A Few Notes

Things have been picking up, and I'm delighted to tell the truth. From what I've experienced in this business it's feast or famine when it comes to the workload. Just a few positives notes here, then I'll move on to the bashing, and let's be honest it is more fun to bash douchebag editors and clients than it is to felate myself with job-well-done's. So here goes:


The Good
Inkwell Editorial informed me today that they would be publishing a response to a query I wrote in regard to freelancing overseas. I'll post a link when it gets published in July.

I wrote some copy the last few weeks, as mentioned in a previous post, for a restaurant called Hummus Place (109 St. Mark's Place New York, NY) in the East Village. It was just some basic information about the food, history, and nutrition of Hummus (that's all they serve). Sharon, the graphic designer, and Ori, the chef, loved the copy and I can hope for more copywriting work from Sharon. The two were delightful to work with. I'll be scanning a copy and posting it once these babies get printed up.

I was also contacted to write a series of health articles for some anonymous yahoo user. I always get everything in writing, so I responded that all the specifics should be written into a basic contract. Still waiting on that.

EDIT: I forgot to mention I've been tapped to write a tutorial on binary numbers for Mathblues.com. Rafiq, my editor, says that it's a chance to rewrite history and scold all those text editors who punished me with bland direction. I'm actually enjoying it, I'll post a link soon.

The Bad
I did encounter one sour bit in the last month of assignments and it still irritates me no matter how far I put it out of my mind. I was contacted by a man, we'll call him Phil, who runs a medical website. I don't care to name it, because honestly I hope his business flounders in the market. Phil is a self proclaimed salesman, originally trained as an engineer and from what he told me on the phone, "an intense guy." He asked me on the phone whether or not he came across as intense and I had to respond, not really. We met at his office, I should have known when he first walked in, fresh from lunch wearing that ridiculous buret and self importantance. We went into his office and he began grilling me on what I could do for him, like any good salesman. He even went so far as to offer me a fulltime job, as he described it, a thankless job, I'll pay you nothing and I'm difficult man to work for. Needless to say I told him I wasn't interested. I did, however, mention that it might be interesting to work gathering writers and see what projects they are working on. To this he bobbed his hand in the universal "jack off" motion. I'm not one to be upset at vulgarity, far from it, I think it's one of the wonderful quirks of language, but the self importance that this salesman had dismissed my thought was infuriating. I let it slide, he quickly retracted his statement by saying "if it's important to you, then it is important to me." Bullshit. And I know it when I see it. You don't live in New York and not see great heaps of it every day.

We eventually got to the idea of freelancing. He wanted someone to write a series of articles on some of his clients, profiles you might say, to attract visitors to his site and purchase their services. We agreed on a length, a topic, and a price, which was very low mind you. The price wasn't really what got to me. What got to me was that I had mentioned in passing once on the phone the meager sum I had received for a previous writing assignment (my first one, mind you) and with everything else that was said, he remembered that number and kept bringing it back up, as if it was a travesty that someone else should get a better deal than him. I agreed to take on the minor project since there was not much else going on. Phil proceeds to call me on the weekend urging me to get started. Perhaps he is not familiar with freelance writing, but I will let anyone else know that we freelancers keep sacred deadlines. If you miss one, it's your ass. We work from home for god's sake, it's the one parameter we must adhere. It took me a solid month to get the good people at ICE on the phone. I don't blame them at all, they are a small firm with a limited staff. I wrote the article with a series of phone interviews and notes. I sent it off to Phill and the folks at ICE. ICE liked it, Phill did not. He, as I recall, "could not get past the lead. It frustrated me." Indeed. Fine, I said, read it and give me some feed back and I will happily (well not happily) make the changes. I have not heard from him since and I am considering letting the project die on account that I have a few other clients that are infinitely more accomodating and pleasant to work with. So, in closing I learned to

A) never disclose previous fees and

B) men who style themselves as "intense" are sporting a facade that's cardboard thin. Hunter Thompson was an intense man, Henry Rollins is an intense man. Phil was just a pushy salesman. I will forever spit the word salesman with distaste and revulsion.