My freelance pal Steph Auteri wrote a great tell-it-like-it-is post a few weeks back about five common freelance writer pitfalls, among them query fear, inability to negotiate, issues with scope creep, and burnout. I'd like to use that post as a jumping off point for today's open thread, so click on over and read the full post. I'll wait. Now that that's out of the way, let's discuss. Do you agree or disagree with these pitfalls? Are there other challenges you face as a freelance professional? I found it interesting that Steph lumped scope creep and time management together. When she crowdsourced ideas on Twitter, I chimed in with scope creep, because much as I try to spell out the project scope before we get started, I often field requests for extras like brainstorming taglines or completing an extra round of revisions because they changed their target keywords. Time management isn't such an issue for me (especially not since I read 168 Hours), but managing scope creep can be a major challenge. What about you?