Work

[desayunoencama]

I finished a quickie weekend translation gig about Andalusian Bus Services, so now back to Cultural Heritage Legislation.

I'm always a bit perplexed about how or why freelance work seems to only come all at once. That is, if I'm busy, I'll suddenly get more work, whereas there are long (sometimes VERY long) stretches when there's absolutely nothing on the horizon. And it usually comes when everyone else is off work, naturally, so I wind up almost-constantly "swimming" counterstream to everyone around me.

I think that with the economic crisis, many places are hoping to promote themselves or sell beyond the national boundaries, so this may work out to my advantage as more places decide to invest in translations into English.

Since so many friends have already left for holiday home visits, in some ways it's nice to have the distraction of work to keep me grounded/focused.

(Not to mention that a few months down the line there'll be another small deposit in the bank account!)

Comments

[vdiamond.livejournal.com]

I share your puzzlement about freelance workflow. The same thing happens to me. This month, after literally months of no work from one publisher, I got back five (count em!) five developmental edits, which are time-consuming, of course, because their very purpose is to be thorough. Five. All with deadlines within two weeks of one another. Some of these samples had been turned in as early as July with nary a word so to have all of them come in at once. Gulp.

Clearly, it's not something we can control as freelancers, but it sure does make for some crunch times here and there. And there's always the fear that, if you turn something down, that client/publisher/person may never ask you again.

Sigh. :)

Happy holidays to you!

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

Alas, I think many clients take advantage of our Freelancer Fear (tm) of not having more work,or not getting more work from said client if we turn down a particular assignment.

Also, so many people just don't plan effectively, so they try and organize everything right before the holidays, realize there's all this stuff that needs to get done, and dump it on freelancers while they then go off to their holidays.

Sigh.

I'll sometimes touch base with a client like the one you mention has had some of these items since July without passing them along to you (sigh) and tell them that since I've got some upcoming assignments for another client (or an upcoming trip) that I wanted to let them know of my availability (or lack thereof) in advance so they could plan accordingly, and if they wanted to begin sending work, even if only partially, I could thereby manage to factor it into my schedule blah blah.

Of course, that only works for regular or recurring clients.

What's a bit weird is how I'm suddenly getting work from a lot of new clients, who come to me from very disparate sources... (friends, associations, listservs, Facebook contacts even!) Not that I'm complaining! :-)