Being a professional academic writer is like being a super-villain: Some little jerk is always trying to foil your evil plans. But the difference between a writer and a super-villain is that as a writer you are your own best nemesis. Super-villains are notorious for being destructive, but writers are notoriously self-destructive.

The most self-destructive aspect of the writer's dark and damaged soul manifests in the form of the Demon Muse. This terrible little bastard whispers in our ears while we are sleeping, trying to trick us into committing professional blunders. I will expose his secret strategies.

Read all the way to the end of the article, and you'll discover the secret identity of your terrible adversary, the Demon Muse.

1. The Demon Muse disrupts the writer's professional momentum.

Sometimes it's hard to start the writing into motion - but after a long work session, sometimes it's hard to stop. That's just inertia. Some people identify themselves as 'perfectionists' and others as 'workaholics', but really it's just a matter of momentum.

As professional writers, we know how to manage our momentum when the work is done. When the paper is already finished, it's great to give it one extra coat of paint with a bit of revision while proofreading, and solidify its meaningful theme or message - but don't allow yourself to get fixated and tinker with a paper that's already well-written. Instead, use that momentum to catapult you into the next paper. As you know, the hardest part of any writing project is getting started, so it's great when you can finish your work day by getting a head start on tomorrow's paper.

A great way to manage momentum is to move on to the next paper before you edit/proofread the paper you just finished. Edit them both later. If you finish a paper and still have that special state of mind that cranks out content steadily, there's no need to immediately stop the mind from creating content and ask it to format a reference list. Keep it going for a while.

2. The Demon Muse tempts writers to wait for the perfect state of mind.

If you break the barrier between ordinary consciousness and transcendental bliss, and you write something that comes from that sacred place where artists travel to excavate bits of the Truth beneath the surface of things... that's not really what the client needs.

Sometimes writers don't allow themselves to start typing until they're in that rhythmic writing trance, that meditative mind-state all writers know. Don't wait for that. This is just typing up a paper. There is no need to procrastinate and wait until you feel that writing state-of-mind. The rhythm starts to happen after you've already been typing. Instead of waiting for that trance rhythm, and refusing to let yourself type until you have it, start typing! Feel the rhythm rising while you tap the keys.

3. It tricks us into trying to make each paper the best thing ever written!

People who operate academic writing websites favor writers who consistently get good results. Their confidence in you = a better variety of opportunities for you = more time and money. But good results do not necessarily reflect the 'best' writing, whatever that is. People have preferences, so even the 'best' writing has some people who love it and others who cannot appreciate it.

Here is a sticky clump of irony: Academic writing does enable us to apply our talent, but it's not where we fulfill our potential as writers. If we waste our best work on essays for strangers, we are getting it wrong. Many people who buy academic papers do not even know how to recognize good writing. They buy papers because they don't like writing, and they don't understand it. Let's not be sending them material of Shakespearean depth and sophistication. Even if they do appreciate it, they will still just feel more conflicted when they try to use it.

4. It challenges the writer to keep a distinct style.

In academic writing, tinkering with the style is a form of procrastination. If college papers were supposed to be Pulitzer-worthy literary breakthroughs, then maybe the clients would care about the profound truth reflected in the nuances of your sublime writing style.

You'll get more complaints if you try to give of yourself by sharing your style. Here's the secret: Most clients feel disturbed by a distinct writing style, because material with a distinct writing style is more difficult for them to use.

5. It tempts writers to underestimate the value of an established essay website.

Writers who freelance through websites share earnings with the other people who work behind the scenes. Writing papers is only one aspect of the actual work stream. The people who make the academic writing processes possible include web developers, promotions experts using social media and other marketing resources, and people who deal with legality and collections to protect our time and money against idiot clients who would defraud us.

Forgetting how much work is involved in the other aspects of the business, it's typical for writers to want to go around the websites and collect all the money ourselves; we don't realize how much work was being done by the well-established essay website that was sending us all our business and functioning as a sort of escrow service to protect us.

I'm not saying you should never seek private clients - especially if you find some who seem truly reasonable. But be prepared to spend a lot of time doing things other than writing - and you'll notice that the other tasks involved in the business really require a different sort of thinking, so you need to keep switching back and forth from the meditative state of mind you use for writing to the sort of thinking that is needed for chores associated with payments, talking on the phone to needy and nervous customers, blah, blah, etc.

6. It entices writers into a leap-of-faith on marketing websites for writers.

One upon a time, I started getting serious about marketing my writing service to degree candidates in my local area, because I live in a place with a lot of prestigious schools and professional people who can actually afford to hire a writer. I was excited about an opportunity, so I wrote several pages for free to impress a guy who I thought would hire me. I had to make it my best work since my purpose was to make a good impression, and it took all day to write those free sample pages. In the end, he got sidetracked and put the project on hold indefinitely, so that was the end of that. There's no need to wonder if he was a con artist or if he just has a short attention span, because it's human nature to get side-tracked - especially when they owe us money!

It's just not a great idea to spend any significant amount of time catering to the expectations of a client you find through Craigslist unless they give a deposit. Usually, a few more steps are needed when clients find you on Craigslist. A lot of them will want a face-to-face meeting, which takes up enough time to significantly diminish the value the project can have for you.

7. The Demon Muse tricks writers into using brevity in academic papers.

Brevity doesn't just grow on trees, you know. Efficiency is not efficient when you're trying to reach your word count. If there is one stylistic principle we can compromise when writing papers, it's brevity. We need to be succinct when we write our own stuff, not when we're writing some rat bastard's thesis paper.

Writers love efficiency/brevity - writing sentences that express ideas in the fewest possible amount of words. Yoda says, "Do, or do not. There is no try." This is the perfection of concision. In eight words, he expresses something that an academic would only be able to express in a comprehensive thesis paper. It's okay if the ideal of brevity is something you hold dear, but remember not to use it when you are writing an academic paper.

Clients think good writing = long sentences. It's a blunder when writers refine the material to express ideas in the fewest words possible; it makes great writing, but the client will hate it because it's not what they expect. Spread your writing out so that each sentence uses a few more words than necessary, and you will reach your word count sooner (which is the same as earning more money, because time is money) and the client will think it's what an academic paper is supposed to look like.

Let's be succinct in our own work, the writing that actually represents us as artists. In academic papers, it's good to ensure clarity by making sentences and paragraphs a bit long. The reason you always feel dead inside is that you give away too much of your essence - instead of using appropriately flowery, formal academic language that gets you quickly to the word count you were commissioned to reach.

8. It tempts writers to drink coffee when they're not working.

This is a blunder made by coffee drinkers. (If you abuse other substances, the same principle probably applies to them as well. It's sometimes a blunder to start drinking coffee before you start working. Coffee timing is of critical importance for me. Even a single sip can inspire a thousand words of content. It stops working so well after a writer drinks too much of it, so writers who use coffee might do well by using it in the same moment they begin their work. I ritually drink coffee at exactly the same time I start working, so I always look forward to my work. I associate my work with that moment of caffeination.

9. It tells you academic writing is writing, when it's actually typing.

Academic writing is not writing. It is typing. Let's consider the various elements of our work as freelance academic writers. We are studying assignment instructions, replying to email, bidding on projects, researching databases of professional journal articles, typing words on the screen, revising for quality, proofreading, formatting a reference list - and you know all these elements are necessary, so you trick yourself into using them as opportunities for procrastination. The only time you are making progress in your work is when you are typing words onto the screen. Keep typing. Your advantage as a talented writer is that you can type quickly and still produce above-average content.

Expressing ideas through typing involves a real exertion of energy. Sometimes a writer becomes so fatigued that s/he can hardly muster the strength to type another sentence. If that happens, take a break. But don't make the mistake of endlessly editing, or doing a lot of unnecessary research, as a way to avoid typing words on the screen. If you spend a lot of time on the stuff that is not typing, you'll keep yourself fatigued and unable to get back to typing.

10. It whispers in your ear: "Try to be brilliant!"

Try to be brilliant, and you'll end up feeling unappreciated. You'll end up even more neurotic than you already are.

You wanted to be a writer so you could write something brilliant, but this is neither the time nor the place. If you try to be brilliant when writing academic papers for your clients - your work will take twice as much time, and your clients will get confused. Academic writing is not supposed to be brilliant. It's supposed to have a clear thesis statement, references to support every claim, and paragraphs that begin with topic sentences relevant to the main idea of the paper. Be methodical instead of brilliant.

11. The Demon Muse pretends academic writing is an art, when it's a craft.

Be as artful as possible while maintaining an acceptable rate of progress-per-hour. How much time are you allowing yourself for this project? Keep on typing, even if it's not coming out as artfully as you'd like. If you get fixated on some idea, and you do a lot of Internet research or a lot of thoughtful revision, I will punch you in your procrastinating face. Academic writing is a craft, not an art.

The Demon Muse sometimes even goes as far as to make us believe that we truly want to approach academic writing as an art. We find ourselves wanting to splurge our inspiration writing academic papers, because we think we're quirky enough for controlled folly, or enlightened enough to see the equanimity and impermanence of everything - so we tell ourselves that we really want each paper to be brilliant. But approaching work as art instead of craft is just another way writers use their academic writing (craft) to procrastinate about the real writing (art) they intend to do.

12. It lulls the writer into lethargy.

Do not fall into the trap of thinking your work as a freelance writer makes it necessary or acceptable to be sitting all day long. Writing is not inaction. Writing is action. Physical and mental stagnation happen simultaneously, so it's a good idea to write for a while and then go jogging or something.

Many research studies have demonstrated that aerobic activity enhances creativity. On the other hand, a stagnant body leads to a lethargic mind. One of the nice things about being freelancers is the ability to make our own hours and incorporate exercise into our work days. You do not need to be trapped in an office, damaging the body by sitting for hours and staring at the screen. You can 'pick up the slack' in your body by doing some aerobic exercise as a break between work sessions.

Let your intuition conjure the image of an experienced, successful academic writer. To me, that's a person who usually goes jogging part way through the workday. If you freelance online from home, try this experiment: Wear jogging shorts and a tee-shirt as your work 'uniform' and, after you finish half of your work, run out into the world. Notice if you are significantly more productive on days when you exercise. (It worked for me. One of the nice things about being out of shape is that exercise only takes a few minutes!)

13. It wants you to play it cool at times when you should seem eager-to-please.

Getting good results means clients are satisfied when writing projects entrusted to you, so don't let the Demon Muse rationalize neglecting the psychological aspect of your work as a freelancer. It's best to portray yourself in the way that gets the best results and saves you time: the eager-to-please personality.

Some freelancers have personalities that make them 'eager-to-please', and they always give extra effort because they want to be appreciated. These are the freelancers customers love most. You don't need to actually develop the sort of neurosis that makes some people feel desperate for appreciation, but you can attend to the customer's expectation by acting like you're 'eager-to-please'.

One way to portray yourself as eager-to-please is to include a note with each paper so that before the customer opens the file they see a message with your comments about how you fulfilled the requirements. It only takes a minute or two to type a message and instills a feeling of confidence in the customer in the moment right before s/he sees the paper.

- Most customers respond by giving the praise they think you need, and seeing praise from customers makes the operators of the website more confident in you.

- The customers who would typically complain about a paper might not complain, because they believe you are so eager-to-please that you already have given your best effort - so instead of complaining, they might actually use their own minds and make the best of the situation.

If you are too proud to present yourself as 'eager-to-please', you will seem uninterested in customer satisfaction that the customer will have a negative expectation in the moment when s/he opens the file.

14. It gets all righteous about 'what your writing is worth.'

For a freelancer, negotiation is a tricky challenge. When you present yourself to private clients as a tough negotiator, you alienate them and make them hesitate to email you. It's important to be direct and maintain clear boundaries, but negotiation should be done with a kind of finesse that prevents you from having to use an attitude like, "I am going to remind this person that I'm a professional who deserves to be paid what s/he is worth." It is never necessary to use a righteous tone with customers, but freelancers do it all the time.

Too often, freelancers feel the need to affirm themselves to customers or colleagues in self-destructive ways. A freelancer once said to me, "This isn't a hobby, you know!" This is not helpful. It might have been helpful if instead he had said, "I wish I could match that price, but for me the job would just take too much time." Saying that, he would be forcing me to question whether the other bidders even understand what the job requires. But to say that, he would need to be humble and mild.

15. The Demon Muse wants writers to use empty assertion in negotiation.

Instead of trying to negotiate through empty self-assertion, it's best if you use creativity and innovation to gain real negotiation capital.

- Example of empty self-assertion: Sending an email that expresses an idea like, "I feel that I'm worth a higher rate per page."

- Example of using real negotiating capital: Spread your roots to be involved in multiple sources of income so that you'll have more options and opportunities.

When you freelance through an academic writing website, it's important to remember that they don't care if your writing is particularly sagacious or eloquent. Their customers - the people who buy papers - don't even want writing that is sagacious or eloquent. They want writing they can understand. Therefore, you do not actually add any real value by writing in a way that is brilliant. From the perspective of the websites, by asking for higher rates, you become less valuable to them.

So, what is the way to earn a higher rate by applying your talent? Be a soldier about your work, and be sure to average a high number of words per hour.

16. It suggests an 'us against them' attitude.

Writers can be temperamental, so the people who operate academic writing websites give more opportunities to the ones who stay goal-oriented about creating real value. What do you say to them when they email to tell you a client complained about a paper you wrote? Real value is created with the customer actually achieves her/his goal and feels good about the money spent on the paper. Sometimes that is not possible, but it should always be the goal.

Real value can also be diminished, and one of the ways it is diminished is if you respond to problems in ways that create a lot of work for the people who run the website. How you finesse each situation is up to you, but as the person who wrote the paper you're the one in an excellent position to find a creative solution for problems. It's possible to stay goal-oriented if we control our emotions.

17. It distracts you so you miss the morning energy.

It is arrogant to think we can write at any time of day. Writing is a delicate process. Academic writers quickly become familiar with frustration of being blocked, with a scattered mind and crippled reading comprehension. This is a matter of timing. For me, it's best to write in the morning. Some writers get that energy at night. I personally believe the best energy tends to come in the morning, when the planet wakes up, so I suggest you try to harness it even if you usually identify as a night owl. According to Chinese medicine, the energy moves inward toward the center-line at midnight night, so the body feels some stillness, some coolness, and the central nervous system is energized - so midnight is the best time to attain spiritual enlightenment. It's not necessarily the best time of day to write a thesis paper about mongoose mating habits.

- In the morning, the energy is moving outward again, so the body is compelled into movement, you feel some warmth in the body, and you're ready to do the work of the day - including exercise, writing a paper, doing errands, etc.

- At night, the energy is moving inward and it's time to go into stillness and contemplation. If you write at night, it's good to work on your own project at that time - following your own inspiration and writing what you want to write.

18. It makes writers think good writing flows slowly.

Those of us who want to "be writers" feel passionate about it because we found that our brains work in a way that enables us to achieve a deep, profoundly satisfying state of mind when we write. Freelance academic writers often make the mistake of getting lose in that magical, timeless state of mind when they work. Professional academic writers can go there, but we have to move quickly.

Some meditation practitioners use the term 'flow' to name the special state of mind in which they are effortlessly effective. You're doing some kind of work, but it doesn't feel like work, and it seems like you are watching things happen on their own. Writers crank out content in a flow of creation, with the fullness of their attention pouring over the present moment. But does it have to be slow? Writing is meditation, and meditation is action. See if you can get into that meditative, writing state of mind while you type fast, with rhythm, and crank out a lot of content.

The Demon Muse sends you reeling into timelessness. Go ahead and visit that timeless place, but at least set the timer on your phone before you go there. The correct way to write papers for strangers is to use your talent to maximize efficiency. That means you use math to figure out how much you want to earn per hour, and you give yourself a time limit. I use the alarm on my cell phone. If you resolve to finish a paper by a particular time and then you fail to finish it on time, you still will finish it much sooner than if you had allowed yourself to forget the clock.

19. The Demon Muse thinks the writer should be a special forces soldier.

Some writers try to be elite. They try to bid on the most difficult and time-consuming projects to show that they can do what other writers cannot do. So, they make a higher than usual bid, and the bid amount does not nearly justify the amount of time spent. Yet, the writer will do this over and over again, pretending to be a special forces, freelance killing machine. But the result is that the operators of the website might give the easy/efficient projects to the less effective writers and keep you on reserve for the most difficult, problematic, time-consuming orders!

20. It demands that friends and family should understand you.

When you're trying to write meaningfully about some particular topic, it's necessary to meditate on that topic all day instead of getting carried away into something your roommate is talking about. So, you explain to your loved ones that when you're working you cannot talk about other things or you lose your focus.

But sometimes part of your creative process might involve deliberate procrastination, or taking a break, or playing the guitar. How are you going to explain to your partner that you cannot talk to her while you work when you have time to stop and play the guitar, or do some other quirky ritual? People are not going to understand your creative process. They'll say they can, but they get their feelings hurt every time. Write with the door closed.

This is especially important if you have kids at home during the times when you work. They should never have to see you while you are pacing back and forth, brainstorming, carrying out your weird writing rituals. It's not healthy to have to literally ignore your kids while you work, and it's also not healthy to have your work disrupted, so it's sometimes best to sneak out of the house while they're still sleeping.

By now, you may have noticed the true identity of the Demon Muse.

All of the blunders discussed above involve egotism. The freelance academic writer's arch enemy - the personification of the writer's self-defeating habits - is neither a demon nor a muse. It is the writer's own conceited sense of grandeur disguised as the Demon Muse! Recognizing that the interests of the ego rarely coincide, in any particular moment, with the interest of being productive and effective, the writer's work suddenly becomes easier and more manageable.

Egotism was the enemy all along, but the writer was too egotistical to know it. And who could blame us for being a little egotistical? We are brilliant writers, after all.

Brought to you by FreelanceEssayWriters.com

Academic writers are, by nature, rather reclusive creatures. Many of us turn our accumulated isolation into sarcasm and impatience over time, while others of us use the space to become more highly evolved, empathic individuals. But all of us can become annoyed from time to time by certain behaviors and actions that our clients (and employers, if we work for a company) can manifest.

One day for fun - or probably to blow off some steam after being particularly annoyed - I began a list of the ways in which academic writers can become easily annoyed. I was shocked when I hit a hundred in no time at all. I won't tell you how large the list grew, but I'm happy to share the first one hundred. These are in no special order - in the end, all annoyances feel pretty much equal.

Please share yours too, if you like - I'd love to add to the list.

100. A client doesn't want to send me his proposal because he thinks I'm going to steal his ideas. Come on, people. We're writers. We don't need to steal our clients' ideas.

99. A client wants to assure me she's never done anything like this before and gives me a ten-minute rundown about why she was forced into it. Look - I'm no confessor. I don't think this work is unethical, or I wouldn't do it. But we all need to make up our own minds about these things.

98. It's the first day of true summer and I've put off the last ten pages of that dissertation until today. No extensions, no delays possible. Hey - I can be annoyed with myself too, you know.

97. A client tells us he needs help with making sure the citations are correct, when what he really means is, I plagiarized my entire paper so rewrite the whole thing. Those are two different things, guys.

96. Seventeen hundred emails arrive loaded with one or two sentences apiece, each one containing a shred of an instruction for a paper. I'm juggling dozens of projects sometimes, and I have to keep track of this random stuff too? Please, people, put everything into one email. How hard could it be?

95. The staff where I freelance sometimes tells me that I need to redo a section of a literature review because three of my sources were too old. DAMN - she's right. How could I have missed that? Well, again, this time I can only blame myself. Gotta do that first thing.

94. A client wants to bond with me over the fact that my last name indicates a grandparent who grew up in her native country. I'm not looking for new friends, folks - just a growing list of clients.

93. A client curses me up and down the block and back again when he thinks I have not sent his paper to him in time. When I prove that I have, in fact, done so, he tells me he's stressed out, which is supposed to be an explanation. Like, it's my right to scream at you because my life is hard. Helping students cultivate grace under pressure might be a nice addition to our school curricula.

92. My favorite staff person - the one who looks out for me the most - asks me in her nicest email voice if I could pretty please take on a late job that another writer botched. I am really busy and I really shouldn't, but of course I do. No further explanation necessary.

91. A client who has a minimal grasp of English gives me a long list of sentences he deems incorrect simply because he can't understand them. Then I need to spend time explaining each one. Come on now - if you wouldn't do it to the plumber, why are you doing it to me? Ask the writing center first, please.

90. Clients in other time zones who can't do the conversion correctly and then blame me because their work is late generally end up contrite, but they tend to be extremely combative until the situation has been cleared up.

89. I'm getting to the tail end of a long paper when the client sends me late-breaking information from her instructor that completely changes everything. Even if I will be compensated for the additional work, the whole thing feels galling.

88. Many clients assume I care deeply about their personal lives. Don't get me wrong - I'm as happy to engage in chit-chat as anyone else in a professional setting. But when it comes to the down-deep details of family, love, and disease, well, I tend to think some things should be kept confined to very close friends. Call me old-fashioned, but it's how I feel.

87. Along those lines, consider a client who is not only getting married, but wants me to engage with her in exclaiming over every last detail of the planning process. In a word: ugh. Not all of us have dreamed of this moment since we were a little girl.

86. I always appreciate the client who wants to know how he can write as "good" as I do. Honey, at this point if you have to ask, it might not be worth the effort. More seriously, this is why we are here - because everyone in the world is not an excellent writer, just like everyone isn't a ballet dancer.

85. Clients who use clearly fake names and email addresses created just for this purpose amuse as well as annoy me. I have nothing to gain from exploiting the truth about your name and whereabouts, truly. If hiding makes you feel better, John Smith, I understand, but I'm not the FBI.

84. It's always a bit aggravating when a client asks me to explain the particularly brilliant analysis I've just performed in the course of completing her project. It's hard enough to write the stuff, but to have to type out whole explanations on top of it is a bit much.

83. I never know whether to be annoyed or amused when clients believe that academic writers all sit in warehouses somewhere, typewriters in front of them, ready to churn out the papers. I'm not being facetious - some people really do believe this.

82. The same client who insists I get back to him within a few hours at most, 24/7, 7 days a week, tells me he hopes I've had a restful and enjoyable weekend. Yeah. When would that have happened?

81. A staff person at one of the companies where I freelance keeps sending me jobs that are completely outside of my interests. Why, oh why, do you want me to keep telling you no? And why, oh why, do you guilt-trip me when I do? Don't you want the client to have a writer who knows what she is doing?

80. Clients who swear that my attachment is corrupt because they don't know how to open it - clients who swear my website is not working because they don't know how to fill out the form - clients who otherwise cannot use modern technology but refuse to admit it so they blame everyone else for their own lack of knowledge - these are among the more annoying folks I deal with.

79. A client who promises me a big tip for doing a good job might seem like a swell guy - and I do appreciate the occasional tip - but come on. I'm going to do a good job anyway.

78. Many times, clients are not as well organized as might be ideal, and so they forget things like the fact that drafts are due early, or progress needs to be shown over the course of the writing of a thesis. However, they remember real fast when their instructors ask them for whatever it is they've forgotten. Then, of course, it's my emergency. Sigh.

77. It's always challenging when clients have their parents or buddies "proofread" my work and then send it back to me. Going from error-free to error-ridden in one day flat. Gotta love it.

76. Along those lines, here's one of my favorites: clients who alter the model papers they receive, as they are supposed to do, make errors, and then lay those errors on my doorstep. Sorry, guys. I just don't make those kinds of mistakes, any more than a car mechanic would put maple syrup in a gas tank.

75. Here's a fun one. Some clients send me project requests with ample time in which to do them - say, two months for 50 pages. When I send the quote, I hear nothing back. Three days before the thing is due, I get a frantic email begging me to please help, they were scammed by a cheaper company, and now they have run out of time. If I wanted to scam these clients myself, I would tell them sure, I can get that done. But come on. It's just not possible, no matter how persuasively you beg or how much money you offer me. (To a point.)

74. A client who wants to know my personal opinion of her thesis topic is always a tricky situation. In general, I have a strict policy of non-disclosure; the sheer range of topics that I encounter is such that I am bound to come across projects which I find concerning or even downright offensive from time to time. The best way to avoid having to lie is refusing to say anything at all about any of them. That part isn't annoying - what is annoying, however, is the client who won't take no for an answer. Sorry, dear - you need to find affirmation elsewhere.

73. When 20 year old frat boys want to flirt with me on the phone - not guessing I'm a middle-aged woman - I am never sure if I'm more annoyed or repelled.

72. Being asked what city I'm in, what I'm doing the next night, and whether or not I ever meet my clients - these and other, similar, situations hold great potential for annoyance.

71. Also, it does nothing for my day to be asked what I look like, am I the girl in the photo on my site, and what am I wearing. Believe me, you do not want to know the answers to these questions.

70. The one time I forget to block my phone number is the time I talk with the client who needs his hand held seemingly to do everything from tie his own shoes to send me the necessary information to complete his project. Can anyone say phone stalker?

69. Interestingly, those are also the clients who tend to want to call me at 4 AM, gosh golly forgetting the time zone difference, just to see how the paper is coming along.

68. Certain clients who ask me the same barrage of questions, apologizing all the way because "I've never done this before" and "I'm just scared I will get ripped off" seem to think they are among the Savvy Ones, a small elect group that knows to ask the right questions. Sorry, folks - lots and lots of clients have these same exact questions which they ask in pretty much the same exact order.

67. How many times have I told a client I will not violate their confidentiality? About twelve thousand gazillion.

66. Again with the phone issues (I told you, we writers are a reclusive group): why is it so hard for so many clients (OK, it's almost always males here) to keep the conversation within professional boundaries? Yes, my name is pretty, and I do love spring, but that has nothing to do with e-commerce in Malaysia.

65. Yes, you do have to pay before I do the work. Are you insane? Does anyone ship out anything to anyone ever before it's paid for?

64. Sometimes things run late. Computers break down, there are power outages, workloads get a bit out of control - whatever. Things happen. When they do, it's especially aggravating to be pushed pushed pushed by a client to meet a deadline, only to be told a day or two after I send it (only a few hours late, for which I pulled an all-nighter) that it wasn't really the deadline, and could I make 100 changes to the paper and by the way you have another week in which to do it.

63. What I really love are clients who ask for a quote and then decide they cannot go through with the project. Instead of saying no thanks, or simply not responding, these clients need to tell me what a horrible person I am, and what a horrible business I'm in, I presume as a way of easing their own guilt for even contemplating such a thing.

62. No, I can't help you get a job as a freelance professional writer.

61. Sometimes a staff person will tell me to go "above and beyond" for some special client or other. I always feel like I'm ten years old, being told by my mother to smile at the nice man who's going to give my dad a promotion. Give me a barf bag, please.

60. Why is it always the worst weather, the most horrible day, when the internet at my home office goes on the fritz? I gotta put on real-person clothes, get in my real-person car, and leave my lovely cocoon to find an internet cafe somewhere. It's one thing when I do it to have a change of pace, and another to have to leave the comfort of my home office just to get online. Have I mentioned we're reclusive?

59. Even though I know full well, after 15 years in this business, that there's an ebb and flow in terms of how many papers there are, it still catches me off guard sometimes. To the point: the height of the spring busy season drives me nuts, and the height of the summer slow season drives me nuts.

58. As hard as it may be to believe, little first-year college student who somehow knows everything already, I've addressed the same prompt for Othello about 48 times in my career. I do think I can handle it.

57. Speaking of handling, I find it interesting as well as annoying that so many clients are shocked that I can't write code in Thshisdfg A555$ software, and equally shocked that yes, I know who Flannery O'Connor is.

56. I get annoyed with both of these situations: when a writer to whom I sub-contract a paper tells me a sob story every time a paper is late, expecting me to care, and when a writer to whom I sub-contract a paper powers through horrible emergencies to keep churning out the work. Why these contradictory situations both annoy me probably says more about me than about them, though.

55. It is highly annoying when people do not think I work for a living because I sit on my ass and type all day. Trust me, I've seen hundreds of people try - and fail - at this job.

54. While model papers are a very helpful tool for students to learn better how to complete their own projects, they are far from guaranteed in the constitution. Please don't tell me you can't pay for your paper because you are a student which of course means I'm supposed to feel bad for you and drop the price. Almost all of my clients are students. This is a service that goes above and beyond what is offered in school, sort of like Kaplan goes above and beyond - and just like Kaplan, I'm not free.

53. No, you cannot get that 200-page dissertation in 5-page segments. Just ain't gonna happen.

52. Screaming fights on email (and sometimes by phone) to argue over what are, and are not, mistakes are some of my happiest moments (to be read with biting sarcasm). It is phenomenally annoying to have to explain, over and over, that "yours" does not have an apostrophe, and why not. I'm serious. I have three advanced degrees, 35 years of professional work experience (15 as a writer) and taught English in community college for eight years. You're going to argue with me about apostrophes?

51. I love it when clients want to know if I still have the articles from their literature review which I did six months ago. Yes, sweetheart, I keep everything on my computer forever from every paper I've ever done. Gosh, maybe that's why it keeps breaking down.

50. While I certainly don't share the details of my personal life with my clients, I also find it stunning that so many clients seem to think I don't have one. That's all. Just saying.

49. There are some clients who believe I should be able to whip out a 150-page dissertation in two days, and other clients who think I can't possibly handle a third two-pager in the span of a week. How does that happen?

48. As cantankerous as I am, I do try to be fair and objective when evaluating disagreements, in particular between sub-contracting writers and clients. As go-between, I do my best to see where the fault is, whoever has committed it. I don't take sides, in other words. I find it therefore especially galling when writers assume I will be on their side no matter what, as well as when clients assume I will not be on their side, no matter what.

47. Some clients are bound and determined to be unhappy with what I write, no matter what. Issue after issue is brought up, and no sooner do I explain or justify one when they find another. If I make a mistake, I am the first one to apologize and correct it. But it isn't a mistake when I don't write the exact same paper that you've imagined in your head.

46. Clients, when you write to me after four years and ask if I can send every one of the 39 papers you purchased from me oh, starting six years ago - well, that's annoying in anyone's book. I mean, do you actually still need them now?

45. For the most part, it's great to be able to have contact with other writers, staff at other companies, and clients through email only. I'm reclusive, remember? But every now and then it's annoying to have to type everything out if I want to have a conversation about the weather, just after I've typed out 15 pages of prose for a thesis I'm writing. Oh well - this is an annoyance I can gladly live with.

44. When a client wants to pay in pounds or Canadian dollars, I find that annoying. First, because I'm based in the US, my work and company and freelance sites are based in the US, and so that's the money I use. Second, because I suspect they only ask to save money, since it isn't like PayPal doesn't convert the amount automatically.

43. If I have to call my internet service provider due to a service outage, I'm treated like a baby with computers - or, more like it, as if I'm an ancient relic who fears computers. Please, people - I already restarted the modem, rebooted my computer, and did all those other things at least twice long before I called you.

42. I know you mean well, but I don't need to be blessed, or told to have a blessed day. You have your beliefs, I have mine.

41. Can I call you now, you write at 1:06 AM? No, I cannot call you. I can't call you right now either. I also pretty much can never just call you now. Has anyone heard of the concept of giving someone a range of times in which to call?

40. A client who emails, frantic, because her instructor does not believe she has written her own paper causes immediate annoyance. You have misused the paper I created for you, and now I have to deal with your panic over the matter?

39. Clients who hear the cockatiels in the background when I'm talking with them sometimes want to embark upon lengthy monologues in which they detail just how much they love animals, and how many cats they have. Please refer back to earlier entries that explain just how annoying this sort of presumed desire to bond can be.

38. I love it when clients send random emails with cryptic subject lines, adding information to their (anonymous) projects - or, better yet, when random faxes come in with no order numbers, no titles of projects, not even a name or email address. I think some clients believe we only work on one order at a time....

37. I work with live chat functions upon occasion so that clients can discuss their projects with me in real time. Apparently, some folks believe I do nothing but sit and wait by my computer, given that it can take 15 minutes for them to answer my questions. Look, guys, you chatted me.

36. I find it uber-annoying when clients send password-protected files without the passwords, and then get irked with me when I ask for the passwords, like I'm trying to pry into their business or something. Making matters worse, clients who tend to do this also tend to not check their emails very often, so such projects often end up being completed toward the final hours of the deadline stretch - sadly, the client's inattentiveness doesn't always translate into fairness for the writer.

35. I get the occasional client who implies - and sometimes directly states - that he will slander my name, take back his money, and otherwise do whatever he can to hurt me if he's not 100% completely satisfied with my work. And this is before I've even sent a quote. I don't know about other business people, but I don't tend to work well under threat of professional ruin.

34. Occasionally, another writer at one of the companies where I freelance will fill in for a chapter or so on a longer project that I'm doing. For example, the staff needs someone to do a rush job - I'm the only one who can do it, but I have a deadline on a dissertation - so the staff will find a fill in. That's all well and good. The annoying part comes when the fill-in can't write her way out of a paper bag.

33. Everyone wants a deal. I get that, I really do. But come on. Do you really think that if you tell me to reduce the font size to a grain of sand, or single space the entire paper, or otherwise make it so more words have to be written to fill a page - do you really think I'm not going to notice?

32. Halfway through a large thesis, the client dumps a bunch of required articles in my lap. Not so bad, you say? Well, they're in French. Can anyone say "four years of Russian in high school and don't remember a thing?" Moments like this are why I have learned to count to ten.

31. When a client is particularly nervous about enlisting my services, I usually offer them a trial page or two, just so they can see what I'm capable of without their having to make a large investment of time and money. I'm always happy to do this, but I am never happy to answer the occasional harsh accusation that I haven't "written enough" or "focused hard enough on my project." It's a free sample, people. What do you want?

30. This one's a toughie to explain. When you use your credit card and it doesn't go through, your online statement will make it seem that it DID go through. This is called an authorization, and it will go away in a few days. Then you know how you try your card again and again until you are sure it won't work? Yep - you got it. Every time you do that, another authorization shows up on your statement as another charge. But these are not charges, and they will disappear. Well - all I can say is, try explaining that to an irate client who thinks I've cheated her out of hundreds of dollars with several erroneous charges.

29. Even though I try not to be aggravated, I don't always succeed when clients get cheap-assed prices from other companies and then want me to match them. Do these people go into Saab dealerships and demand they meet Kia's prices? They are cheap for a reason. I'm priced on the higher end for a reason. Don't expect a satin ballgown for the price of a t-shirt.

28. No, you can't visit me if you happen to be visiting the town where I live. No, no no no no.

27. Along those lines, you do know that we all work out of our home offices, don't you? Remember item number 83? Not only are we not all chained to desks in warehouses, but we're not even leaving our homes, for the most part. Why not? Isn't that one of the perks of telecommuting?

26. Here's an annoyance that has nothing to do with clients or staff of any kind. Working at home means just that: We are WORKING. At HOME. Working being the operative term here. Friends and family, please do not mistake my writing papers for liking things on Facebook, chatting with a friend, or doing anything else. It's a job.

25. Friends and family can be annoying in other ways. Oh, so you get paid to do what? Write? Are you kidding me? Yeah, Uncle Ted, you're right. Anyone can do it - even you, with your firm commitment to semi-literacy.

24. Yes, plagiarism detection software will pick up and flag quoted material, even when it is cited properly. No, that does not mean it's plagiarized. Repeat as needed until client understands.

23. Speaking of plagiarism, I'm going to sneak in one of my favorite lines (which I did not write): Your procrastination is not my emergency. So you forgot to send me that feedback I needed to complete your project until three hours before the thing is due. I get it. But your panic-laced invectives won't make me accomplish the impossible; all they will do is make me seriously annoyed with you for yelling at me because of something you did.

22. I've been known to become quite annoyed with some of my fellow writers who insist upon viewing our clients as children. You know: they feel the need to nurture, to take care of, to help them in that way. Seriously, people. We are not their parents. We are professionals, contracted to assist with our clients' educational experiences. We're not their mentors, their big brothers or sisters, and certainly not their proxy moms and dads.

21. Every now and then, a client will ask if I'm a professor at her school. One would think she would be pacified by hearing that I'm not a professor at her school. But no. She needs to know if I know anyone at that school, was I ever there, will I ever go there, etc. etc. etc. Sweetie, if you are that scared simply talking with me, perhaps this is not a good idea.

20. As a rule, I'm quite annoyed with drama. I don't care if it's a client, a writer, or a staff person, but it seems to me that most people don't agree with me. They seem to like drama. And I hate it, And boy, difficult projects with difficult deadlines do offer a tremendous amount of opportunity for drama. Sigh.

19. Please don't make a laundry list of all of your personal tragedies, illnesses, stressors, and so forth, and then use that list to ask me for a deep discount. While I appreciate that you are having a hard time, we all have these issues in our lives. That doesn't mean the oil man will bring my fuel for free, or the grocery store will give me 10% off my food. So why does that mean I'm supposed to discount my hard work for you?

18. No, I will not "just get started" on your 100-page dissertation while we all wait for your funds to arrive.

17. Yes, that is true even if I've worked with you for three years now. Nothing personal, but things change. How do I know your boyfriend/mother/whatever won't have a crisis and need some cash? Then it's bye bye thesis. So we'll just have to wait.

16. I just looooooooooove it when ten minutes after she makes her payment - a payment based upon a quote which I provided according to her specific instructions - a client sends me "new and improved" instructions. Inevitably, these new instructions call for an increase in price, given that they inevitably carry with them an increase in work. And inevitably, the client is shocked and astounded at this.

15. Few things are as aggravating to me as when I'm at the height of busy season, frantically pounding out word after word, when a client blithely wants to know can I move up his deadline by "just a few days." Are you kidding me? Honey, you'll be lucky to get it five minutes early.

14. Academic writers create model papers for our clients. We don't get good grades for our clients. If you are a client, please remember the difference.

13. I appreciate it very much when clients order multiple papers. I really do. But all too often, they forget that organization is critical to this business, and pile three or four orders into one email - this followed by random attachments with cryptic notes explaining which attachment belongs to which assignment. Let's get one thing straight: one order form = one assignment = all attachments at once, all together. How hard is that?

12. The last thing I need, when I have 150 emails to answer, is to have to stop and fill out a form with a capcha code just because some client has whitelisted my email address. Please - if you're doing business with me, then stop guarding your inbox against me.

11. Along those same lines, I can feel my blood pressure begin to boil when clients tell me I haven't sent them their papers when I know I have. Why don't they have their work, then? Because my emails have gone to their spam folders and they gosh darn it didn't realize it.

10. This makes me especially annoyed because most of my clients were born and raised in the internet age. They should know better.

9. No essay writing service is going to assign a group of its top writers to your Very Important Dissertation. What do you think this is - the operating room at Boston General? It just doesn't work that way. One writer, one project.

8. The same client who insists he's a genius is the one who's using an ancient version of Internet Explorer - old enough to be incompatible with the order form he needs to fill out to request a project. Time to upgrade, baby.

7. No, I will not Skype with you about your project.

6. Some topics are just plain annoying to me. There, I've said it. I'm only human. Some things interest me, and others don't. I try to engage with everything with an open mind and try to wring whatever I can from it, but at times, I just can't swing it. In those cases, every sentence is one big annoyance.

5. I'm a day person. There, I said it. That's like saying you're a math whiz to a roomful of frat boys, but it's true. So it doesn't get too much more annoying than when sub-contracting writers can't seem to get me their papers before 1 AM. Sigh.

4. Here's one that has nothing to do with clients, writers, staff, family, friends, or anyone else - anyone other than dissertation review committees, that is. Can there be anything worse than a professor who "corrects" my writing and renders it "less correct?" How about professors who don't know APA style? Or who change their minds every ten minutes? It doesn't matter that I get paid for revisions - what matters is the aggravation of having to follow the lead of someone who doesn't know what he's talking about.

3. PayPal takes fees for every payment I get. Fees add up. That's annoying.

2. Carpal tunnel, man. There's an annoyance with no person to attach it to. Lucky for all of us writers, the surgery is easy, fast, and does the trick.

1. And finally: I've been annoyed for years that the Irish client with the gorgeous voice never invited me to Dublin for a visit. What? Writers are people too, you know.

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