T’is the calm before the storm.
I’m in the eye of the hurricane.
(Pick your favorite metaphor for what follows!)
Right now, I’m doing absolutely nothing for clients!!! (Feel the freedom! Enjoy the moment! Celebrate!) Although I love, love, love what I do, at age (newly) 71, I also love NOT doing what I do to make extra money as often as is prudent!
I wrote this weekend for a couple clients (I don’t usually write on weekends, but made an exception) and made about $600 in 2.5 hours. Two of the three were unexpected drop ins. The other was a last-minute “mirroring” project for another client because the person she expected to deliver something for her blog didn’t, and it was a rush. She needed it within the hour. So, yeah, I did that one, too.
On or about March 17th, I will be editing/enhancing a terrific manuscript when the author turns it over to my total control. He’s taking a last look at it to make sure he’s ready to do that. I never tackle a manuscript until the originator tells me they are 100% ready to relinquish total control to me. Doing it any other way can cause massive headaches and I don’t want to have to charge more to compensate for potential massive headaches.
But for right now, I’m at loose ends, unless I want to finish a blog post for a client that is due in April. I don’t. Sometimes I need to put some space between one end of a blog piece and the other while my Muse takes a respite. Nothing is occurring to me right now as a way forward (which rarely happens), so I’m waiting to see what comes up when I give it some space and time. (This isn’t the way I usually work, but sometime it happens. Maybe once or twice a year.) If nothing happens, I will have to resort to wrestling the rest into place, and that’s no fun. It never feels sculpted/channeled properly when that happens. It feels cobbled together instead of divinely inspired.
Because I expect the editing job on the manuscript to take between 30 and 40 hours (in three to four hour segments), it’s going to take me one and a half to two weeks to finish it, so I want to get the April projects off my plate before I begin.
April projects include two live shows (less than an hour each) and four blog posts for one client. My client is writing one of the live shows (except for the blog post that will accompany it, which I have already written) so that leaves me one live show and three blog posts to write. Totally do-able but I have to come up with topics for the blog posts. I’ve made some suggestions but haven’t heard back yet on whether they float the client’s boat. We should settle that this weekend when we collaborate again. As soon as I have topics, I can move ahead.
I have other clients who drop in semi-regularly for help, too, but usually only a couple hours per week. As long as that stays the same, I should be fine.
I will put off accepting new clients until the manuscript is put it bed. As a semi-retired professional, I want to make sure to stick to my guns and refrain from overloading my plate with deadline-driven work. My happy place is 10 to 15 hours of work per week, especially during spring, summer and fall so I can get outdoors often to walk, bike, and play pickleball while the weather up here in the Pacific NW is decent. Wintertime work hours can be more, because I’m stuck indoors so much then with nothing else to do. At an average of $100 to $150/hour, 10 to 15 hours per week is more than enough to keep my savings account growing (which it desperately needs — when I was an executive secretary at Warner Bros. back in the 90’s, I made $30K one year, and that’s by far the most I ever made as an employee during all the years I worked for other folks) and my credit card paid off. (I pay that off every month.)
I got some additional testimonials from new clients. They are lovely. Check out my testimonials page to read them.
(Tara Fox, a “grounded golf” instructor, and Tonya Kopp, for whom I wrote two sales pages based on her existing pages.)
