Write on! A freelancer's whinge

1. Recalcitrant accounts departments

When payment for a story is grossly overdue, the bailiffs are banging at the door and you're boiling your leather belt to make a nourishing broth, you logically but resignedly contact the person who commissioned you in the first place.

Resignedly because, first, unless they've been a freelancer themselves, any feeble bleating that it would be nice to be paid promptly is often met with an unsaid yet clearly implied subtext that if you're not suffering for your art, what sort of a charlatan are you then? Second, you're invariably and airily referred to the accounts department.

As everyone knows, most - though (insert suck-uppy disclaimer) not all - publications' payment people are a bunch of sullen little Ewoks working out of a damp basement.

They never, ever, ever return phone calls or emails, and are perhaps understandably resentful that you're actually meant to be getting paid for, say, having been sent on a freebie to magical Mauritius or something.

Also, at least one of them is invariably called Marcelle, Chantal or Desiree (or variations thereof) and at any given time is about to go on, or is on, maternity leave.

In fact, some while after writing this, I almost fainted with vindication when I saw a piece in a daily newspaper with the heading, "New baby meant no pay for SABC1 staffers." Read the intro: "SABC1 freelancers - including the channel's presenters - have not been paid because the financial officer has gone on maternity leave..."

Either way, some of my most surreal, Kafkaesque exchanges ever have been with RADs, and but for space considerations and the fact that you probably wouldn't believe me, I ache to repeat them, word for word.

Recalcitrant or not, however, they're far nicer to deal with than...

2. People who don't pay at all

The trick here is to stop paying freelancers if it's even vaguely suspected that the publication might be in financial trouble, but to still keep on commissioning them to do work - while fobbing off their inquiries with a sincere sounding, "The cheque is in the mail" or "We're upgrading our electronic payment system."

That way, if and when it does fold, the robber barons in charge won't have been stupid enough to have paid for editorial contributions. Besides, riding roughshod over freelancers is as easy as summarily firing a "garden boy" probably was in the Verwoerd era.

I've worked out that the current record holder - the long-defunct local edition of Maxim magazine - shafted me for the equivalent of slightly more than five year's gross income in my first reporter's job, back in 1989 at The Zululand Observer. And not even the really good bits out of the books of Job, Exodus and Revelation can adequately describe what I'd like to... but I'll stop there.

3. Self-important peers

Working from home means you really have a hobby, not a job. That's why media friends and colleagues - and for some reason the ones on newspapers are the worst - will happily brush aside your phone calls with a bustly, breathless, mildly irritated tone when it suits them

Favourites are, "I'm going into a meeting now," or, "Tchoh! I'm on deadline at the moment... can't speak, you know."

However, should you be unable to animatedly respond to their phone calls or instantly reply to their emails at any time of the day or night, it will be taken as a very sure sign of self-importance and downright rudeness on your part.

4. Vague, vacillating, indecisive editors

This is an old, old favourite, not only of mine but of virtually every freelancer I know.

Essentially an editor and you agree on a story idea, and you submit it more or less according to the brief - only to hear the dread words, "I like the way you've approached this... but I think it would be far more effective if you did it this way..."

It's tempting to answer that you'd be delighted to do so, as long as you're paid in full for the piece you've already submitted. But if it's a publication you'd like to write for again, the correct response, of course, is to praise the editor for his or her perspicacity, curse your lack of it, and start all over again.

5. Stupid sub-editors

My copy is very often riddled with errors small and large (and unless you're a committed plagiarist, why do they call it "copy" anyway?). So I really appreciate some sense and shape being knocked into it.

But here's a little tip: if it's a subject I patently know far more about than you, don't fiddle too much.

Put it this way: if I'm writing about cars and you're, say, a lady sub-editor who barely knows where to put petrol in - and am I going to be crucified for this or what? - don't, for example, take the hyphen out of Rolls-Royce because you think it looks right.

On a slightly different subject, Nicolas, as in Nicolas Cage, is not spelt with an "h." Nor is Mother Teresa. And so it goes.

6. Pushy PRs

If they tell me, however smilingly or laughingly or light-heartedly, what they would really like me to write, I'll be very tempted to say the direct opposite. Especially as, over the past few years or so, I've metamorphosised into one of the more dangerous species of journalist - namely the sort who couldn't care less about freebies.

Not out of any newly acquired moral code, I hasten to add, but simply because it takes a bit more to lure me out of my lair these days than a seafood meal, a night in a new and obscenely opulent five-star hotel, or a trip to Magical Mauritius or Terrific Turkey or whatever. Particularly as I'm invariably expected to be tail-waggingly grateful.

While I'm here, I'd like to point out that unless I'm paying, I seldom turn right when entering an aircraft. Especially if it's an overseas junket.

First, for me it's work. Second, in the vast majority of cases the airline, not the PR people nor tour company, is providing the seat and so can surely stretch to at least a business-class berth. It's hardly as if it's going to be chucking off fare-paying passengers anyway.

Third, I find it virtually intolerable to fly economy, knowing that other people on the aircraft are having a nicer time.

7. Worshipful secretaries

This animal believes that her boss, namely the editor you're trying to get hold of, spends most of the not inconsiderable time he's out of the office conferring with his immortal peers on Mount Olympus.

So, no, she's not going to let you speak to him or give you his cell number. In fact, the closest you'll probably ever get to breaching her defences is being told, in tones of breathless reverence, that "Mr (or Ms) so-and-so is in a meeting at the moment."

You'll then be referred to the deputy editor. Which reminds me that when I was a dep ed on a magazine some while ago, I also got to deal with all the freelancers (except the very attractive ones).

In retrospect I'm unsure whether it was because the editor was too busy and important to handle them, or if he was just trying to give me something to do.

For more:

• Bizcommunity: Professionalism under threat
  
• Bizcommunity: Freelancers: here's how to get paid
  
• Bizcommunity: 'This is my job,' by a Journalist