On July 1, I had the honour to lead the singing of “O Canada” at the Lieutenant Governor’s Garden Party at Government House in celebration of Canada Day. And here’s a video! Here I am …
My young-YA/middle-grade fantasy Fireboy, already a finalist for Best Young Adult Novel in this year’s Aurora Awards and finalist for a 2027 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award in the Northern Lights Division, has just been …
Had a great time being part of the cast of Regina Lyric Musical Theatre‘s production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I played Fogg (the insane asylum keeper) and also sang in …
My young-YA/middle-grade fantasy Fireboy, a nominee for Best Young Adult Novel in this year’s Aurora Awards, is also a finalist for the 2027 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award in the Northern Lights Division. This is …
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m up for two Aurora Awards this year! Fireboy is on the ballot for Best Young Adult Novel, and The Worldshapers is once again on the ballot for Best Fan …
I spent a good chunk of today at Wordbridge, the annual writers’ conference in Lethbridge, Alberta. My main reason for coming was to launch a Shadowpaw Press title (Broken Realm by Jenna Greene, a Lethbridge …
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Sometimes being a freelancer sucks
Take today, for instance. I just found out that a major project I thought I would be writing has fallen through…and it was one I was really looking forward to. (No, I hasten to reassure you, not the sequel to Marseguro: as far as I know, Terra Insegura is still a go.)
And it’s not as if I don’t have lots of stuff to keep me busy, which is one reason I’ve been a bit lax posting on here this week. But when you only get paid when you drum up work for yourself, losing a gig you thought you had is annoying.
Grrr. Guess I’ll take it out on my keyboard.
Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2007/11/sometimes-being-a-freelancer-sucks/
3 comments
Definitely beats a real job, but there are some days…
I hear you. The way projects collapse in on themselves always astonishes me. I can carefully plan out having this done by this date, and that done by that date, and then I’ll be in good shape to do the next thing…but somehow when it all shakes out everything has to be done at once. And then, all of a sudden, you hit a drought and have no paying work at all.
Oh, well. I suppose it still beats a real job… 🙂
Ain’t that the truth. My dilemma is sort of similar. I signed a contract for 3 projects way back in January with one of my clients. They paid me 50% upfront on all of them. Two are completed and totally paid for. The third project should have been done in September. Due to one reason or another, my client, that does a lot of surveys, first was late in doing their surveys, then their in-house stats guy quit, then they farmed out the stats on this project and for some reason he can’t seem to actually get this stuff done.
So I do other stuff, just convinced they’re going to e-mail all the data for this 90 page report at some last-minute date and say, “Oh, we’re in a rush, can you finish it by next week?”
Drivin’ me nuts.