I feel accomplished. I just finished putting a tarp over the goat shed–the part of it that is under a small, shingled roof. The goats rarely go in there except in super-frigid weather but the roof started leaking in the middle recently. (My bad: for more than a year I stored some four by four wooden beams up there on the roof crosswise and the rains came and the water pooled behind the beams, infiltrated underneath the shingles, and waterlogged the particleboard roof. Lesson learned the hard way.)

When spring comes I’ll probably replace the small part of the roof over the goats (it’s only 4′ x 12′) and then put corrugated plastic atop it so it sheds water well, but for now, I just want to make sure their bedding stays dry in there in case it gets bitterly cold any time this winter so they can hang out in there in total comfort.

As soon as I finished that little chore (not so little when you’re doing it alone atop a too-short step stool that’s sitting on waterlogged grass or mud: the legs of step stools like to submerge themselves suddenly and unexpectedly and throw you off balance…but I digress) I went to the store for some groceries.

This morning before tackling the goat shed I finished up a project for a new client. He’s thrilled (and local!) and we’re going to meet each other in person for the first time and “do lunch” next Friday at a sushi restaurant on South Tacoma Way, which will be a first for me (sushi) but he says he’ll take good care of me and guide me through…   oh-kay… I’m game… I think.

Another client is waffling on whether he wants his site to be as relational as I make sites. None of his competitors have relational sites, so he’s nervous.  I told him right up front even before he settled on me (after seeing his existing site) that if he doesn’t want a relational site, not to pick me because I’m not into yawn-some, corporate-speak sites.  He agreed completely, so we engaged on a trial, five-hour basis, to cover review of source materials and up to three hours of copy writing and/or enhancement of existing copy to make it more relational.

I sent him the first two pages for review and although he says he’s impressed with what I’ve done, he wants them to be more “stern”.  Stern is a long way from relational in my book.  I can see modifying a few lines to make them slightly less relational, but if he wants more than that, we’re going to have to agree to disagree and call a halt to the project so he only has to pay the kill fee to get out of the agreement. He had access to my portfolio of work and loved it all, so he sure knew what to expect by way of style when he hired me.

He also got the cart before the horse and had a web designer create (or choose) the templates for the pages before he had the copy, so he says the copy doesn’t fit.  I let him know right up front before we began that he got that backward and that I wasn’t sure I’d have the leeway to do what I needed to do as a copywriter if the page templates constricted me too much. He said that was no problem; he could have the templates changed easily enough. So now he’s looking into doing that, which is probably going to cost him more. It’s a  pickle–but it is what it is: the frame (page template) that you put around a picture (the website copy) should be the last piece of the puzzle, not the first. It’s the ‘picture’ (the web copy) that people ‘buy into’, not the frame–although a great frame always helps as long as it doesn’t mess with the total picture. It’s the copy that has to sell. If the frame cripples the copywriter, you’ve defeated the purpose of hiring a professional wordsmith and you’re pretty much out of luck.  We need sufficient runway to weave our words into compelling, engaging copy.

Anyway, I think this client and I are going to work it out just fine. We have a good relationship already, even though this is our first project together, so I’m sure we’ll get through it.  I don’t mind altering the copy as long as I think what he wants won’t shoot him in the foot.  He may just decide to take a few words or phrases out to make it sound a little more ‘stern’ than it does. (It doesn’t sound at all stern–I would hate to visit a stern website–wouldn’t you?).

Perhaps he’s using the wrong term–his parents (the founders of the company) are expatriat Egyptians living in Canada and although the fellow I’m working with sounds 100% fluent on the phone, he may not have a tight grasp on the vagaries of the English language, so he might not mean ‘stern’ at all.  I await more information…

Another former client wants me to doll up (enhance or completely rewrite, depending on need and price) a blog article that a partner wrote. He says it’s anemic and he knows I can improve it because I’ve enhanced a couple of his blogs before.  So that is in the pipeline.  I’m waiting to get the copy so I can determine whether I can redeem (edit/enhance) the existing copy or if I have to start from scratch and totally rewrite it.

All in a day’s work!

What else?  Guess that’s it for this time. Have a great weekend!