I Owe The Money, But…
I was looking through WAHM.com message boards today and came across something really interesting. Nichole, who blogs at Chaos in the Country, was hired to do some writing. She completed her tasks and was paid sporadically over a couple of months. Then payments stopped coming. She contacted the person for whom she was writing and found no resolution. Finally, she contacted Angela Hoy of Writer’s Weekly. Angela has a column called Whispers and Warnings, where she publicly lists disputes between writers and their employers/contractors. Angela contacted Kelly, the person who owes Nichole money, and requested her side of the story. The emails seem innocent enough: “Yes, I’ll pay. But only installments…blah blah blah”. However, on her own blog, Kelly says:
Long story short she begins to harass me for the money. I agreed to pay her no matter what and I tried to explain to her what happened. Suddenly- we wernt [sic] friends anymore. She conveniently forgot that I had helped her for more than a year. Not only that but our little agreement was now a full fledged business arrangement well,well,well [sic].
[...]And the penalty and fines are a whole lot more than the $75 I owe miss nikki.[...]
[...]I will continue to pay her but now, Ive started sending her a money order.
$1 a week. Dont spend it all in one place.[sick]
According to Nichole, Kelly hasn’t sent her a dime. Could it be that she can’t afford the cost of the money order? The fact is that Kelly agreed that she owes Nichole money. Kelly says that Nichole’s work is sub-par, but that doesn’t matter. She owes her money. What isn’t she paying? Because she’s been publicly humiliated and is angry? Or because she thinks that scare tactics will get Nichole off of her back and out of her life (thereby allowing her to keep the less than $100 she owes to someone else)?
Some people are telling Nichole to just forget about it and move on. But I don’t think that’s right. Kelly has basically called Nichole a hack, derided her writing, and mocked her. Kelly admits that she’s default on the payment and Nichole needs to remember that. Yes, Kelly is saying some “not so nice” things, but that just reflects on her own lack of professionalism. If she can’t afford to pay people to write for her then she should make damned sure she doesn’t offer up the money. She contracted to pay a certain amount and now is the time to pay up or shut up.
By the way, and I’ve said this before, if you mock someone else’s writing style you should make sure that your own is impeccable. If you laugh at someone for pursuing a writing career, laughing because it’s now a “business arrangement” (which it actually is because of the promise of payment for services rendered- as someone attempting to earn a Master’s Degree should know) then you should perhaps at least take on the appearance of someone who is professional. Lies and pettiness don’t put you in a good light.
Another thing (while I’m on a roll) Kelly was bragging that her site stats have gone through the roof because of her failure to pay a debt, but that’s not true. Thanks to my SEO acquaintances, I know what to look for to see if a page is doing well. Kelly’s site has been online since 2007 and she has less just over 2,000 page views since that time. This would mean that she maybe got a couple of hundred hits from this issue. That is not impressive. Take a moment to give her a couple more hits and look at the writing. If you were hiring, would you approach a writer who publishes such glaring errors in her blog? If you were a writer, would you want someone reading those errors?
Here’s the thing, something similar to this happened to me. My own articles didn’t go live, though, so I didn’t pursue the issue. However, someone hired me to write for them, I submitted three articles and then heard nothing else. I was supposed to be paid…blah blah blah. Well, the site for which those articles were intended never went live either, so I plan to use those three articles on one of my own sites. It still chaps my ass that I wasn’t paid and so when I see other instances of this type of stuff… Not to mention Kelly’s whole attitude about this is incredibly frustrating. “Yes, I owe her money. Too bad she complained because now I’m going to act like a petulant child…” I think writers deal with enough idiocy from those outside of our field and we really shouldn’t be getting the same thing from inside our ranks.
*Nichole’s side of the story can be found here.
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Thank you!… I don’t know what else to say other than thank you.
Nichole’s last blog post..Something Stinks Around Here
Hi, Nichole,
There’s no need to thank me. I am still irritated that you were treated so shabbily because you had the nerve to request what was owed to you. That irritation was compounded when she decided to try to rub salt into your wounds. If she was the professional she claims herself to be then she would get out the checkbook and pay her bill.