Just as many writers dream of the day their novel is not rejected, many copywriters dream of a successful project. Landing the project is only half the battle. Seeing the project through to completion can be even more difficult.

During that precious time between the agreed upon deal and the completion of the project there is a delicate balance. In this time you’re working with your client in order to bring about their idea, and there are lots of things that can get in the way.

Lack of Communication:
Just because you know how to communicate doesn’t mean you know when. You might be aware that a particular topic requires calling up the client and asking them more detailed questions. Perhaps you concerned about bugging them too much over all the little details. If you’re calling them everyday, they could get the impression that you don’t know what you’re doing.

From recent experience, I would have to say that anytime something makes your work go slower and the solution is in the hands of the client – call. You may think they are slowing you down, but in fact you’re the one not following up when you need to. They can’t think of everything, that’s why they hired you. If they get annoyed, just do your best to make it easy for them to answer you.

Lack of Finality:
Ok, so you agreed upon a deal over the course of a phone conversation. Now, put it in writing. Just because you’re both being really friendly is no excuse not to be professional. This way there is no worries about expectations that could ruin your budding friendship.

Say your friend suddenly decides on a deadline that you don’t remember him mentioning earlier. Or what if the project starts going in a different direction than what you had expected? If you had it in writing you could have renegotiated the terms… sounds professional doesn’t it? Having the agreement in print forces both you and your client to have good communication.

Not Meeting Expectations:
Sometimes, you can’t help not meeting someone’s expectations. Other times, there are things you could have done in order not to lead your client down the wrong path. It’s true that you should sell your abilities, but no one can see the future.

What if your schedule changes, or some technical problem occurs. It would be better if the client understood that you’re not perfect. You can do that by being more conservative with your confidence. Be confident, but don’t shrug tasks saying they’re a cake-walk… even if they are.

To make sure I wasn’t skipping any of WordPress’s features, I did a thorough search on the Web and took up a book at the local Barnes and Nobel.

It turns out that there is more to WordPress than I saw at first glance.

There templates for example. Though many of them were very interesting and beautiful, I still felt limited because of the cumbersome CSS editing window. However, I soon found how easy it was to simply make the header I want and then have it uploaded. Now I plan to maybe change a font or two using the CSS editing window. But I still am not thrilled to be editing CSS that I can’t see.

Let’s talk posting now, since that IS the original purpose of a blog. Though I didn’t like the automatic paragraph spacing; I soon discovered that there is a nice special tool for copying & pasting from MS Word. That made for a world of difference since I could then use MS Word and not have to worry about any distortion. In any case, I had been meaning to save all of my posts in my laptop.

I also found out that posts, widgets, and pages have more options than saw at first glance. Posts and pages have a side dish of options that appear once you click on the plus signs next to each category. Some widgets have options that you can access through the little box icon next to its title.

However, there are still some things I would change. Blogroll for instance… I don’t really read other blogs. I want to provide a list of helpful websites to my readers and simply call them links, but there is no option to rename the blogroll widget.

Another widget that’s missing is the Make-Your-Own html widget. That was something I adored at Blogger.com. I used it often to showcase buttons, icons, make my own list of things.

I hope that in the future, WordPress plans to offer these meaningful tidbits that allow people to truly create a space all their own, but for now they’re doing alright. Frankly, I don’t know if I’ll stay with them. I have read up on moving from Blogger.com, and it looks like I could import everything. What I’m afraid of is having to sit there and review all 220 posts for goof-ups, missing pictures, and correct categorization. Not to mention the weird fact that even though the posts are imported – if I decide to delete my Blogger.com blog, the posts might not work right anymore.

Already now… what do I like about WordPress?

Hmm, I like the static pages that you can create, but I was hoping for a little more flexibility. Perhaps I just haven’t found it yet. I also like the big variety in templates. There are big differences between the bunch and some of them have editable features like a header picture.

I like how WordPress seems to be more website-ish looking. When you look at a Blogger.com blog, you KNOW it’s a blog.

So far, all the pros stop here because there is a lot I am uncomfortable with or I was expecting more.

First, I am not thrilled with this text editor I’m working with right now. I hate the automatic spacing I get when I hit the enter key. It’s driving me batty. Second, I think WordPress could have done better with the menu layout. Though there are lots of items (which is neat), everything feels crammed and always in differen shades of blue.

Last, I miss having full access to html and css. I don’t like the css window. How can I edit my CSS when I can’t see it???

I’ll need to think some more.

This is my first step into the WordPress world. Who knows if I’ll stay. It’s a far cry from Blogger, but yet some things feel like home.