There’s always another armored giant with an axe

At least, that’s what this week felt like. A frantic scramble to keep all the various projects in the air.
The frustrating part is that nothing I’m doing right now is generating higher per hour income than my regular eHow work—it’s all in the spirit of “down the road this may pay off.” To wit:
•The special-project eHows are much more complicated than the regular ones so they take more time—although once I learn to adjust to the format, that will change (they’ll still take more time but not as much as now when I’m learning the ropes).
•I completed a magazine article which, assuming it sells, will pay very low, but it will be an excellent clip.
•The ELance project I’m working on (a ghostwritten treatment) pays relatively low, but once it’s done I will have a completed Elance project which should help me win more projects.
•I’ve started an odd sort of ebook project (I’ll describe it more when I’m done) that again, pays below the usual rates, but it holds the prospects of royalty payments, so I figure it’s worth doing.
•I’m also working on a project for Raleigh Public Record which should actually pay decently.
On the plus side, having begun to worry I’d never land any project beyond my film books and eHow, it’s encouraging that I’ve gotten so many. Having so many projects all coincide, however, means I’m bringing in a lot less than usual this month. And because they’re all due in roughly the same time frame, and I was out almost all of the previous week, my usual approach—add them on top of my regular hours (or at least, give up a couple of eHows a week to get them done)—doesn’t work. So my fiction time was devoted to the ghostwritten treatment rather than any of my own stuff.
And I add to my own burdens, I must admit: Deadline pressure stresses me out and makes it easier for me to go goof off and wander on the Internet instead of working. Counterproductive, need I say?
However, as I noted Monday, the path of freelancing never does run smooth. And hopefully all these efforts will pay off down the road. And I’ll dodge that last guy with the axe.
In other news, Leave the World to Darkness came back from Andromeda Spaceways, but I did get my regular royalty check from McFarland for Screen Enemies of the American Way and my earlier books (not huge, but bigger than I expected).
(Cover by Billy Graham, all rights to current holder)