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wooo-hoooooo!
Feb. 18th, 2009 03:50 pmMany of you know that I took on not one, but two big indexing projects in my freelance work last year. Okay, one moderately big one that was long term because the material kept coming in dribs and drabs, and one that the index is so big it approximates War and Peace. The latter's not *quite* done yet, but today, I sent off the other.
One of the problems with this pair of indexes was that any time I started working seriously on one, the contact person for the other would pop up with, "Can you get this much to us . . . ?" and I'd switch gears and be even farther behind.
Now that one's done, I won't have that issue. I can take the rest of the day off, and get back to the other index tomorrow with reasonable confidence that I can just work on it until it's done. And I will never again take such a project. Or at least, if I do, I need to see the material first, get a much longer deadline (one year is not unreasonable, really), and charge two to three times as much.
I will say that both of these projects stretched my ability and taught me knew skills. They also left me brain-dead for months on end as I struggled to make significant progress and cope with anything else in my life. Learning is good, right?
Now, the 7yo's home from school, and I've got bread to bake.
One of the problems with this pair of indexes was that any time I started working seriously on one, the contact person for the other would pop up with, "Can you get this much to us . . . ?" and I'd switch gears and be even farther behind.
Now that one's done, I won't have that issue. I can take the rest of the day off, and get back to the other index tomorrow with reasonable confidence that I can just work on it until it's done. And I will never again take such a project. Or at least, if I do, I need to see the material first, get a much longer deadline (one year is not unreasonable, really), and charge two to three times as much.
I will say that both of these projects stretched my ability and taught me knew skills. They also left me brain-dead for months on end as I struggled to make significant progress and cope with anything else in my life. Learning is good, right?
Now, the 7yo's home from school, and I've got bread to bake.
