Waves and concerns

I seem to be blogging in waves at the moment. There's lots of ideas zooming around my head but sitting down at the computer screen and typing seems to only happen in short sharp bursts.

I'm also fretting a bit. I've had some health issues which have temporally abated but my medication runs out tomorrow and the GP warned it could all start again. I've had two appointments at the hospital for the 'abnormality' the optician spotted and now have to be referred to another consultant who's at a hospital 40 minutes drive away (the usual time spent at the hospital is 2 hours to see the Dr for 10 mins - and you can't take a book to read because they put scary drops in your eyes).

My OH has been working some awful shift patterns so has been absent from childcare duties and then when he did get a few days of the decided he needed a break and went fishing (though I still refuse to take it up as a hobby so that I can have a break). We should finally find out about the redundancy decision on Tuesday but in the meantime things are a little tense.

Plus I feel a little bit of a failure - after nearly 4 years freelancing I've let my OH persuade me to apply for a part-time job. Though I have a lot of work to do in the next 10 days I have nothing in the pipeline and no money coming in for at least a month. My usual clients have gone silent and after prodding some have admitted that they 'aren't currently sending anything out of house'.

I'm not completely disappearing from the freelance scene - and I don't know if I have the job yet - but I am looking for a bit more security. There are only so many things you can sell on eBay and my son needs a school uniform for January.

Hmm after that moan perhaps I should have kept the blog silence a little longer ....

The M word :-@

The Berry/Brewer girls over at Freelance Parent want us to talk about that dirty word - Money. As in how much do freelancers really earn.

I touched on this here back in May but it's time to spill the beans - bearing in mind I am currently very, very, part time the figure that I expect my accountant to come up with at our meeting next week is around £10,000 - which works out to £833 a month (and seeing as I recently worked out I need £800 a month to pay my share of the bills that's just about right).

Since May I have been making positive efforts to increase my work load and my pay rate so I'm hoping for an increase next year - especially as I will be less part-time in 2009.

So, no, I won't earn my fortune freelancing (at least not in publishing) but being my own boss is priceless ...

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?

Facebook and LinkedIn

I'm up to my eyes at the moment (great after the recent dry spell). The reason - because I've had some work from unexpected sources, namely Facebook and LinkedIn.

I've been a fan of Facebook for a while - but a lot of people aren't. There's a lot of discussion out there about whether it is a distraction from work rather than a source of work (and even support). As a freelancer it has been a lifeline as I hook up with other freelancers and we post (talk) about anything and everything but it has also put me in touch with prospective and past work contacts. Equally if I ever need to pass work on it is highly likely I will recommend one of my Facebook contacts because I know more about them.

I've recently signed up to LinkedIn and pop in every now and again to answer some of the questions that people post up. This has led to me linking with more people and some exciting work opportunities. Though there isn't really the social side of Facebook it is a useful tool.

So from my point of view it is worth a try!

I've found my motivation!

Having a little look on YouTube I found my motivation for doing my job!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjhOBiSk8Gg

Now, must get back to work.

Back to Earth with a bump!

I'm back from my trip - slightly less laden with souvenirs than I would have been if my pay cheques had come through but never mind they are winging their way to my bank account now so can pay all the bills that arrived in our absence!

So it's back to Earth with a bump! My answering machine had a message from a company about collecting my laptop - strange I left it at PC World just before we left to be fixed (it started emitting a high pitched noise when I switched it on and the screen was blank). I duly rang the number believing that they were ringing for me to arrange to pick up my fixed machine. No such luck. I was rather shirtily told that they had left several messages and written to me to arrange to pick up my laptop to fix it (one message and no letter). When I pointed out that I'd left it at PC World they checked the computer again and assured me that yes PC World had been in touch on Friday and it was being picked up that day - so it has been sitting in PC World for 3 and a half weeks. Ggrrr! I feel bereft without my laptop even though it has now broken down twice within a year.

On the plus side I have come back to some work - always nice - though the info I need hasn't arrived yet and the deadline is Friday .... back to normal then.

Momentary euphoria turns to nagging doubt

I'm experiencing momentary euphoria due to the fact that the project I mentioned in my last post is finally 'in the post' to the designer. The client and the project manager stopped answering my emails last week so I'm now starting with the nagging doubt of whether I'll ever get paid by them and, if I do get paid, if they will give me any more work - and if so if I would accept it?

You see I've been in the position for the first few years of my freelance career of only having a couple of clients - one of which I worked for in a previous life as an in-house editor - and chugging along quite happily until 1) the work dried up and I realised it was true you can't put all your eggs in one basket and 2) little one went to nursery and I suddenly had more time on my hands - and I'd rather work than do the housework!

My first action when the work started to dry up was to advertise in a few places locally (so far to this date I've had no clients from this :-]), get on as many web forums for freelancers as I could and, of course Facebook.

The second was to chase up my advanced membership of the SfEP which had been sitting in the office for a year waiting for my previous employer to write a reference about my freelance work - which she simply 'didn't have time' to do. Thankfully as I could prove that in the year since I had made the application I had worked 100s and 100s of hours and had undertaken CPD (continuous professional development) the council granted me the status and I was able to add myself to the directory. The result has been several new clients and a very hectic workload but also some bad experiences - unintelligible briefs, contrary clients and late payment. There have been good points too - expanding my repertoire, building up a good client base and in some cases a bit better pay!

So I'm not in a position to pick and choose just yet - but it would be nice! Perhaps when he's at university :-)

Are clients on the same planet?

A regular debate on one of the facebook groups I frequent is 'Do clients speak the same language as us?' with my latest one I'm beginning to wonder if we both inhabit the same planet!

Early December got a 'would you be interested in a quick job for us' email, to which I replied a hearty 'yes' with a view to working over the Christmas period when everyone else was on holiday.

Week before Christmas
Client: 'Glad you can take on the project, will be with you hopefully before Christmas but definitely before the New Year'

2nd Jan
Client: 'Here are the series editors' corrections for the text'.
Me: 'Okay, but I don't have the text to add the corrections to'.

10th Jan
Me: 'I have just received the original but there appear to be 2 versions'.

11th Jan
Client: 'There are 2 different versions of the book one with questions and the other with the answers - here's the email with the instructions that I thought I'd sent before Christmas - can you do the checklist over the weekend and get queries to the project manager early in the week?'

Sun 13th
Me (to project manager): 'Okay I've gone through and here are my initial queries and the checklist you wanted me to fill in. Can you check that I am on the right lines and get back to me?'

Mon 14th
Project manager: 'I'm very pushed at the moment will get back to you tomorrow'.

Tues 15th
Me (to PM and client): 'I've finished going through and there appears to be a lot of text missing - changes have been made to the questions but I need matching information for the answers are there any files missing?'
Project manager: 'I have your queries sent on Sunday I'll be in touch tomorrow with an answer'.
Client: 'There aren't any more files'.
Project manager: 'Can you tell me where you are with the project and how long it is going to take you to finish it?'
Me (to PM): 'Depends on when I get the missing information unless you want me to try to write it'.

Yesterday
Project manager: 'Can you tell me where you are with the project and how long it will take you to finish it?'
Client: 'You don't appear to have sent the information we requested to be with us immediately after the weekend.'
Me (to client): 'Was sent to project manager on Sunday'.
Project manager: 'The stuff sent on Sunday is fine. Can you fill in the attached form to say where you are with the project and how many hours you think it will take?'
Me (to project manager): 'All depends on the answers to the queries.'

Today
Client: 'Can you tell me where you are with the project?'
Me: 'I am waiting for answers to queries sent on Tuesday as I am missing a lot of information.'
Client: 'Please find attached information that we have - does this help?'
Me: 'Not really as it is the same as what I have. Can you confirm what you want me to do? Should I wait for answers to the queries or should I try to rewrite the answers book to match the questions myself?'
Client: 'Oh don't wait for the answers to the queries as we won't send them off until we get proofs. Please do write the answers for the book as best you can. Can you let us know when you will be finished?'
Me: argh!!!!

And, yes, this is one of the clients in my last post about asking questions and Wordsmith was quite right in her observations that there are situations where you can ask too many questions but I dread to think what would have happened with this project if I hadn't!

Payment terms are 45 days - so my hair should have started to grow back by then :-)

OK, rant over, back to work!