Freelance Writers and Client Revisions

John Hewett over at The Writer’s Resource Center, has an excellent article called Successful Freelance Writers Don’t Take Revisions Personally. He’s right, of course – the way I’ve always put it is professional writers love good editing – not quite the same thing, but you get the idea.

The thing I like about John’s post is he makes it clear that there are times to leave a client behind. Obviously, he’s all in favor of satisfying the client, but he recognizes it’s not always possible.

Of course, there’s the whole issue of excessive revisions – a squishy term at best, yet one we’ve all faced at one time or another. Excessive revisions seem to happen most often when we take on a new client and, it always seems to me, to be part of the problem I create when I don’t insist on my normal hourly rate.

You know what I mean – you’ve written 10,000 words, with drafts that have gotten tentative approval along the way, and all of a sudden the client wants you to start over. Or you have the sense that you’re 95% through and the client asks for an additional 2,000 new words. It can happen in a variety of ways.

One solution is to drop the client, but that’s unsatisfactory on both sides. Another is to bite the proverbial bullet and keep revising; the problem with this approach is you may never get finished.

I work to avoid this situation in two ways:

First, to make sure the client and I have agreement on what we’re trying to accomplish. This works as long as the client doesn’t change the goal mid stream.

Second, I specify the number of revisions. This works best with shorter projects like articles or copywriting. I usually offer three on the theory that if we can’t get it together after three revisions, something else is wrong.

Clarity in the beginning solves many problems; setting boundaries in advance solves many others.

Write well and often,

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