As part of my non-resolution this year, I promised myself that I would celebrate all of my achievements, both small and large, instead of setting my sights on specific goals that might be unrealistic. Well, last night, I chalked up a major achievement: I finally finished a massive editing/formatting project for an Elance client, consisting of editing and designing print and ebook versions of six separate short children's books. The project took me way longer than I'd originally projected, and I'm not even sure I'll still get paid, but being able to cross that albatross off my "to do" list frees me up to both search for more freelance work and to concentrate on my own projects.
Next order of business is to finish a transcription job for a friend's doctoral thesis. After that, I'll probably resume work on my long-shelved work in progress, a collection of essays and poetry about parenting, with the working title "Now with Kung Fu Action Grip."
Next order of business is to finish a transcription job for a friend's doctoral thesis. After that, I'll probably resume work on my long-shelved work in progress, a collection of essays and poetry about parenting, with the working title "Now with Kung Fu Action Grip."
What do you think of the title "Now with Kung Fu Action Grip" for a collection of essays and poetry about parenting, and about my son, nicknamed Kung Fu Panda, in particular?
Love it!
9(75.0%)
It's OK.
2(16.7%)
Can't you come up with something else?
1(8.3%)
Any other possible title suggestions?
- Current Mood:
accomplished - Current Music:The rain outside my window
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alycewilson- alycewilson
- Alyce Wilson, Poet, Writer and Editor
Comments
I'd make that your tagline and come up with something a little more obvious, but still clever and eye catching, for the main title.
Incidentally, being late shouldn't mean you don't get paid on Elance. You might get stiffed on the feedback though - they might mark you down on schedule. In my experience, if you've done a good job, the client doesn't mind waiting a bit.
If you *didn't* get it funded, well, fingers crossed for you and it's something to remember for the future.
I'm hoping it is a case of him being unable to check e-mail and that, when he does, he will at least communicate with me.
At the very least, this will be a learning experience.
I'm not crazy about the title because it feels somewhat limiting to me. As though, perhaps, it would better serve as the title for one essay or chapter.
Theafaye said the same thing about the title. What about: "Alyce's Adventures in Parenting: Now with Kung Fu Action Grip!"
And I hope you get paid. Is everything okay there? I've had a lot of work through Elance and I'm sure you know this by now, but WOW, some of those clients can be crazy. I could write a book about them. Or maybe just a blog post.
As far as this particular client is concerned, his full-time job is being an Army translator, and I've had no communication from him since the last time the U.S. boosted troop presence in Iraq. I have to wonder if it's related. I honestly hope he's OK, but I don't have any other information in order to contact family, et cetera. I think I'll just give him a couple weeks and see what happens.
My first job on there was polishing a novel written by a non-native English speaker. The "novel" ended up being a collection of short essays clearly written around prompts in a composition course. It was SO rough and almost impossible to understand. He wanted it turned into a bestseller for about $100 :|
Folks who will pay someone $0.20 an hour will get that quality in return. It's unbelievable what people think they can pay and equally shocking what some people will work for. I just wish everyone understood their own value!
How did you handle that client who wrote all the composition class essays? There's only so much you can do to help a client who is completely clueless about writing!
That was my first client and it was a learning experience. I am much more careful about the jobs I take now :)
This was my first project of this size, and it taught me a lot, too. For now, I'm only going to take smaller one-off projects that I know I can complete within a reasonable time frame with little trouble, and I'll provide an estimate that is higher than I think I'll actually need to get it done.
You can learn a lot from Scottie in "Star Trek." :)