Meryl's Notes Blog

This AbsoluteWrite article came out at the perfect time. Recently, I lost a client simply because I didn’t meet his standards.

When we connected and started a trial period, I threw in the towel as I struggled to turn stories around within a very tight deadline. It wasn’t that I couldn’t write the story fast enough, but that I couldn’t reach two people to interview. I had never made so many relay phone calls in a short time frame. I covered the bases by calling as many people as possible and yet, I was lucky if I reached one person within the three hour period.

It was a blow to my pride as one of my strengths is the ability to meet deadlines. Then again, I’ve never run into one this short that required third party involvement.

When I told the editor I couldn’t do it, he continued to work with me by switching to once a week features. This would give me more time to get the needed resources and sit on an article for 24-hours before editing (so my eyes were fresh). Even so, I still didn’t perform to his standards.

It surprised and disappointed me that my work took too much of the editor’s time. I knew the target market, so several colleagues who belonged in that market kindly agreed read my articles before I turned them in. They made suggestions and I updated the article based on the suggestions. Upon request, I sent the article to someone I interviewed before I submitted it. All comments were positive and indicated they were clear, organized, and informative.

Whether or not my work was of good quality is beside the point. If they editor says it took too much time to edit, then I’m not the right person for the job. When clients aren’t happy, I do what I can to make up for it or move on.

Part of being a writer means accepting assignments don’t work out every time, but this one has been difficult to let go. I thought it was a match because of the target market and topics covered. It’s been difficult to stop beating myself up though family members urged me to cut it out.

The AbsoluteWrite article states, “Don’t beat yourself up — OK, you made a mistake. You’re not going to be put on some world wide editors’ list of freelance writers to avoid.” But it wasn’t one clear-cut mistake. Time is the only thing that will take care of this wound, but it helped to read that.

Rejection Injection also gave a nudge.