Feast or Famine?

I'm lucky as I'm just about staving off hunger - the project I was waiting for that was going to take the whole of August has arrived and one of my clients who doesn't pay very much but who pays quickly answered my last plea for work. But some colleagues are not so lucky and I seem to be hearing daily of publishing houses making their staff (my contacts) redundant and others tell me they're 'not sending any work out at the moment'.



Then I hear of more Internet sites starting up where editors bid for work, which works for some but I'm not sure it's for me, and some where they project manage the production of a book for a percentage of the royalties (eek!).



Others are reporting that they are too busy and are having trouble deciding between projects to take on - naturally I'm taking account of the areas they work in ;-) I'm also looking at the part-time jobs section in the local paper, keeping my secretarial skills honed and returning to my crafty side.

As many freelancers know - it is usually feast or famine and I'm still hoping for the 'Back to School' rush to kick in.

A knock in confidence

I've been a bit quiet of late (for those who know me personally that is very rare!).

I've been very busy with quite a lot of work coming in - great.

However a couple of weeks ago I had to make a difficult decision with a job I'd agreed to take on - I sent it back, unfinished. I've never done that before - I've always ensured that I've done a complete and satisfactory job, though it may have been a little late. Unfortunately it had got the the stage that I'd worked double the hours I'd allocated to it, it was already a week late but I was less than halfway through the final edit. I was staying up all hours to make progress on it and had other clients work backing up. The final decision was to risk losing this one client to save losing up to 3 others. A difficult decision but it was the right one at the time.

I've already had repeat business from the other clients but I must say it has knocked my confidence a bit - mainly because it was taking me so long to complete the project and I like to take pride in my work.

How do you deal with it when your confidence is knocked?

Very quick update

Quick update on my last post - payment will arrive in my bank account tonight (3 weeks late) which will include the interest but not the compensation fee. (I've amended my invoices to actually state an amount in the text I put at the bottom - for an invoice of under £1,000 this will be £40, more for over £1,000.)

I haven't lost business as a result as they've been in touch twice this week about upcoming projects - one I can't do as I'm too busy to even blog at the moment.

Right, back to the grindstone (laptop) ...