Indispensable?

Dare I say it's been a quiet week on the home front? If I do, the phone will ring, my mother will have had another crisis, I'll need to head forty miles over the moors with an overnight bag in the back of the car, and everything will go pear-shaped again. But what the heck, I've said it anyway, and my life is pretty pear-shaped at the moment whether or not I tempt fate.

Many years ago I chose to work freelance. It was partly because I'd always wanted to give writing a serious try and the opportunity arose when my daughter was little. Another large part was so that I could be around when she came home from school, and also work the flexible hours which suit my body clock. I am not a morning person! And a lot of the time it was fine. I took on some commitments which tied me to certain times and places, but they didn't happen every day, and mostly home and the work dovetailed.

The biggest problem was other people. I didn't go out to work every morning. A lot of the time what I was writing was speculative, so I didn't even have to meet deadlines. I worked to my own schedule. And some people thought that meant I didn't have to work at all, so was available for coffee, lunch or a heart-to-heart whenever they liked. Or even more annoyingly, that what I was doing wasn't work, but a self-indulgent hobby which should take second place to their needs. And if you're a writer, at some point in your career you've been an aspiring writer, so I kind of think you'll get exactly where I'm coming from.

Some of those people eventually got the message; others... yeah, well, it's unlikely they read this blog anyway. It still happens. It happened a few weeks ago. My presence was demanded at a meeting, arranged to suit other people's convenience. The meeting was important, but I was chasing a very tight editing deadline, and it didn't suit me at all. Nothing was said to me, but there were black looks and mutterings, and a little later I picked up that I'd been accused of seeing myself as 'indispensable' and therefore selfishly unwilling to arrange my life to suit the other people. I actually went to the meeting. I would have minded that reaction less if I hadn't.

So excuse my hollow laughter when people say I have delusions of being indispensable. It's so hard, when people have a regular salary paid into the bank, paid vacation time, health and pension benefits, to make them understand how precarious a freelance life is. It should be simple to understand: if you don't work, you don't get paid. So you have to do everything you can to make sure the work keeps coming in. Far from being indispensable, a freelancer is the most expendable person on the payroll – or more accurately, not on the payroll. And a speculative freelancer... I wonder how a lot of writers survive.

These days I do a lot more editing than writing, which means that when someone does give me some work, I can be fairly certain of a fee at the end of it. And while that money isn't essential to my survival, it is earmarked for those little things that make life a tad more comfortable. We're not just talking about holidays and my chocolate habit here. I mean things like running a car. We have a good local bus and train service, but, well, those emergency trips across the moors (see first paragraph), not to mention the regular non-emergency trips, would be impossible without it.

I learned the first rule of freelancing very early: never turn work down, because if you do it may never be there again. In my line of work, there are freelancers on every corner, and most of them have worked in-house and know the right people; there's always, always, someone waiting to take the job I reject, and the next one and the next. The second rule is deliver on time. Those same ex-in-house editors know all about deadlines, so I have to know too. There are other rules, like do exactly what the client wants, and ask just enough questions but don't hassle; but the first two are crucial, because that's how to create the best chance of repeat business. They add up to providing a reliable service: being there when you're needed, and delivering to deadline. And if you don't... well, go figure.

Indispensable? Don't I wish!

Comments

[Jeff Cohen]

You've always been indispensable to us, Lynne!

[Lynne Patrick]

You're so sweet, Jeff...