The First Official Rant Day Today is my Rant Day. I’ve decided I need to designate at least one day of the month as the day when I get to vent without feeling guilty for doing so. It’s unprofessional, but dang it, sometimes it’s just so necessary. I see my favorite irreverent freelancer, Kathy, take…
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CYA – Survival Among Enemies On a recent project, it became apparent almost instantly that the parties involved in helping me complete the assignment were warring factions. In one case, there was an email accusation that slashed away mercilessly at the information given to me by the other contributing party. Oy. And vey. What to…
CYA – Own Your Process I said something in my last post that maybe we should talk about. Things went wrong with my client mentioned in that post when I allowed him to own my process. Let me explain – When I met with the client the first time, he started by telling me I…
CYA – Contracts and PaymentHooray! Four times must be a charm, because the client finally understood that the project I spoke of in the last post will not be finished this month. I guess I got what I wanted for Christmas! Now comes the fun part – getting payment. Yep, I have a contract. Yep,…
CYA – Client Focus To those of you who believe that if you repeat what you want to happen over and over again it will happen, stop it. You’re annoying the hell out of the rest of us who are trying to make it happen for you. It occurs in the world of writing and…
CYA – Lesson One If you’re a writer, you’re working with contracts (and if you’re not working with a contract, shame on you!). I keep some standard ones handy for clients who are without, but when a client sends you one of their contracts, please please PLEASE read it carefully. I mean it. If you…
The Duh Factor I just saw a lame question on a forum, coupled with a post on :: inkthinker ::: Ignorance is not bliss; it’s just ignorance, that reminded me just how bloody lazy some people can be, and they don’t seem ashamed about it. The question: “Where can I find the contact information for…
Habit Forming For those of you who have made the jump from office to home office, how are you doing on the whole “I’m working from home, so I gotta get serious” thing? A recent discussion over at Anne Wayman’s About Freelance Writing site talked about whether a writer should have an outside address or…
Fighting the Losing BattleJust came across a brand-new client. In the short phone conversation we had, I managed to impress him with how flexible I was (he even said, “You sound very easy to work with”) and how qualified I was to handle his project. He did have one thing standing in the way, however….
Editing For Fun And (not) MoneySo what do you do when your great-uncle Ted asks you to look over his latest endeavor into the novel-writing biz? What do you do when your best friend’s mother needs someone to “look over and edit” her newsletter for the Red Cross? When you’ve been volunteered to be the…