Keeping clients honest

Here's a dilemma: what does one do with the client who can't keep track of its own deadlines?

In the past, when I've attempted to cover my behind by pointing out that the client hasn't provided the necessary materials in order for me to meet the original deadline, this information has been met with a revised timeline and occasionally a thank-you-for-pointing-that-out email. My most recent experience with this kind of communication was met with a terse I'm-too-busy-to-worry-about-deadlines response, implying that I was nuts to care about such a trivial thing as a project deadline.

That kind of tap dance really gets my dander up. When you give me a deadline, and I agree to it, until you tell me otherwise, I will stick to the original plan. My professionalism prevents me from letting deadlines slide, even if the client is the one doing the sliding.

Is it too much to ask for the client to just send a quick we're-moving-the-deadline email, with details to follow? For some clients, apparently it is.

(P.S. The obvious question here is why do I care more about my clients' deadlines than they do?)

Building on the momentum

Taking a weekend off from real life by going somewhere else can inject a jolt of energy into the creative process. I visited a college friend for two days, setting my own life's details aside and immersing myself in hers. Listening to her tell stories, meeting the characters in her life, watching the world go by through her car windows, I found some great material for a short story, maybe a novella. (It would only be loosely based on actual people, of course...)

The momentum wave I was riding before the weekend took a little break while I was on my short vacation. But I was constantly thinking about how to apply life's observations to this creative endeavor called writing, and how that might apply to networking to promote my business. That doesn't sound very relaxing, does it? And yet, I came home refreshed and ready to get to work this morning, full of ideas and momentum.

Lesson learned: getting out of town can recharge the batteries.

The importance of self-marketing

Saw this today and found it incredibly relevant (and added a photo to this blog after reading about the importance of personal brand management):

Top Small Business Marketing Trends for 2009

Posted using ShareThis

The great logo search

My (sort-of) self-titled company does not have a logo, and now that I'm handing out business cards and building up my presence on the web through this blog, I think it's time to get one.

One of my networking groups includes designers as well as writers and editors, so perhaps I could trade services with a designer to get a free logo. Maybe I could offer to write some new web copy, help with a marketing plan, collaborate on a proposal for a new client, overhaul a resume--whatever it takes. Quid pro quo.

Yep. It's time to send out a query.

Doing my homework

When taking on a new project, occasionally I've found it tempting to "phone it in," especially if I'm already on deadline with another client or, worse, not intellectually stimulated by the subject matter. Keeping an eye on the prize--whether it's exceeding the client's expectations, earning a decent living, or simply finishing the job to make time for something new--is key in this situation. To build my business and keep my reputation, laziness is never an option.

This rule especially applies to research projects. I've been in this business long enough to remember how research used to be, long before email, cell phones, and Google. Doing my homework required searching through library books, archives, microfiche (who uses that anymore?), file folders, and stacks of notes scribbled on bits of paper. And finding interviewees was even harder, often requiring in-person visits, hoping to squeeze some time out of their day. Technology has brought everything closer, made everything faster, and enabled much easier communications. But sometimes that same technology comes with red herrings--like selectively edited Wikipedia entries filled with misleading, biased, or incorrect information.

So if I do end up phoning anything in these days, it's on the social side of life. My friends know what I'm talking about. And it's not personal. It's business.

The work lives on(line)

I've recently discovered that some articles I wrote years ago for the Sallie Mae job-seeker website TrueCareers are still posted online, along with some newer articles by other writers. This leads me to believe that one of two things is true: either I have a gift for writing articles that are timeless or the web content editor at TrueCareers has forgotten to clear out the old stuff. Either way, I am pleased to see my work still online and (hopefully) read occasionally--maybe even providing a bit of help from time to time.

I added a link to the career articles page at TrueCareers to the Client Sites section on this blog. The following are my articles, all accessible from that page:

* How Low Do You Go?
* Live to Work or Work to Live? That Is the Question.
* Focus Your Internet Resume to Get Attention
* How to Reduce On-the-Job Stress
* Corporate Trouble: Reading the Warning Signs
* Year-End Bonus? Bah! Humbug

Getting distracted

My colleagues in the editorial biz call it an "occupational hazard," this inability we all seem to have in getting through an article, email, blog entry, book chapter--or heck, sometimes even a newspaper headline--without stopping to examine an error. It could be a misspelled word, an error in syntax, an errant comma or misplaced hyphen, or something incredibly minor, like an extra space between words (which, honestly, drives me nuts). Whatever the error, it stops us in our tracks, completely stymied that some crackerjack editor didn't notice and fix the problem before it went to print (or whatever one calls the online-only equivalent of print).

I get distracted every time I read something in TIME magazine, one of my favorites for catching up on in-depth news stories, tales of global strife, and little bits of humorous fluff that the editors find interesting enough to include. I've noticed the magazine's rather new convention for capitalizing the first word after a colon, as though the colon somehow ended the first phrase completely, warranting a brand new sentence. This boggles my mind, not only for its sheer stupidity but also for flagrantly ignoring basic English sentence structure. It's as if every copy editor at the magazine has suddenly come down with a case of creative editingitis (ED-it-ing-EYE-tus)--the disease that strips the editor of years of education, replacing it with a desire to recreate English from scratch. I equate creative editingitis with Ebonics, that ill-fated attempt in the '80s to make a new hybrid language out of American southernisms and completely broken English.

So what is it about these errors that keeps me from enjoying a good read? Probably the knowledge that such errors would have been caught had I been the copy editor in charge. Yes, it sounds cocky. But that doesn't make it any less true.

Finding the motivation

Back in the early '90s, when I was attending all sorts of writing and poetry workshops and actively participating in writing group discussions, I was encouraged to "write something every day, even if you don't feel like it." This was good advice when I thought I wanted to be the next great American fiction writer, and I tried to follow it judiciously.

But once I was writing prose for a living, this advice seemed irrelevant. I was already writing stuff for my clients. Why should I also write something on my own, for no money? Taking such a flippant attitude was probably where I lost my way as a serious writer of serious things (i.e., a person who keeps a journal and/or writes fiction/poetry all the time).

I do actually write something every single day, whether it's email, personal or professional blogging, or just fragmented thoughts on a notepad. What I'm not doing is working on polishing anything original, like a short story or a poem, or even the beginnings of an article that might someday get published. This is what was meant by "write something every day."

Promoting my business to the wider world is moving up on my priority list, starting with the networking event this evening. And as long as I'm motivated to print out new business cards and post something new on my business blog, I might as well use that motivation to write something completely unrelated to my business.

We all have to begin somewhere, when we start something new. Adding a new daily activity can be difficult to habituate, and I certainly don't expect it to happen overnight. So I'm going to start with today and see how it goes. (Monday always seems to be the day when I try new things!) Today I will write something non-email, non-blog, non-note... Something with purpose, something that interests me, something that could take me somewhere new.

Networking can be fun!

Today I was invited to join a networking group of women entrepreneurs in my county who meet monthly to share ideas, strategies, success stories...and perhaps complain a bit about clients. I am already a member of a (mostly) virtual networking group of freelancers in the greater DC area who communicate primarily via email and Facebook. Professional in-person networking, an essential self-marketing tool for freelancers, is a permanent fixture on my career to-do list, and yet I never seem to make enough time for it. So this seems like a great opportunity, and it's right in my backyard. I think I'll RSVP yes.

Samples and resume

An experiment in self-publishing

I've been a freelance writer for most of my career, and an editor before that, but this is my first attempt at building a professional web presence to promote my services. My plan is to post musings and observations on the world of freelance writing, and also to post my credentials, resume, experience, and writing samples (through Scribd.com, with links to those samples on this blog). I welcome feedback and suggestions from writers and non-writers alike!