Just Keep Chasing Payment

I finally received royalties for a book I finished in 2003. It's very nice to get the money, but I doubt I'll see any more unless I want to go through the same amount of hassle again.

Next time remember to:
Read the contract very carefully.
Keep a copy of it safe - I can't find it now! (In my defence, I was living and travelling in a camper van at the time.)
Don't give up easily.
Get others (legal, fellow authors) in to help. (I think that's what eventually got me somewhere.)

Chasing payment:
Thomas Higgins
Better Payment Practice

And now, my current thinking…what to charge! I have read an awful lot of posts about this, but I always find them very frustrating. They say things like, find out what they expect you to charge. How? And how do you quantify your experience, how does the scale go up? And of course, a lot of them are US-centric.

I do have some idea, as I already work for a magazine. Here are two other sources of useful info so far:
NUJ Rate for the Job (almost the only one you need, I think)
NJ Creatives Network - US, but a start
And checking the job boards (read trawling) to get an idea.

I didn't get any reply from the 'perfect client' which is a shame, but I've got others to apply to. I'm going to the Dominican Republic for two weeks on Sunday, so I won't be updating, although I will be writing (and surfing) a lot.

The Perfect Client

What to do when you've found the perfect people to freelance for, and you know you're the perfect candidate? Send them a cracking CV and cover email, of course. At least, I hope it's cracking. I kept it really short and sweet.

But what if they reject me? I guess it's like the pitching-articles/sending a book out advice - forget about that one, and get on to the next (hm, that goes for men too). But this is actually my first pitch of the new push into freelancing, so my already nervous stomach (damn sickness bug) is really jumping.

I might bug them in a few days if they don't reply.

honourable mention

I got an 'honourable mention' in an On the Premises mini-competition!

The comp was a challenge to rewrite a cliche. This was my entry:

"CLICHE: Blue sky thinking.
REWRITE: Brain-tickling, attention-zipping, expectation-ripping, neuron-firing twinklings of inklings.
(by Kat Dawes)
(Technically, you could say this one isn’t a sentence, but we’ve all seen sentence fragments used as sentences in fiction. Plus it was one judge’s favorite, so it gets in.)"

So no money this time, but I'm just tickled pink ;-)

Perfectly Put

I was having a hard time wondering how to keep my rambling personal blog (and other personal ephemera) on my surfergrl site when I wanted to start writing more about writing and my progress with freelancing.

So I have revived Perfectly Put, the freelancing business I started to set up in 2002. It's time I showed how serious I am about writing for a living, so this shiny new blog will chart my progess, discuss the writing life and...well, who knows. Blogs are pretty organic, and I like that.

(p.s. I am still happily employed at CARVE, just branching out!)