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This client was a car crash

Also there was an actual car crash

By Alicia McKay
This client was a car crash
Photo by Clark Van Der Beken / Unsplash
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WHAT'S INSIDE

Friday Flurry is a behind-the-scenes newsletter exclusively for paid subscribers.

In this Friday Flurry, get the goss on a terrible client.

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Happy Friday,

Keeping up last fortnight's little tradition, I'm writing to you from the gym again - this time, with a compression suit on my legs after a workout.

Please don't be alarmed by my right foot, I just have the suit on slightly crooked.

This week's writing

Have you had a chance to read this week's feature essay on opinions? If not, crack in. I've made a brilliant resource pack to go with it for paid subs - it's got an opinion audit scorecard, information about different opinion types (and what to do with them) and a filter for power literacy. It'll be online as soon as my designer has finished making it easy to read and use. Can't wait to get that to you!

Opinions are like assholes
An enema for your thoughts
Alicia McKayAlicia McKay

This week's reading

I just finished Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I'm doing a full-year novel writing course, and we have a reading programme to work through. My manuscript in progress is a multi-generational novel, so I'm reading a few to understand how they're structured.

Middlesex was a trip. 100 years of family history from Greece to the US, with lots of tasty storylines - incest, murder, the lot. It won a Pulitzer! But even though all that stuff happened, and the writing was excellent, I spent the whole book waiting for the proper story to get started and felt annoyed when it all wrapped up quickly in the final quarter.

I'd love any recommendations for multi-generational novels you've enjoyed to help my progress.

A terrible client gig

When you're self-employed, you learn to spot red-flag clients. There's a few different varieties, and I've become pretty good at spotting them over the years.

  • The It Costs Me To Serve You Client - itty bitty jobs that suck up 5x the usual admin time, challenge every invoice item, then pay late.
  • The I've Had A New Idea Client - the scope-changers that change everything at the last minute (then expect extra at the end.)
  • The Forgot They Were Your Client Client - the disinterested client books you in a flurry of urgency then never responds to your email or acknowledges your deliverable.

This client wasn't any of those. They were a new and special variety. The Have a Meltdown and Leak to the Media kind. Read on for the tea.