Never Turn Down a Job

I have a policy of never turning down a job if it is offered to me personally. Now some employers "invite" 100-700 people to apply for their jobs. I do not consider this a personal invitation, so I frequently will decline these. However, I always try to give the employer a note explaining why I am declining.

When a person sends me and only 10 other people an invitation, I frequently bid on these and if I am contacted personally through the messaging system on Guru, I definitely bid on it. I do not always get these jobs, but usually it comes down to a cost thing. If I am busy and they want it quickly, it will usually cost more than if I am available and they do not care how long I will take to do it.

Sometimes people will haggle with me to get my price down. These people are frequently from another country where this is a common factor. However, sometimes I have not understood the project. For example, one person wanted me to write a script about the negative effects of this comprehensive immigration bill that is before the Senate. I initially thought he wanted a 30 minute detailed movie and bid on it as such. He contacted me, though, and informed me he only wanted a 3 - 4 minute script for YouTube. Needless to say, my price dropped drastically, and I was hired.

Picking up a Day Job

The nicest thing about being a freelance writer is that I get to make my own schedule. If I find a good opportunity for temporary work, I can arrange my schedule to meet my needs. If I want to do volunteer work, again I can shift certain projects to other days and do the extra work. Last week, I found myself dressing the Broadway musical "Wicked" simply because one of the dressers broke her foot and I was able to go in on less than 24-hours notice and finish the week.

That said, it is very important to complete your projects on time. If you have bid for one month to complete a non-fiction book and you have to wait on interlibrary loan to get the books you need for research, always contact your employer in advance and explain the situation to them. Yes, this has happened to me, but thankfully it is not often. Most of the time, the employer is slow to fund SafePay or something along those lines and that slows the process down.

My Technology Curse

So, my curse has returned. I published my series (Parts II through IV) on Freelance websites. I wanted these to be spread over a few days, since the inspiration for new posts strikes me sporadically, but I want to post regularly so you know when to expect a new post. However, despite that today is May 13th (the day I am writing this)and that I scheduled the post for May 21, it has already posted.

If you want to see this series in full, I began it May 5th. I would have finished it in the following week, but I got a little sidetracked. The last post was supposed to publish May 21st and is listed as scheduled to publish then, but it is already receiving page views so I think it is live despite what it says on my screen.

Oh well, just another glitch in the blogger phenomena.