients.

Taking the high road means you don’t regret saying something you shouldn’t. You may regret not saying it, but that person will never have additional ammo to prove they were justified in their abhorrent behavior.

Writers, when was the last time you had to be the professional in the room?
Have you ever fought back? How did it go?