Fickle clients revisited

Following up my last post, my fickle client has turned out to be a complete nightmare.

The trial day started off badly and went from frustrating to hair-tearingly disastrous. You've heard of road rage and air rage. Is it possible to have copy-editor's rage, I wonder? (Well, quite possibly if you've been reading Roy Greenslade of late, but that's another story...)

The copy I was sent was lifted off a newswire abroad and written in English by someone who is not a native speaker. My job was to turn it into house-styled clean and accurate prose. Which might not have been too difficult had the original writer not littered it with abbreviations that meant nothing in English and forced me to make inspired guesses, or even wild ones.

One report I was sent consisted of a mere 2 paragraphs but took 2 hours to sign off as a heated discussion ensued between myself and my overseas colleague who was forwarding the work as we could not reach agreement on the meaning of one word. At one point, this person patronised me and then called my expertise into question which, to be blunt, pissed me off immensely.

All the other work I had lined up for other clients ended up delayed or postponed, worsening my already darkening mood.

I did what any sane person would have done and headed out for drinks and food with a friend that night, and talked over my problem. I was torn between wanting to tell my client to stuff this particular job and recognising the importance of regular work that covers the bills. And decided I'd give it a month, tops.

Next morning, the overseas colleague kindly forwarded more copy without asking, even though I had only agreed to one trial day and was behind with other work. However, I agreed I'd do the editing until the end of the week and in the meantime consult the executive who actually pays my monthly invoice.

Day 2 wasn't quite so bad as Day 1 but on Day 3, no work turned up at all. None. Not a stitch. An email enquiring if I would be needed went unanswered.

Today I sent a very lengthy but politely worded email to the executive asking for clarification of my position and making it clear that I will not tolerate be treated with such a lack of respect by the overseas office. I await his reply but something tells me I'm going to dump this client sharpish as I'm fed up being apparently dropped, rehired a month later and then redropped 2 days after that.

Fickle clients

So, last month my most regular copy-editing client and provider of my core income dropped me with virtually no warning. To say I was shocked was an understatement as I'd considered this particular client to be recession-proof.

And, indeed, as it turned out, my being dropped had nothing to do with the recession. Or not much anyway, although it's fair to say they probably found it cheaper to muddle on in-house instead of paying me as I'm overseas to them and thus comparatively expensive.

I immediately set about plugging the gap by finding other work. I've been fortunate to be offered quite a bit of corporate writing work lately, largely unsolicited but some I have actively chased.

And whaddyaknow! No sooner do I fill up my days with other work than my ex-client comes crawling back to me to offer me more work. My initial feeling was to reject it but I doubt any of us can afford to be so fey right now. So I expressed cautious interest - this is not my old work but a new job entirely that will also be daily. The downside is that the original daily work only required me to be at the PC between 7 and 9 in the morning. The new job will oblige me to be available at a whim between 8 and 3, thus tying me to my desk for many more hours a day on the offchance that I might get sent work. This is going to have a severe impact on my other work activities, including limiting my options to go out, either for a break or to meet interviewees/colleagues/potential new clients.

Decisions, decisions...

I've agreed to do a trial day tomorrow. And then I'll see. I admit to being wary - if they can drop me once, they can drop me again and I don't like being mucked around. On the other hand, it's regular work that will pay my monthly bills again. Not an easy choice - I don't want to be motivated purely by money and yet I need to eat and keep a roof over my head.

I shall report back later in the week.

Black holes and recession-proofing

Not a reference to the large hadron collider, but it might as well be.

My pitches are all currently vanishing into nowhere right now. Unfortunately, this is the freelance's lot and I know enough not to take it personally but it's still frustrating. One particular story I've been trying to sell for weeks. It's topical, it has the right amount of sleaze attached to it and it raises serious questions about the conduct of a certain section of the press. One editor was kind enough to respond fairly quickly with a "no, it's not quite right for us" but the other one is resolutely ignoring me. I wish this ed would just mail back and say no.

I'm trying to place another story, a health one, with a mag I've written for a few times already. Despite follow-up mails designed to elicit a firm yay or nay, this ed is ignoring me too. Grr.

It seems to be the season - other freelances I know are also being blanked. It's not personal. And times are hard right now in the industry as publications tighten their belts - the credit crunch means less advertising being sold, means fewer pages, means fewer slots to fill. And staffers being "let go". One staff colleague lost their job last week. I hope this person won't be the first of many amongst my circle. My local paper's pagination has been slashed - not that I write for it, but it's an indication of tougher times to come. It's now so thin I'll have trouble lining the cat's litter tray with it.

I'm lucky that I have enough non-journalism work (other writing jobs and copy-editing) to keep me going. A number of colleagues today were talking about the stock-market turmoil in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and asking me for advice (finance is one of my specialisms). Undoubtedly some of them are going to hit a rocky patch as the economy stutters. It's definitely the time to diversify - I already do that, but some freelances I know are looking at teaching part-time or taking on bar work temporarily, just to pay the bills.

My own plan, by Xmas, is to move into new areas in my fields. I had a tentative offer to do some pro-blogging today - I don't know if anything will come of it but it's definitely a time to expand my expertise. And as I'm planning to move again soon, I'm also considering new training in InDesign so I can take on in-house shifts as well.