Last week was extremely busy, but very satisfying, in that I completed the first draft of a document I’ve been working on for over a month. I sometimes think substantive editing is a bit like housework, in that you often get to a point where things look a terrible mess before they come good (for example, in housework, the point where you’ve …
Working from anywhere
This week I learned that there’s a difference between being technically able to work from anywhere and being mentally able to do so. Camping with my teenage daughter, I found that, although I had the computer, electricity and an internet connection, I could not get myself into the focused mindframe that I need for editing or any other business-related activity. Even …
Hidden problems
I’ve had a remarkably busy working week, given that I spent 4 days of of it visiting friends on the NSW coast and in the Victorian bush. I worked on a couple of documents – a scientific paper and a short document for an international organisation. Both looked straightforward at first glance, but once I got stuck into them, I …
All coached up!
Well, seeing a business coach was DEFINITELY a good idea. In our first session, we managed to thrash out the answers to three of my four questions (the only one we didn’t tackle was where I see the business going in the short and long term). We also covered various practical things that I didn’t even realise I should be doing ( ‘unknown unknowns’ …
Making a plan …
I see that back at the beginning of December I was blogging about how I had set a date to make a business plan. Well, that didn’t happen, and I still have no plan, not even a 1-page one. So, I’ve bitten the bullet and got myself a business coach. We have our first appointment tomorrow, and I’m hoping that she …
Yet another tool, and an XO laptop
This week I bought yet another electronic editing program. This one is called PerfectIt, and it’s designed to find errors and inconsistencies in MS Word. So far I’ve only used it to check a scientific paper that I’d already edited. It picked up a few errors (inconsistent use of hyphens and capitals). Now I plan to trial it on an unedited document, …
More new tools!
This week a friend introduced me to Dropbox – a system for storing, syncing and sharing files online. I love it ! My usual system for making a quick back up is to email a file to myself, but Dropbox seems a much more professional solution. It’s also a good way to share files with clients. I’d previously looked at some of the free online …
Copyediting tools abound
I mentioned recently that I had found lots of editing tools through my membership of the Copyeditors and proofreaders section of LinkedIn. In the past week I have bought two of these tools – the Editors Toolkit Plus and Edit Tools – and now I’m trying to work out how to use them. I’ve started using Edit Tools for stylesheets – for example, …
Taking stock
Now that I’ve been running the business for four months, I feel that I’m really getting into the swing of it. I’ve got my admin organised (updating the blog is Tuesday’s task, so I’m already behind for this week …); I have six clients, spanning threee continents; and I’ve established my backup team, which spans two continents. One thing I haven’t done yet is …
Social networking is working for me!
I’m not much of social networker. I could never see the point of Facebook (probably because I’m way outside the demographic, so don’t have many friends using it), and I gave up ‘tweeting‘ after a couple of weeks (a common phenomenon apparently). A post on the BELS discussion list persuaded me to join LinkedIn, and for a while I thought it was yet another time-wasting activity. However, now …