I had to get a larger greenscreen setup for my upcoming EVER NEW podcast. The smaller one doesn’t work behind my chair.

 

The new greenscreen is 7.5 feet by 12 feet. I had to mount it sideways on the new frame to make it cover the entire area that my mic camera takes in behind me.  It works perfectly but sure does take up a lot of my den behind me!

 

But hey, a little inconvenience for a professional-looking background is worth it.

 

I’ve been practicing my EVER NEW spiel so I can say it without hitch or hiccup every time (or so I can record it once and have it play just before I go live every time). At the moment, I have it recorded but I can’t get the background to show anything other than the greenscreen, and I don’t want to post it looking that way.

 

I had to iron the greenscreen to get most of the wrinkles out. Then I sprayed the remaining ones with water with the hope that will take care of them. Not that wrinkles show when I put up a background (which I always will) but I don’t like seeing them in the greenscreen as it sits here in my den. I’m a perfectionist in that way.

 

In Other News…Just-In-Time Projects on Unfamiliar Topics Unnerve Me!!!

 

I’m on the cusp of making a huge decision, or having one made for me. I find myself, for the first time ever in my 15-year writing career, careening toward a previously unannounced and unforeseen, almost immediate deadline which had been pushed out (in September) to “sometime in 2022” and now appears to be needed almost immediately rather than later. (I was told this just yesterday.)

 

JIT (Just in Time) projects unnerve me (I usually charge four times more for them because of the extra stress they induce), even when they don’t make me feel inadequate (when I know the subject matter like the back of my hand). JIT projects on unfamiliar topics unnerve me and  start me thinking, “This isn’t a good fit.” And this hiccup is with my newest, biggest, most high profile, most gifted client.

 

It’s exactly the kind of unnerving I don’t need over the Christmas-New Year holiday week, which I was planning to spend pretty much vegging because I had so many blogs written ahead (into February) until this pivot, which now requires four new blogs on a completely different topic than the ones I had prepared because the client is rolling out a course in January and wants four blogs written to point to it.

 

I understand the need, totally, but I don’t have the insights or the talking points or the source materials to make it happen. I have the sales pieces, and something that was written a year ago, which I’m supposed to adapt to make it unique, but I have no additional talking points or source materials to use other than sales pages, which make several promises but don’t provide enough “meat and potatoes” info to glean to use in blogs.  It’s a pickle!

 

So, I’ve put the ball in the client’s court. I don’t think I can deliver what is needed without being able to get inside her head and know what she knows about the specific topic. It’s upsetting and frustrating, because she has said she loved everything I’ve written to date except the rewrite of the  previous course because there is no new information in it.  (She didn’t provide any new information for it and I’m not an expert in the field.)

 

It’s very stressful and you may be sure I didn’t hang my shingle as a writer to undertake stress-inducing JIT projects. Otherwise, our association has been pure joy. I’m still crazy about the client. I just don’t feel adequate to create valuable content for a field in which I’m no expert. I need source materials and additional talking points when someone wants me to create a rewrite that should in no way appear to have the same content.

 

That’s like asking me to rewrite White Christmas without using the word white or Christmas.  The best I could do with something like that is  “I’m imagining a bright holiday reminiscent of ones I enjoyed as a child.”  Ya know?!  Without additional talking points, statistics or “meat,” and without an equal, expert  understanding of the breadth and depth of a topic, my choices for a rewrite are severely limited!

 

So, I’m allowing the client to decide whether she still thinks we’re a good fit for each other. If she does, we need to come to some kind of agreement that she will decide the topics (she won’t ask me to choose them, because when I did, they ended up not being on the topic she just sprang on me and plans to run with in January, which is just days away.)  I’ve told her I won’t leave her in the lurch; that I will continue to serve until she finds someone who knows her various topics of expertise like the back of their hand and is a great writer to boot, but that if she feels I’m not going to be able to give her the support she needs well in advance of every deadline, so we don’t encounter any more of these JIT challenges, that she should start looking for a replacement with all deliberate speed who can bob and weave at a moment’s notice with  agility and joy. I am simply not that provider.  I choose to work more sedately and serenely. I don’t charge enough to work under stress-inducing JIT deadlines, and I don’t want to work under JIT expectations, period.  I want to love (to the tip of my toes) every minute I’m serving as a writer!

 

I will be sad to lose the income — it has been wonderful — and I will be devastated to lose the client, if it comes to that. But I know in which ways I can work with equanimity and joy, and I choose to honor that. At 70 years of age, its time to honor my body’s baseline druthers, and I know this client, of all clients, understands this. She teaches it, in fact! She’s a miracle worker and I love her dearly.