Hey. How do? :-)
Ok, so where do I start?
A lot has happened since my last post; the most significant is...
I've gone back to freelance writing.
I thought about it. Thought about it long and hard...and decided (after much inner kicking and screaming) to revisit that part of what I used to do.
Soooo, I approached a former client I used to write for. My best client ever. The coolest.
Started writing the first line of my email to him, thought I sounded STOOPID, so saved it in draft.
Then, hours later, I decided to just go for it, damn it - wrote the email asking if I could come back for 6 months to a year, then pressed 'Send' before any hint of psychoanalysis could kick in.
The next morning, I get a real friendly email welcoming me back and asking me if I could start immediately!
Chuffed and relieved? An understatement.
I'm even getting paid a bit more than I used to. :-)
My weak points...overcoming them...trying to...
Meeting deadlines has been a problem for me. If I had a deadline to meet by, say, Friday, I'd spend all week worrying about it rather than actually doing the damn work. I'd put off the writing for as long as I could, 'til Thursday or so. Then, come Thursday, I'd start to really panic and get properly stressed out.
I now know (well I've known for a while) that the 'deadline syndrome' was based on fear: pure and simple. Fear of the sum of what I had to do. Fear of opening myself up to my work being looked at. Fear of taking action.
This time round...
This time, I decided there was little point going back into freelance writing if I wasn't willing to make some changes.
Bearing that in mind, I'm happy to say I recently wrote a piece for my client and met the deadline!
How I did it:
- I started doing the research 3 days before the deadline (trust me, this is a HUGE improvement on my part)
- Instead of focusing on the whole piece, I broke it up into small manageable chunks and just dealt with each chunk at a time.
- I'm your typical Gemini; I have a short attention span, bore easily and thrive on variety. I can't sit down and spend more than an hour or two writing an article without some serious squirming. So what I did was intersperse my day with other work I had to do, alternating between them.
- I had a daily to-do list which really helped.
So, yeah. So far, so goody oh.
Felt really good handing that piece in; a sense of achievement.
Ermmm, other things I've been up to...
- proofreading...
I've been getting more proofreading work. One's an existing client who's been making more orders. The other came after I created a thread advertising it as a service. I'd love to add more clients to my workload, so we'll see how that goes.
- forum posting...
I haven't done paid forum posting in a good good while, but I've been giving it a dabble recently. Got one that's fairly long term. New forum – good to be a part of it from the start. Doesn't feel too tasking as I find the topic cool. The pay on offer was initially 10 cents a post, but was upped to 15 cents/post. I wouldn't mind joining an additional forum; I have to find it really interest, though (very important) and it has to pay better.
I wouldn't mind doing a bit of blog commenting work too (tends to pay better).
Sooo, that's what I've been up to.
Hope y'all have had a good weekend :-)
I'm out...
Ebele.
