Before I switched to more or less full time writing books—with the occasional newspaper or magazine article, such as this—I was really into copy writing.
For those of you who don’t know, copy writers generate ads or company blog posts and articles, and most of the people who do this are freelance rather than staff. The pay at the time was from five to fifteen cents per word for fifty to one thousand words of copy. That might seem like a lot, until you figure in the amount of research it took to write just, say, five hundred words, for which you’re paid the princely sum of twenty-five dollars… a one-time fee.
No matter how many times the client published what you wrote, or how much revenue it might generate (think of the purpose of company ads and publications) that twenty-five dollars is all you get.
Despite being freelancers working remotely, the copy writing community can become close knit, even though it’s also competitive. We shared ideas, mutual complaints, and the occasional wind fall when a job netted us a couple hundred dollars.
It got old for me, though, and my books started to take off, so I dropped out of the game.
When I stopped, most of my copy writing community, which had been completely online, evaporated. A few diehards hung on, sending me occasional emails or messages on my social media accounts, but except for one, who I’ll call the General, they too finally dropped off.
The General, though, has been like the neighbor you barely know who drops in unannounced three or four times a week, or invites herself to your backyard barbecues. He just will not go away. He’s on a couple of my social media accounts and at least once a month sends me messages apropos of nothing.
For example, the last was a message that just said ‘Hi.” At first, I responded, just to be polite, but after a while, the messages became longer and more intrusive, and more frequent, with testy reminders if I didn’t respond right away. I tried explaining to the General that my schedule was busy and I had no time for idle chatting on social media—to no avail. The messages kept coming.
Finally, I decided to be blunt, abrupt, even rude. I just quit responding. When he sent a ‘Whatcha doing?’ message, I just deleted it without responding. That would be followed in 24-hours with a ‘???’, which I also ignored. Then, after a week, there would be a sulky message berating me for not responding. I naturally ignore these. The last thing you want to do is get into a debate with a needy personality like this—it’s like stepping into quicksand.
I’d like to say that ignoring the General finally worked. Alas, it didn’t. I still get messages about once a month, some short, some long, all wanting to know if the General has done something to offend me.
I’m tempted to answer, ‘yes, your insistent on maintaining a relationship that doesn’t really exist anymore offends me, and your constant messages are an intrusion.” I won’t do that, of course.
I’ll just keeping ignoring and deleting, which is more than could be done before the Internet when intrusive acquaintances like this would show up on your door step. Back then, the only cure was to file a restraining order, or move in the middle of the night and leave no forwarding address. | NWI
