Mon 22 Oct 2007
Time has really gotten away from me lately. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to keep up with all my obligations.
It’s pretty maddening, really. I’m the kind of person who prides herself on keeping up with everything, and with my current plate, there’s just no way.
Deadlines are a writer’s lifeblood. We live by them and we die by them. Meet them, and you’re a star. Miss them, and your name is dirt. The problem is, in many cases, that the deadline is being set by someone who has no idea how long it takes to write a quality piece of work.
Case in point: Last week, I was told I had to completely update two 300 page manuals and the help documentation for a software release. That’s all well and good, but the deadline was one week.
Yep, you read that right; ONE week.
I had to laugh at the ludicrousness of that request, and my laughter was met with 
blank stares. “What? You can’t do that? You’ll just have to work overtime.” Again, I laughed. “You don’t get it,” I said, “You were oooing and ahhhing over the fact that I wrote the 11 page release notes in a day and a half, because it was so fast. Take 900 (the number of pages you want me to write and/or update) and divide it by 11 (the number of pages I wrote) and then multiply that answer by 1.5 (the number of days it took me to write the 11 pages). That’s how long it would take me to complete the task.”
For those of you who don’t have a calculator, the answer is 122.7 days or 24 1/2 work weeks, which is approximately 5 1/2 months or so. Gotta love that!
At that point, the blank stares changed to popping eyes. (It was actually pretty funny.) The even funnier thing was, though, that they still expect me to do it.
Ridiculous.
So, I’m having a little trouble keeping up with my obligations. Hopefully, I can give them something that will at least look decent and have the correct information, but this isn’t how I work. I produce quality at a fast pace, not quantity that’s crap.
So, stay tuned, boys and girls. I’ve got my feelers out again to see if I can find something more suitable for my work ethic.
God help the poor person who takes over when I’m gone, because one thing is sure - some things never change. And here, it looks like nothing does.
See you soon!
Stumble It!