Starting a Freelancing Series

An increasing number of freelance writers and bloggers now run a regular series of posts, at least according to some of the useful links about writing that can be found on Twitter. I have decided that a starting a series may mean I post more regularly on this blog, so today I am going to kick off what will be a Saturday series:

A Week in The Life of A Frazzled Freelancer

I tend to get rather frazzled in many areas of my life, and freelancing is no exception. It doesn't matter how good the weather is, how much I love my clients, or how much money I've made, by the end of the week I am frazzled, as this post testifies. I don't want you to think that this is because I don't like and enjoy my life, I do, but I also know that I am not the most organized person with the most malleable family.

This last fortnight has been exceptionally frazzled as my RA has flared up and that always interferes with my work and pretty much anything else I want to do, May is also a bad month for me, which I won't go into here. This series is intended to give you a weekly birdseye view of what life is like in the frazzled freelancer's lane. So, here goes.

Feast or Famine

The freelancing life can be one of feast or famine, particularly if you are not methodical about marketing, and my marketing tends to be a bit haphazard. At the moment I have 3 clients who between them, have an order of about 75 articles a week, two clients who send me bits of work here and there, and who were referred to me by another client, one monthly job for VirtualMeasures.com and some articles for a content site. So the week is pretty full right now, especially when I add in the weekly supervision of 3 postgrads and the on/off writing of research proposals.

I do try to keep to some kind of schedule where I allocate so much time each day to regular clients and allow the odd hour or so for anything else that comes in. I keep a running list of how much money I have earned each day, what I managed to do that was on schedule, and what got left, for reasons I outlined in another post. Thank God for Moleskines, they are a great place to keep all of my writing info.

I've not spent quite as much time on Twitter this week but that doesn't seem to have freed up any time for working on my personal writing. I have been more than halfway through a novel for the last several months and am stuck rewriting one particular scene, but haven't touched it this week.

One client that I picked up on a marketing exercise at the start of May, is now talking about paying me an hourly rate as wahm staff writer, as they liked the work I'd already done for them, but that is still in negotiation. Over the last couple of months I have also developed a speciality in finance articles as one client orders 25 of these a week and they are fast becoming no brainers. If you are in any doubt about credit card debt or need some finance articles then I am your friendly frazzled freelancer.

Dracula's Emporium

This week was particularly frazzled, when I have an RA flare, it is not just my body that is at war with itself, the problem tends to carry over to my brain. I am on an RA drug known as methatrixate, which requires me to have monthly blood tests done. I was due for tests this week, the first time I turned up at Dracula's emporium and had forgotten to take the form with me, so I couldn't get it done. Yesterday, I went back, but had the wrong half of the form with me. I now have to wait until Tuesday, request another blood form, and submit myself to the needle. So much for a week in the life of a fairly fucked up frazzled freelancer.