Moving on up (again)

Once again, the work pendulum swings, but this time it's in an upward direction, despite my pessimistic forecast from earlier this year. I suspect people will be fed up of hearing the same old story (even I admit trawling through older posts that it's starting to wear a bit thin). All I can say is that God help me the day things really do nosedive and don't improve because by then I shall either be eaten by wolves or burned to a crisp (see Hilaire Beloc's brilliant cautionary tale about Matilda).

Anyway, I digress. Things have picked up thanks to the continuing generosity of the people I currently work for and the acquisition of not one, but two unexpected (but entirely welcome) new clients. The first is 1&1 Internet, and I thank Richard for including me in his blogging team going forward. The regular work basically replaces all of the work I lost when Dixons pulled the plug on its Advent and Sandstrom websites last December.

The second is a set of playbooks - I won't reveal the topic or client for confidentiality reasons - but not only do I have 15 days guaranteed work over the next two months, there's the potential of more to follow going forward.

It's a bit of a shift from my usual work, I'll admit, but for any writer to survive in these times they need to accept corporate commissions, and I'm immensely grateful for these two bits of work as they've made this month the best one of the year so far, with both September and October pretty much guaranteed to be very good months too. And if the 1&1 work continues into next year, I'll hopefully not be hit too much when it comes to the now-obligatory lean months of January to April.

Now all I have to do is get a grip on the finances and start putting some money back into the savings...