All systems go!

So much for thinking it would be a quiet week. Monday yielded little e-mail but, as might be expected, it only took one day out of the office (Tuesday) for my inbox to be inundated. I came back from London to find nearly 100 e-mails needing my attention. Most merited only a quick glance before deletion, but a handful were to do with paid work. As a result, I'm now playing catch-up again.

My London meeting turned out to be very productive. The job's mine if I want it. But I'm not making any official announcement yet as there are a few things to mull over. The money looks good on paper, it's just that a handful of issues need to be clarified. I hope to finalise everything early next week.

I was shattered after going to London and back in a day but despite the tiredness I had a sleepless night. My brain refused to switch off and I tossed and turned for hours. So yesterday, despite work piling up I got very little done apart from dealing with yet another stream of e-mails. I was propositioned by a PR agency who wanted me to write press releases about internet gambling sites. Now, I never work for agencies on principle, as I have explained before, and besides, I wasn't particularly interested in this job as the person who contacted gave only a mobile number. What kind of PR agency has no landline? I googled the company to discover there was no website either. Well, there was, but it wasn't live. So I mailed back explaining these two points. I was most amused to get a shirty reply telling me how rude I was. Apparently just for pointing out that I don't do agency work and and saying I don't do business with companies that have only a mobile contact number! If I was rude, she was certainly unprofessional to reply like that. My best friend, who is keen to break into editing, agreed with me when we met up last night. I have no compunction about turning down job leads like that.

I had a nice phone natter with an editor/copywriter in Manchester about the trials and tribulations of what we do, and to discuss passing work to each other if either has a bottleneck. I'm planning to meet her soon in person to see if an exchange will be viable.

I also spoke to my graphic designer - we have another ad to prepare for our scientific client and we've planned a much-needed lunch meeting to discuss rebuilding my professional website. Hurrah! I thought this would never happen, but it's become increasingly urgent. I hope that this will be done by late August as it's long overdue.

Beyond that, files flowed across the ether to be edited. I'm going to have to work like a slave this morning to get it all done and returned as I need to take the afternoon off to buy a birthday present for my sister. And there are a zillion calls to make. And an article to write for Editing Matters on the importance of timekeeping for freelances.

Enough wittering, I need to buckle down if I'm ever going to earn any money this week!