Dealing With Setbacks: April Wrap-Up

This April has been one of those months where I’m grateful for my freelance career, in spite of the difficulties that come with it.

I spent a lot of this month traveling: going to my sister’s baby shower, visiting friends in DC, and finally heading to Arizona for a week to see my brand new nephew. Out of the four weekends in the month, I only spent one at home. That sort of mobility would not be possible with any other sort of job. And since one of the main reasons I went freelance was so I could make time for important things like visiting the people I love, I’m very grateful for it.

Of course, being freelance does have it’s headaches.

Lessons Learned – Dealing With Setbacks

I had several setbacks with clients this month, which made it the most frustrating month since I went fully freelance.

I’m saying goodbye to one client due to chronic poor communication. It got to the point where seeing an email from him/her in my inbox made me get very panicky and upset. This went beyond my normal bad habit of expecting the worst. It became incredibly stressful and unhealthy. So, in spite of the loss of income it will mean, I’ve decided not to take on any more work from that particular client.

I was proud of myself for making the decision to look after my own well-being, but it was hard: this month I was also told by a website I write for that they won’t be accepting work from paid contributors for a while and that a major client decided to scale back on the monthly work I do for them.

Now, this is all par for the course when you’re freelance. This is why we diversify — because no one source of income is 100% reliable.

But it was still a hard month to get through, feeling like I was doing something wrong or messing everything up. My husband at one point called it “the dark side of freelancing.”

But that got me thinking: that’s the dark side of any work. You can be a full-time employee and still lose your job overnight. So, I’m thinking of this as the bright side of freelancing:

As a freelancer, I already depend on myself to find work and create my own successes. So when something goes wrong, like losing a client, I’m not starting from square one. I have a business and multiple revenue streams to fall back on.

That’s a pretty amazing thing.

Blogging My Writing Process

I need to post another update on the state of my novel — I’ll admit right here, though, that I am not making as much forward progress as I planned to this month. Look for an update coming Friday. I think if I can get myself back to updating here, I’ll stay on track better.

I’ve Got a Secret!

I’ve been working on a little side project for this blog, which I’ll soon be able to share and promote.

This project will be 100% free to anyone who wants it, will include several tricks I’ve learned since starting out, and will, I hope, help new freelancers or anyone else struggling to find clients.

Stay tuned — it’s almost done!

Around the Web

1. Have you been following the debate on net neutrality in the US? Copyblogger has a good summary of the important points, including why losing net neutrality would be terrible for small businesses.
2. Being a freelance writer is hard work, and it can be hard to grow your business. Mridu has an awesome article on why you need to go right to the source and build your audience directly if you want to succeed.
3. Candice has a great post on finding your dream job… and how it might not end up being the job you think you want!
4. I was so interested in Joanna’s list of how she is going to fight overwhelm and refocus her work. I think I may need to make a list of my own…
5. Vanessa wrote a great post on Pub(lishing) Crawl on diversity in fiction, which is close to my heart and a big part of my current WIP. Plus she mentions one of my favorite characters from one of my favorite series, so what’s not to love…

That’s it for me — how did April go for you?

Any ups, downs, or surprises?