Thursday, November 1, 2007

October: The Good, The Bad, The Love...

October was an interesting month. I got quite busy with a new team of people that I'm giving work to and I'm learning a lot about managing other people's deadlines as well as my own. I'll write about this interesting experience in the coming blog posts this month. As my October wrap up, Here's the good, the bad, & some link love.

The Good:
I had a good month overall. I wrote my first ghostwritten e-book from scratch (I'd done rewrites and compilations in the past) and I enjoyed the process. Better still, the customer gave me a rave review so I think I'll be doing more of these. I have a few half written e-books that are my own instead of ghostwritten so maybe I'll delve back into those and actually finish them. It was a busy month with some chaos but I feel like I've progressed in some areas and that's my goal on a monthly basis.

The Bad:
I had some disappointments and some victories in October and my biggest lesson of the month is in setting deadlines with other writers. Not everyone has the same writing personality as myself and I've figured out that I need to have team members with the same mentality in order for me to be able to sleep at night. I also need to put people on trial run when they first join and not put myself in a position where someone can let me down before they've initially proved themselves. I had a writer who joined the team and ask for work come back and ask for as much work as I could give because of a financial bind and then she disappeared leaving me with three assignments and scrambling because one was suddenly past due. I can only hope she's actually ok in life and hasn't had some horrible thing happen but I need to be a little more wary with new people until I get to know them because it is MY reputation on the line. And, I need to remember that I am a freelancer and do not work for my clients. I have to stop feeling horrible guilt if I turn down a job. I also need to learn to take more breaks. I am working on that one.


The Love:


Thanks to all who commented here in October. Here’s some love right back atcha:

Sharon Hurley Hall
Brenda Emmett
Michele Tune
Courtney Ramirez
Lorna Doone
1luckeemom
Sue Jeffels
Margie
Oswegan
Holli Jo
Lillie Ammann
MLH, Marcie

Have a great November!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Dana. My link love for October will be published tomorrow. Freelance writing is a constant learning experience, isn't it?

Michele | aka Raw Juice Girl said...

Thank you, Dana, for the link!

I hope you have a smooth, joyous November with lots to be thankful for ;0)

Smiles,
Michele

Travis Erwin said...

Overall it sounds like a productive and educational month.

Dana Prince said...

I got the idea of giving back the love from you, Sharon. It's a great idea :)

It was, Travis. Thanks for stopping by...haven't seen you in ages :)

Sue Jeffels Writing said...

Have only just cottoned on to the link love - will get down to that this week. Thanks Dana

Anonymous said...

keep up with the good..the bad is ugly!

Malcolm R. Campbell said...

Gee, I thought having people ask to help and then slip away at the last moment only happened with volunteer projects. :-)

On the other hand, the good is good enough to make up for school of hard-knocks lessons. Good luck with the e-books!

Malcolm

Deanna Kent-McDonald said...

Dana,
Hello! Found you while lurking on absolutewrite. It's a bizarro thing. I have "scheduled" time in the lonely & somewhat freakish internet world. So seeing someone who says "Canada" makes me feel unreasonably thrilled. Anyhow, nice to visit. I'll be back.
DKM
www.deannakentmcdonald.com

Dana Prince said...

Thanks so much for stopping by, Deanna. I couldn't resist AW any longer. There's so much useful info there and I plan to blog about it soon.

I visited your website & LOVED your bio :)
Cheers,
Dana