If you’re a blogger, at some point you’ve probably gone toe-to-toe with an Internet troll — “a person whose sole purpose in life is to seek out people to argue with….over extremely trivial issues.”

If you haven’t had this delightful experience yet, you will sooner or later. Technology is maturing faster than we are, so Internet trolls have become a fact of life.

When my first article was published at xoJane, e-gremlins called me a jobless, spoiled, trust-fund baby. I was pegged as a psychotic, shitty writer, who’s only ever written sub-par, self-published novels and articles.

The comments made my stomach knot like a mall pretzel. I sobbed. One minute, I wanted to crawl back into my mother’s uterus. The next, I wanted to fight — to scratch my way out of the trolls’ black and white pit of negativity. I read the soul-sucking comments over and over for six hours.

I decided I wasn’t prepared for a war with faceless, nameless, word-wielding trolls, who relentlessly stalked me on my social media profiles. So I decided to play nice, which resulted in some of the trolls feeling bad for their comments and one admitting that her reading comprehension was poor.

But Stephen King says, “If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.”

We all know that trolls aren’t polite. They spew smoke and hurl fire. Their words leave you blistered, red, and peeling, but as you slowly heal, your skin becomes tougher and your scars fade.

My cyber-bullying experience taught me valuable coping skills. Now I can mentally clobber any troll that comes my way, and you can too. 

Blowing up a relationship — it’s every blogger’s worst nightmare, and a few months ago, it almost happened to me.

My only steady client sent me a fuming email. She demanded her money back because she claimed I had plagiarized, which was “unethical and… unacceptable.” The worst part: she said, “[I] can no longer accept your article submissions.”

I wasn’t originally given the chance to do a rewrite or explain my side of the story.

I was completely side-swiped.

After all, I’d done an interview with a popular wedding planner on Facebook. I had even sent my editor the transcript, and according to a free online plagiarism checker, my article had 0% non-unique content. (By the way, a 2014 study from Texas Tech found that plagiarism checkers often produce false positives, especially when jargon or “topic phrases” are used. Those checkers can also provide incorrect source links, and score papers inconsistently.)

It turns out I did plagiarize by accident. I’d copied quotes from something I’d read online and inserted them into my piece without proper attribution, so why did my client write this glowing testimonial less than a month later?

Cherese exudes personality in her writing, she consistently expresses innovative tips in a way that our readers love. Cherese has the ability to interview industry experts and summarize their knowledge using language that is easy to understand. Cherese shows incredible professionalism, is always open to feedback and works hard to ensure her posts meet our needs.”

I turned my rocky working relationship around, and you can too.

First of all, take a deep breath. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Are you calm? If not, hide your laptop, phone, or tablet. Yes, I’m serious! Go for a walk, scream into a pillow, eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s (and cry into it), or get down on your knees and say a prayer.

Then pull up your britches and… 

He’s cheating on you.

You’re doing everything you used to do for him — all those things he said he loved — but he’s pulling away. Oh, sure, he says you’re still the tops and that he never wants to end his relationship with you, but it’s just not the same as it used to be.

But you know he needs what you’d been giving him. Really needs it. So, if he’s not getting it from you, he must be getting it somewhere else…

Sounds like you’re dealing with reverse scope creep!

Reverse scope creep is killing your relationship

“Reverse scope creep” was a term we came up with in the (free!) Be A Freelance Blogger forum to describe a client condition that’s the opposite of the dreaded “scope creep.” Let me show you what I mean:

Scope creep = When a project slowly gets out of control by becoming much, much larger than what you initially agreed to in your contract. Basically when a client continues to ask you to do “just one more thing” and you do, because you’re too nice for your own good.

Reverse scope creep = When your contract promised you a ton of work but now you’re barely doing anything. For instance, you were told you’d be writing (and getting paid for) 3-4 blog posts per month… but now you’re lucky if you get assigned/paid for one blog post every two months. But your client still “really loves” your work and wants you to continue working with them.

It’s an odd situation to find yourself in as a freelance blogger. There’s a chance you haven’t even come across this problem in your career yet. However, there are four main reasons why reverse scope creep crops up… 

Note from Sophie: Guess what? I’m getting married in less than a week! To celebrate, I’ve got something special for you — for more info, read to the end of this post by Alicia Rades.

People make it sound like being married to your career is a bad thing, but I beg to differ.

In our 3 years of marriage and 6 years as a couple, my husband and I have learned a thing or two about maintaining a healthy relationship. I’ve been at my freelance writing career nearly as long, and I’ve found that if you want to enjoy your career, you have to treat it much like you treat your spouse.

If you do that, your relationship with your job can be a positive one.

So maybe you aren’t ready to slip a ring on that finger just yet and say “I do” to the one you love, but if you’ve already committed to a life-long career of freelance blogging, here are a couple of ways to keep that relationship going strong.