Thursday, December 6, 2007

When Bad News is Good News

I was waiting to hear about an assignment from a temp agency today. I'd gotten a call last week, when I just had a little bit of freelance work lined up, and it's wasn't certain, but it looked like the agency needed a whole bunch of people to work 20 hours a week, all through Christmas, including Christmas week. The pay wasn't great, but it was four solid weeks of work, so maybe I'd earn enough so I would get some writing time in January. Squeezing in all those work hours alongside the other two projects would be tough, but possible.

Then at the start of this week, I got a message from a company that I've been waiting for, for some high level business writing/editing work. A job that could pay very well, and if I did a good job, might become moderately steady. It's not a done deal yet, but they might want me for a project in late December/January.

All of a sudden, it looked like I might have a severe excess of desired work. With strong cooperation and understanding from my family, and a lot of self-discipline and not too much sleep or fun, I could manage to meet my commitments and earn the money. Worth doing, but it'd make the holiday season a lot more challenging.

Today, I got the bad news that I didn't get the temp agency assignment. I'll miss earning the money, but I also breathed a sigh of relief. I'll be a lot more available to my other projects, as well as to my family. I should still make more than enough to cover what I need and some extra. And maybe I'll even squeeze in a little of my own writing this month, after all.

P.S. I did finish that ten-minute play that I started last weekend. It felt awfully good to finally write a new play, and to bring it in to my playwrights' group. After bringing them bits of my novel for two years, it was comforting to use the right tool for the job once and have them work on an actual play with me.

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