This week has been a week of near-misses. I got stood up for YET another meeting, which I thought would kill the relationship. (I was really, really peeved.) But two days later, we finally met. Rather than dwelling on past transgressions, I gave the client a coupon for a free half-hour 1-on-1 computer training from a business associate. She’s happy and the project is moving forward.
Then after a week *full* of deadlines and after handing in 20+ articles and revising (read: fixing) a web site, yesterday I got a bit of a rush job for an 800-word magazine article. I sent in a first draft yesterday afternoon and heard a big fat nothing. They’re on the East Coast, so I didn’t think much of it. This morning, they called and said they didn’t like what I wrote at ALL.
It was rather disheartening news, but we talked about it for a while. I still didn’t really understand what they were after, but I suggested that they mark up what they didn’t like about the article in the document. Sometimes putting things in writing forces people to articulate what they want in a different way.
Their comments made sense and I fired off a second draft earlier today. Let’s just say, I wasn’t exactly optimistic. I figured it might be one of those projects that takes a few passes. But I was delighted to find this response:
"We have a winner! Exactly the tone we were looking for!"
And my day got a whole lot better. They made a couple of changes and will meet their deadline without any problem. Even though it’s been rainy and gray for what seems like forever, I got to do an invoice for a happy customer, which made my Friday afternoon a lot brighter 😉