How to Tick Off a Contact and Act Like a Jerk in One Short Sentence Maybe I’m just overly sensitive, but I got this note today from a PR rep regarding an idea for my newsletter. Things were going well – and I liked him – until he responded to my email about circulation. “You…
Marketing Dilemmas On Anne Wayman’s About Freelance Writing site, someone from another country asked how to market oneself when making cold calls and follow-up calls to marketing mailings aren’t feasible due to distance. This was after I’d suggested reading Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer and following it verbatim. A good question, and one that deserves…
Heads Off the Desks, People! Fab-u day today. I took time off from the on-site job long enough to catch up with projects. Managed to crank out what I think is a pretty decent draft on a highly-technical article for a client. Why do I love the business techie stuff so much? Maybe because it…
New Year, New YouYea, we all do it. We make resolutions during the shiny hours of a new year, but somewhere around March, things are back to status quo. So why bother making resolutions? Because at least it’s a step in the right direction. So go on – make your resolutions. It’s a confirmation of…
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…
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…