Freelance, Footloose

In the middle of the night

2009-01-06T22:09:00.002+08:00

I've been keeping long days and nights to meet a huge project deadline, so forgive me – the subject of sleep (or lack thereof) is on my mind.

Here's another helpful post: Garry Tan ruminates on 7 super simple ways to stay awake and maximize consciousness. I've always managed to resist the call of Red Bull (#3 on his list), but drinking more water (#6) keeps me going day or night.

Last night I worked till 3:45 am, making it almost a 20-hour day. What kept me going, besides the usual steady intake of water, was a cup of coffee (black, as usual) at 10 pm and a handful of oatmeal raisin cookies around 1 am. I'm not going to make a habit of it, though.

Catch some quick shut-eye

2009-01-04T13:32:00.000+08:00

The i-sleep USB pillow --- plug it into a USB port, then it'll inflate when the laptop is closed and you're ready for a quick nap without moving an inch from your workspace. I've dozed off beside my laptop before (not usually on it, because that's when you wake up to a screenful of gibberish and/or run the risk of executing some kind of fatal command on your hard drive) and the little plastic pillow here looks more comfortable than my arm.

What would be neat if it auto-deflates after, say, 10 minutes, so you can get right back to work.

I think this was a student project from a couple of years ago, so I don't know that it's on the market. Would've made a neat holiday gift!

(Via Unclutterer.)

The best time to sleep

2009-01-02T13:47:00.009+08:00

I've always considered myself a night person, so of course I had to click on "3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late" --- whereupon I was gratified to learn that creative types tend to be night owls who "fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon."

As I've said before, I don't run on a schedule like that but I know some freelancers who do. Maybe it's the smart thing to do after all; maybe the problem with a 9-to-5 routine is not just the constraint of being stuck in an office for a specified number of hours, but also that it's the wrong hours that are being asked of us.

If creative types tend to be night owls though, I wonder what they/we used to do before the invention of the lightbulb ...

And to all a happy new year

2008-12-31T08:46:00.005+08:00

There is something particularly satisfying about collecting a long overdue cheque directly from a client on the penultimate day of the year. I picked it up in person because after ten months and a multitude of emails nitpicking about address changes, I wasn't about to leave anything to chance.

The thing is, the overdue payment was for only S$100. I think the amount of time I spent chasing it down worked out to more than that in billable hours, but on the principle of it I refused to let the matter go.

Here's to a new year with no egregious overdue payments!

'Tis the season

2008-12-24T15:01:00.006+08:00

If anyone is still reading this blog, I apologise for the egregious transmission disruption. I've been completely buried by work since the last posting (more than three months ago, I know) and I'm going to rethink this site in the new year after this wave of work has passed.

In the meantime, I think the latest Freelance Freedom comic (special holiday edition!) hits the spot. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Related post: A comic strip for the rest of us

The spirit of copyright

2008-09-13T11:53:00.006+08:00

I thought I was pretty clued in to teh intarwebs, but I somehow missed the Post-It Note Jaguar phenomenon from a couple of years ago. Still, it's not too late to contemplate the intellectual property implications of what transpired thereafter. As Melanie Phung recounts in "3M Carjacks the Post-It Note Jaguar":

This is the story of how a $24.5 billion multinational corporation refuses to pay a small licensing fee to the amateur photographer who inspired its commercial campaign.

Unsurprisingly, none of this casts a good light on 3M or on the prospects for the little guy protecting his/her copyright in the current media environment.

In Singapore, I've heard of ad agencies poaching visual concepts wholesale from images on Flickr and other image-sharing websites. To be fair, this was happening in the days before Flickr; as a user named Jamie comments on the post linked above, photo stock agencies have had to settle cases of copyright violation too.

But now, not only are more images and content available online (and therefore easier to steal), the individual content creator also probably doesn't have the resources to lawyer up against a big firm. Given prevailing attitudes towards creative work in Singapore, that doesn't make me optimistic ...

(Thanks, Darren, for IMing me the link.)

Dammit, now I want a new (paper) notebook

2008-09-11T22:15:00.000+08:00

Despite how high-tech everything's gotten, I still like and need to use paper notebooks. As I've mentioned before, PDAs are too fiddly for taking notes during meetings or interviews, plus notebooks can be handy for brainstorming or planning before the final version materialises on the computer.

I have lots of notebooks for work, most of them blank and freebies picked up from various clients or events. The one I'm most embarrassed to use, although it has the nicest paper, is a Singapore Writers' Festival notebook; it's embarrassing because it has my name stamped on the cover. And because I don't foresee saving these work notebooks for posterity, it's usually a throwaway one that I pull out at meetings.

Having said that, I like fondling blank books and thinking of what they could be used for, and now I'm lusting for a new one more than ever, thanks to Deeplinking's "Notebook Reviews" (via monomania). It's the most thorough review of (paper) notebooks I've ever seen, and I like that it starts off by pointing out some Moleskine shortcomings and myths. And hey, it rates Muji notebooks as having "very few" minuses, which I totally agree with; I always get a hardcover Muji notebook when I need a vacation journal.

The notebook that was news to me was Rite in the Rain, which it describes as "1.) sturdy as hell and 2.) can be used in the shower, where many people get their best ideas." I'm embarking on a major wet-season travel assignment soon, so I like the idea of having a notebook where the ink won't completely wash out if I get caught in the rain. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any Singapore distributors for their products.

I was given a Moleskine for my birthday earlier this year (the Ruled Reporter Notebook, if anyone cares), and it's still in its original shrinkwrap because I couldn't think of any good-enough use to put to it. It might end up being used for this travel assignment --- after all, it's been lying on my couch for a good six months now. But I'm gonna feel self-conscious every time I crack it open ...

In the middle of the day

2008-09-10T23:55:00.000+08:00

I like reading Mridu Khullar's blog because she provides such great snapshots of the ups and downs, ins and outs of freelancing --- all the more so now that she's a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, and seems to have more time to blog.

Her Tuesday entry this week is "How to get your life back" (if you're a freelancer). The observation that hit the spot:

For a whole community of people who claim to want to be able to watch a movie in the middle of the day, I know very few writers who actually do that.

Neither do I, really --- but yesterday I became (temporarily?) one of those people when at 5.40 p.m. at Spinelli's at Excelsior Hotel, I turned to my friend and said, "Wanna go see Wall-E?"

In under an hour, we were at a cinema lapping up trailers with cutesy animals and waiting for our movie to start. Okay, so it wasn't exactly in the middle of the day, but the important thing is that I put my work away for a few hours to enjoy a little of that freelancer flexibility we're always crowing about.

Damn, I should do that more often. Even if afterwards, I have to go home and do a little more work to make up for it.

How not to prospect a freelancer: lesson #2

2008-09-09T13:45:00.001+08:00

I meant to blog about this email when I got it a few weeks ago --- then I forgot. Better late than never, I suppose.

All formatting, spelling and punctuation are replicated from the original email.

Are you a freelance writer?

I got one assignment for you if you are willing to do.

I am willing to pay $150-200 for this.

It Is about a three pages article, name: “The Ghost in the Machine”, which required :

1. Summarized them in 250 words,

2. A short Explanation of about 30-50 words for two sentences

3. Lastly write in your own views in about 250 words(argument based on the same article given).

If are interested, I will further email you the details

What. The. [Insert expletive of choice here].

I suspect the email came from a kid who wanted me to do his/her homework, rather than an actual would-be client. Which leaves me even more floored that a student thinks this is the kind of work freelance writers do.

How to be a good client

2008-09-08T11:58:00.002+08:00

Sorry about the radio silence last week. I got snowed under by work, and it was one of those odd weeks when I didn't come across or think of anything that said "Blog me now!"

Till I came across the link to Number 17 via blankanvas, which included the following gem of a web comic:

(See the Number 17 website for the full artwork.)
Clearly I need to upgrade my clientele to the point where they'll happily check off the first point in the second column: "If you call a meeting at lunchtime, serve lunch."

A Designer's Guide to Pricing

2008-08-27T15:42:00.001+08:00

Some days it seems like I spend half my day trying to figure out how much to charge a new client, particularly when the project scope isn't clearly defined. I'm sure lots of freelancers go through the same sort of head-spinning calculations, so even though GoMediaZine's "A Designer's Guide to Pricing" isn't a new link, I think it's a useful one to have around.

I like how it spells out lots of factors which are good for freelancers of any stripe to think about, not just designers. For example:

Flat rate or hourly billing?
What's a "kill fee"?
How do I send invoices and track sales?

Of course, collecting the money you decided to charge could be another matter altogether ...

All in a graphic designer's day's work

2008-08-25T13:12:00.001+08:00

The next time someone wonders why a graphic designer "takes so long" to change the page design or come up with a new one, show them this video, in which designer Matt Willey recorded the many, many steps in his design development process for just one feature spread in the Royal Academy magazine:

I would try and do the same for a piece of copywriting, except that I think having text appear, be backspaced/deleted and rewritten on a plain white Microsoft Word document doesn't quite make the same visual impact.

(Via Ken Rossi.)

Pantone mugs that'll perk your morning right up

2008-08-15T23:18:00.003+08:00

Holy crap, I would love to have a set of these.

Sadly, they cost £72 for the full set and the seller doesn't ship to Singapore.

(via LifeClever.)

Missing the 9-to-5 grind?

2008-08-11T17:04:00.000+08:00

I'm not sure if people are back at work today or if they're taking a long weekend on account of National Day, but if you're a freelancer and wondering if you're missing out on anything by not being in an office, reading a few True Office Confessions might rid you of that impulse.

If nothing else, it oughta perk up your Monday.

(Via Swissmiss.)

Do you say you're on vacation?

2008-08-06T23:59:00.005+08:00

Maybe it's a holdover from when I had a job where people got really upset if you were away from work for more than a day without setting an out-of-office message on your email account, but since I started freelancing I've never thought of not letting my clients know that I'll be away. It seems that the more I let them know that yes, I'll be away but the work is under control and I'll get right back up to speed when I'm back --- the less they worry that I'll be absent (and they haven't bugged me while I'm on vacation either).

Today I read John Harrington's post "Vacation - do you reveal your whereabouts?" at Photo Business News & Forum, and it counsels just the opposite: don't tell your clients because you'll miss out on subsequent work opportunities that you might in fact be available for, plus a client might be jealous of your jetsetting vacation plans and not give you work anymore.

The first possibility's crossed my mind, but I always set a date for when I'll be back at work, which I figure is enough to reassure regular clients that I'll be there for them. I also tend to be a little fatalistic about such things: if the client really couldn't wait for me to get back or was uneasy with my being away on vacation, well, maybe they weren't the right client or project for me either.

I've also often thought about how, for those of us who blog regularly or in some other way lead very busy and connected virtual lives, it's hard to conceal something like a vacation anyway. If your blog or Twitter or Facebook status goes un-updated for a while --- or for that matter reflects a vacation-related update --- it'll tip off any internet-savvy clients (who might be one's Facebook friend anyway).

But the post raises some interesting points about client sentiments and an anonymous commenter added his strategy: he instructs his staff to tell clients that he's booked on another job, not that he's on vacation.

Beware of Muphry's Law

2008-08-05T20:20:00.002+08:00

In the World Wide Words e-newsletter a couple of weeks ago, Michael Quinion highlighted Muphry's Law, which runs along the lines of: "if you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written."

Language Log reproduces the full version of the original Law as set out by John Bangsund of the Victorian Society of Editors in 1992:
(a) if you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written;
(b) if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book;
(c) the stronger the sentiment expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the fault;
(d) any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.

Which made me chuckle, of course. After all, when I was reading the Economist Style Guide a few months ago, I couldn't help but feel a little fillip of satisfaction whenever I spotted a typo in it.

I wonder if I've made a typo in this entry yet ...

Make time to think

2008-08-04T23:56:00.004+08:00

Apropos of a Monday, I found the BBC News Magazine's "No time to think?" a useful way to kick-start the work week. First of all, great lede: "When Barack Obama met David Cameron ..." and goes on to describe what seems to have been a candid conversation caught on tape between two media-genic politicians.

But back to the subject matter at hand. The point is to have time to think, not just to be doing stuff all the time --- which might be a particularly acute problem for freelancers, I suspect, because if we're not working, we're probably not making any money. On the other hand, there's so much we do as solo operators that doesn't seem to count as billable work, but which needs time for thinking: brainstorming, getting inspiration from other work in our creative field, experimenting with different ideas before settling on the best one for the project at hand --- and a lot of that happens best when the mind is free and perhaps technically not "on" the job.

I think the easiest suggestion to implement from the article is the first one: "Choose your moment --- stop lunching al desko". I'm guilty of not taking a proper lunch break often enough, even though I realised back when I had a full-time job that the 45-minute or hour-long meal break physically and mentally away from work made for a much more productive day. So that's something to try and work back into my daily routine.

Web tools: Writer: the internet typewriter

2008-08-01T20:01:00.000+08:00

I've been recommended the Zen simplicity of WriteRoom (Mac only) before. The idea is that it fills the screen and sends all other applications into the background, so that one can write without distractions.

I gave WriteRoom a try some time back, but it's actually a little too distraction-free for me. I can't write without internet access because I'm always needing to verify the exact nuance or usage of certain words, or to explore certain ideas or allusions, or just for good ol' brainstorming.

Last week, I came across Writer: the internet typewriter (via Jeff's Brain Dump).

You type, you save (ctrl-S) and the website uses a cookie so that you can access your file again in future. You can email the text to yourself, send it to a blogging platform, save it as a .txt file, export it to a PDF or print it right off. If you create an account (it's free and doesn't even require you to provide a valid email address), you can also save the file to that account.

The first question that popped into my mind was: Who owns the content then? Is there going to be another sneaky clause such as Google's?

Fear not. The service's terms of use say: "The Company does not claim ownership of the Content you submit to the Service", and I did a quick check with the creator of Writer, John Watson, who confirmed that the user retains full ownership and copyright of his/her content.

Writer: the internet typewriter is really just that --- a typewriter, with no italics, no bold, no fancy formatting. The most you can do is select your preferences for text colour, line spacing and font (three options only: monospace, serif or sans serif). But if you find yourself online and in need of a place to hammer out your thoughts without futzing with formatting, it might be handy to have this bookmarked.

Freelancing --- a lonely business?

2008-07-31T23:58:00.014+08:00

Over drinks last night, I met someone who used to freelance but is now back at a full-time job. He asked me how I handle working at home, because when he used to do it, he not only missed having people to bounce off ideas with, but also found that he didn't want to stay at home all day. "I'd do anything to get out of the house, you know --- go for a run, walk the dog, get something to eat ..."

I guess I don't miss having people around so much because if I'm at home, I'm probably online and IM-able. As for being cabin-fevered, sure, I get it now and then. But as long as I balance my work and social schedules so that I still see people --- whether it's people I know or strangers at a library or cafe --- I'm perfectly happy to spend other days entirely at home. And I'm talking not-even-unlocking-the-door-to-peek-at-what-the-neighbours-are-up-to.

Of course, other times I make jokes about how if I fell down in the bathroom and couldn't move, it would be three days before anyone noticed ...

The bottom line

2008-07-29T22:03:00.002+08:00

I lost a writing assignment today because "the client has a friend who can do it cheaper." Curses!

For all those 3 a.m. nights

2008-07-26T20:13:00.002+08:00

Via Mrida Khullar, a most excellent quote:

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success --- but only if you persist.
--- Isaac Asimov

Web tools: NPPA Cost of Doing Business Calculator

2008-07-25T23:07:00.002+08:00

I've written about the usefulness of FreelanceSwitch's Hourly Rate Calculator before. Here's another calculator tailored for photographers: the National Press Photographers Association's Cost of Doing Business Calculator (via Photo Business News & Forum).

It has specific line items for photographers' costs like equipment, supplies and stock, print, and reprint sales. The webpage format is also a little faster to scan and complete than FreelanceSwitch's more elaborate layout.

Either way, the online calculators make it easy for a freelancer to figure out what his/her time is worth.

How not to prospect a freelancer

2008-07-24T23:27:00.000+08:00

Call them to ask for a copy of their "bio or profile", which you need for a tender proposal that you won't give details of.

This is exactly how I was approached recently by a company that I haven't worked with in almost a year. More specifically, I was contacted by someone in that company who was copied on certain emails on the last project, but with whom I had little direct communication. I don't think I even know what this person looks like.

Now if it were a friend or regular client calling, and they told me to trust them on why they couldn't tell me more about the possible job, I might go out on a limb and entrust my CV and a couple of writing samples with them (though I wouldn't do it regularly). But so much secretiveness on the part of someone I barely have a relationship with? It makes me a little jittery.

When fonts are gathered in one place

2008-07-23T23:12:00.005+08:00

I had a small accident involving coffee and my laptop that discombobulated my morning, so Lucian offered me some geeky font humour to make it all better.

Now what I want to know is: where did Helvetica go?

The unhealthy side of freelancing

2008-07-21T23:20:00.003+08:00

A fellow freelancing friend was working at home today, and this is what he ate:

3-4 slices of leftover pizza
A slice of leftover cheesecake
5 slices of fried luncheon meat

This was followed by the dinner I bought him: spaghetti aglio olio with sio bak, with sticky date pudding for after.

I really hope he doesn't eat like this everyday.