The World's Tallest Writing Coach

This post has two purposes. To talk about some of the rough waters you’ll face while freelancing, and also to allow us to blow off a little steam. Last week, we started negotiating for a job with a gentleman overseas concerning a position paper he and his colleagues were looking to put out – edited and made to look more professional.

We placed a bid, sent our portfolio, answered some questions – pretty much the standard process, and woke up one sunny morning to find an email from the fellow saying after consulting with his colleagues, we had been awarded the job. Happy, we wrote back saying we couldn’t wait to get going.

But wait we did, the rest of that day, and the day after, before finally sending another message querying about when the job would commence. Within mere seconds, we received a short message back which read “u took 2 long 2 get back 2 me”.

This, after long, eloquent exchanges concerning the project and qualifications. We were a bit perturbed, and wrote back explaining that yes, while about 10 hours had elapsed between one message and the next, those hours were overnight in the US. The return message stated that the project was a rush job and didn’t have time to wait on “sleepy yanks.”

Sigh.

This is a classic example of two things about the freelance writing and editing business. 1) Don’t take anything personal and 2) Stay professional, even when the other party isn’t.

The fact of the matter is that as great as the Internet and its ability to give us instantaneous communication is, it also allows us to hide behind our keyboards and act in ways we never would if the other party was across a table from us, rather than across a digital ocean.

It stunk to lose the work, but we have to chalk it up to just another lesson learned of the business.