Photo by 13hobby

This is a guest-post from Sharon Hurley Hall, writing from the Caribbean. Read part 1 of this two-part series if you missed it.

Communications And Connectivity

Paradise: It’s great to know that even in the tropics, you don’t have to lose touch with the rest of the world. The Caribbean is wired, mostly thanks to Cable and Wireless. That means you have internet cafes, dialup, ADSL, WiFi and satellite TV. In fact, you’ve got everything the modern freelancer needs. Working in the tropics doesn’t always mean cutting yourself off from the rest of the world — or does it?

Problem: Yes, you’ve got the telecoms, but they’re not always as reliable as in the rest of the world. In big countries you have the choice of dozens of ISPs. Here, I’ve got just two, and one of them buys services from the other. That means there’s no competition and no incentive to have good service. I don’t know why, but with the first company I tried, I had to restart my router several times a day, wasting minutes each time. With the new company, it’s generally about once a day that it goes down.

I’ve got ADSL but it’s nowhere near as fast as my old bottom-of-the-range cable connection in the UK. Frankly, there are times when the internet sucks! That’s not good news if you’re trying to meet a deadline.

Solution: There are three ways to solve this, none of which is very satisfactory, but at least they mean you can answer email and keep in touch with clients. The first is to locate your nearest internet cafe. I’ve got one five minutes away and one 15 minutes away. It’s extremely unusual for the internet to be down across the whole island. It’s only happened once in the last two years, when a monkey got into the main generator. (I wish I were joking!)

Get a backup internet connection. I have a dialup connection with the other major internet provider. Even if ADSL goes belly-up, I can still dial in to get essential email and research done. It may be slow, but it keeps me on deadline.

Get a friend. That same friend who helps you out when there’s bad weather might come in handy now.

Problem No 2: In some ways you are cut off. If you want to go to writing and blogging conferences, you need to shell out hefty sums for airfare and accommodation. The closer you are to paradise, the more it’s likely to cost you to leave it. Keeping up with what’s happening can be a challenge.

Solution No 2: We’ve never been more connected than we are now. It might take a while, but I can download podcasts onto my Ipod and follow conferences and the latest happenings through blogs. Netvibes is my friend. I have tabs to track the latest news, job sites, writing blogs, blogging blogs and more. I’ve even got a few friends in the same business whom I can talk to about issues so I don’t feel cut off.

Photo by jenschapter3

Timing

Paradise: Living on a Caribbean island means freedom from the rat race. Although there’s plenty of work going on, the pace of life is much slower here, perhaps because of the heat. There’s no rush; there’s no problem. So how does that sit with a first world work ethic?

Problem: It’s frustrating. If you need to have your laptop repaired so that you can get on with meeting your deadlines, then you could wait a long time for the answer to a phone call, let alone the actual repair. And there’s more. Although in theory you can work from anywhere, the reality for me is that most of the people I work for are in the UK and US. Some of the writers I work with are in Australia. That presents some challenges when it comes to meeting deadlines.

Solution: I use three things to keep on top of deadlines. When I get the deadline from a client, I put it one day earlier in my desk diary. (Yes, I still use one.) That means that I can always be sure of delivering on time. I take the time zone into account when working with other writers, and make sure that I specify which time zone I am in and when I need work delivered. And I use FoxClocks, a Firefox extension that gives me instant access to the time in the locations I deal with most.

Working in paradise is not all good news. I live for the day when a blogging conference takes place in the Caribbean so that it’s easy to attend. I look forward to ADSL that’s really always on. I will give thanks when I no longer have to watch the South American television feed in this English speaking country. But in spite of the drawbacks, I’ve managed to run a successful freelancing business, and I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

That can’t be bad, can it?

Sharon Hurley Hall is a born again blogger who has been writing for more than 20 years. Visit her freelance mentoring blog, Get Paid To Write Online, for more advice on freelance writing.