Good morning, adventurers!
My monthly wrap up is a little late this time, because I am once again in the middle of travel. Yup, after a week at home, I packed my bags and headed to Arizona. As you read this, I am probably holding another baby. This time it’s my nephew, who has suddenly transformed into a babbling, crawling, wiggling little ball of energy.
All this travel, and all this time with my siblings’ children, has certainly been a learning experience for me and my freelance business.
Lesson Learned: Finding Balance
Playing with my niece = not working
September for me was all about balancing work and family. I spent three weeks of the month living in Virginia with my sister, watching her daughter for ten hours a day while she went back to work and her husband was on a mini-deployment.
I don’t claim to have experienced anything like what working parents manage to get done, but boy do I have a lot of respect from them, because balancing work with taking care of a four-month-old was quite a challenge.
I’d done a lot of prep before heading down there, but keeping up with everything still required a lot of that discipline that is so important.
My days would usually begin at 5:30 am, when I would get up, make my tea, and get as much writing done as possible before the baby woke up. For the rest of the day, I mostly focused on her, using nap times as an opportunity to respond to emails, post on social media, or study industry information. Then, once my sister got home in the afternoons, I would get another couple hours of work done before making dinner.
The balance, for me, was in not trying to do to much all at once. Focusing on client work or queries while the baby was awake was not really possible (at least for me, at least while I was watching someone else’s kid) but working in the morning and late afternoon ended up being very productive.
Multi-tasking, that pillar of Western society, was not actually possible. Either the baby or the work demanded all my attention, which was a little frustrating.
Ultimately, it was a good thing to learn: trying to do too much all at once will only result in a crying baby and incomprehensible blog posts. Focusing on one thing, and doing that one thing well, was really the best way to go.
Blogging My Writing Process
I haven’t done much updating on the progress of my novel, mostly because it’s the same as last time: rewrites. I’ve rearranged most of the major mid-novel plot points — difficult to do, but definitely the right choice. I’m still (as much as possible) beginning my day with 1000 words of fiction. It’s amazing how much of a difference that makes.
Copywriting Work
In a break from blogging and article writing, I’ve been taking on several new copywriting clients. I love the challenge that writing for websites presents, whether putting together something from scratch or rewriting existing copy until it shines. This month, I worked with a prenup attorney and a business technology venture, among others, and I expect to start rewrites for a wedding makeup company soon. Love how much variety there is there!
Shameless plug time: Does your website need a little polishing, or do you need help putting one together? Send me an email and we can come up with a plan! Or, if you know your site needs some work but you aren’t sure what should be done, take a look at my website critique service. It’s a great place to start and can give you a bunch of ideas for how to improve your site and make more real connections with your customers online.
Around the Web
- Scared of putting together contracts with clients? Not sure how to ask for the rate you want? Thought Catalog has out together an awesome cheat sheet for being a great negotiator.
- Getting less-than-rosy feedback from clients always makes me cringe. So I was really happy to find LearnVest’s guide to taking criticism and using it to advance your career.
- At the beginning of this year, I discovered that I was allergic to gluten (which explain two years of being constantly sick). So I got a huge kick out of writing an article on traveling with a gluten allergy for Trazee Travel, as well as a few on my favorite topic, weddings and honeymoons.
- I love Mridu’s list on 21 things you can do today to start finding new clients today. It prompted me to (finally) update my LinkedIn profile so that it matches the work I’m doing now, not the work I was doing in July 2013.
- My recently published a post on my hugely varied work history, and I loved hearing from readers about their own “checkered” work experience!
- Budget & The Bees has a great post on learning when to say no… a vital skill for any freelance worker, but difficult to do. Cat shares some advice on why saying yes is not always a good thing.
Thank you for this Kay!