Did I leave money on the table? I don’t think so, exactly

Last week I mentioned I had a new project under way. As of Wednesday, I don’t.
The project: About.com was looking for a city guide for Raleigh/Durham, someone who’d write regular news, information and shopping/having fun advice for new residents. I applied for this a couple of months ago, when I was in the midst of hunting new money-making projects, and I was pleased last week when they told me I was a candidate.
The bad news: Well, I still had the ghost-writing project to do, and even more demanding, the new Hyperink Quicklet (also mentioned last week). Plus trying to do some eHows for immediate income. Ultimately, it got to be too much, so on Wednesday, I told the About people (a branch of the New York Times) I was opting out.
I really hate the idea of turning down a project someone’s offered me, but I think my reasons were sound:
•Due to some glitch in their system, I couldn’t access the About agreement so I didn’t know how much I’d be paid. If I knew for sure it was a good deal, I’d have made more effort, but for all I know it’s not substantially better than eHow.
•They recruit five applicants for the guide positions and see which of them does best. So it’s not like if I completed the work, I was a sure thing. Taking time away from paying projects for nothing is okay when I have the time … but I don’t.
•The work involves not only writing but setting up the website using About.com’s template. While I’m confident in my writing, one of the other candidates could quite possibly run rings around me on design (TYG could help, but she has enough to do).
•Ultimately, I’m not sure I get out and about in Durham/Raleigh enough to do this. TYG and I are basically homebodies—trying to come up with “list of top X in the Triangle” (they love that sort of thing) would be difficult on a regular basis.
So, farewell About.com. Hopefully I won’t miss you too much.
In other writing news:
•Leave the World to Darkness came back again this week. It will go out again, but I want to review some of the editorial comments first.
•I finished and submitted my Quicklet to Hyperink.
•Ehow got some new finance-and-business articles in. It makes a refreshing change from tech stuff so I unclaimed all my tech titles and went for the money ones (this lot pay better, in any case).
•I did not get any fiction done, so I lost ground again. One of my goals for April is to wipe out my deficit once and for all. With the errands that I mentioned last week ongoing, it will be difficult, but it’s possible.
This does convince me I was right to keep a tally of my deficit and working to wipe it out. The 15 hours when I stared 2012 would have been about 40 by now if I wasn’t working it down. That’s a lot of time not to be writing fiction.
•It’s been six weeks since I submitted my “atomic veterans” article to American Beauty Denver. I haven’t heard back or received a response to any of my subsequent emails, so as of Monday (as I informed the editor), I consider myself free to submit it elsewhere.
I dislike doing that, but in my experience, non-response to reasonable questions is a bad sign. Always. Guaranteed. Late publication, delayed response, those are normal, but not answering emails means they have a problem. Possibly not their fault (one sick editor at a small press can shut it down), but I’ve learned there’s nothing to gain by giving them a little more time.
So I don’t.