Early this morning I was driving home when the phone rang.

“I just wanted to make sure we were still on for 8:30 this morning,” said my client.

“Absolutely,” I said. “I’m on my way into the office.”

I answered her honestly, but I felt a little funny. My office is in my living room. It’s precisely 15 percent of my 400-square-foot apartment near downtown San Diego. I know the numbers because I just measured for the home-office deduction on my taxes.

I never hide the fact that I have a home office. My clients have heard my cat meow at my feet, and they’ve had to wait a second for me to answer the door when a neighbor drops by. These days no one seems to care if one works from home. But I’d still enjoy an official office sometimes.

Yesterday I stopped by my post office box for a moment, and I ran across the sign in this picture.  In suite 205-E, a writer has an office. And outside Trader Joe’s Grocery Store, she has this sign. I keep envisioning a sign here at Avenue Z. Would I just stick one in the window, right under the Christmas cards I haven’t taken down yet? How about a nice yard sign with a stake?

Armed with my Monday, get-things-done attitude, I started putting together a proposal for one of my newest clients. We have discussed his newsletter desires several times, and I’ve probably spent 5 unpaid hours total working on getting this business.

So last night we’re going over the specs for the project, and when he saw that the industry average for newsletter opens was less than 20 percent, he decided he wanted a very different newsletter. The new idea will consist of monthly stats that he will provide, a monthly product feature that he will provide and a monthly letter …. that he will provide.

My job would be to organize things so that he can remember to provide the info. The original concept would have been interviewing people, writing articles, collecting info and more. Now it’s completely admin. It’s maybe $200 a month, but it’s not likely to be something I enjoy or look forward to.

I have to tell him I need to pass on the project.

It hurts to say no, but I have to remember what I do for a living. I write. The name of my company is Avenue Z Writing Solutions. I’ve written before about the troubles my former company had when we tried to be all things to all people. That identity crisis made us lose focus and eventually hurt the bottom line, no matter how much it helped in the short term. I’ve done some other types of projects, but the fundamental purpose was writing, not admin.

 I picked up an Avenue Z record of three new clients last week, and they all appeared outside my coordinated marketing efforts with the webinar. Woo Hoo!

I feel comfortable saying that I don’t need to work on marketing this week. Ordinarily I spend several hours a week on activities that help get my name out there… emails, responses to listservs, direct mailing projects, etc. But this week I simply need to crank out some of the projects that have solidified and get things crossed off the list.

It’s hard to know what kind of balance to strike. One side of me says, “You’re busy! Just work with the people you have, and more will come in a little at a time.” Another thought creeps up: “You have to keep marketing every day and every way. If you’re too successful, so be it. Turn down work. But never stop the heavy company promotion because you can never be sure of your next paycheck.”

I don’t really know which side to listen to as a whole, but I do know that I can settle in for a few days at least and do nothing but churn out words for my clients.

Next steps today:

1. Hide the BlackBerry
2. Close Microsoft Outlook
3. Make a to do list
4. Start cranking

The news has been bad lately… the US seems to be headed into a recession. For reasons that are a bit beyond me, Congress’ answer is to create a package that will give us all checks for $600 in May. I don’t understand much about how governmental budgets work, but haven’t they been reading the newspapers? Why didn’t they work on a long-term goal to fix this instead of tossing $600 into everyone’s pockets so we can go buy the Wii we always wanted?

Err… anyway. This is not a political blog.

So, the country’s economy is unstable, and people are worried. I just started a business as a freelance copywriter, and I’m not sure whether this trend is going to be good or bad for my business.

It could be bad
If companies lock down marketing budgets, cut off advertising, hunker down and refuse to produce any more eNewsletters, make do with last year’s  brochures… my business will suffer. My existing clients will say, “Beth, we just can’t afford to keep the newsletter going right now.” Potential clients will say, “Sorry — we’ve cut our budget for marketing. Call us when we’re in the black again.”  People will simply not produce the things I write.

It could be good
I see two potential trends that might make someone in my position very happy.  First, businesses could decide to cut their internal communications and marketing staffs. They’ll turn to contractors to do specific projects instead of having a person or department always on call. Second, businesses will realize that they have to do more marketing and outreach to keep their clients. They’ll need more newsletters, marketing campaigns, tip sheets, etc.

I’m going to stick with the optimism and guess that freelance writers will be fine during the recession, but I’m not going to stop my own marketing and outreach efforts, even when I’m busy and can’t really take on much more work.