It's the Eye of the Tiger, It's the Thrill of the Fight

I'm in fightin' mode. My gloves are off, and I'm not pulling any punches. As it turns out, the editing and proofreading category that I've introduced myself into is one of the more fiercely competitive areas in the wide world of freelancing.

Who knew?

When I began my little foray into the freelance job market last April, I did my research and chose two websites on which to set up shop. I created my profile, filled out the required forms, put together a portfolio, took some skill tests, and then began applying for jobs. I'm not one to make more work for myself than necessary, so my profile and portfolio are the same on each site. Thank goodness for copy-and-paste.

On Site #1, I got the first job I applied for! It was awesome! I did the work, got paid, and began to build my collection of work hours, positive feedback, and high reviews. In fact, my work on Site #1 has remained fairly consistent, with the exception of my afore-mentioned Era of the Sleep-Deprived Zombie, during which I wasn't looking for new work at all.

Site #2, however, has been an altogether different kettle of fish, and after six months of applying for jobs, I have yet to be hired. All I have to show for it is a string of closed jobs that have been "awarded to another". Sometimes they give you a reason, sometimes they don't. Once, I was informed: "Contractor's bid was too low." (What???  You didn't hire me because you wanted me to charge you more money???) Another time it was, "Contractor did not provide enough information." In that case, I got brave and re-applied (they let you revise your proposal, if you so desire), asking the client to let me know what additional information he was looking for, since I knew I had addressed every requirement in the job posting. Within an hour, I was declined again for the exact same reason. All righty, then. I'm confused, but I take the hint and move on.

Now, I'm stumped. There are a few minor differences between the two Sites, but the biggest one that I've noticed is that Site #1 lumps its editing/proofreading jobs in with other writing categories, so they might be a little harder to find. The most sought-after jobs, like fiction editing, may accumulate as many as 40 applicants after they've been posted for several days. Site #2, however, has a specific category for editing and proofreading, so every job gets anywhere from 20 to 50 applicants within the first 12 hours of being posted.  How do you stand out in a crowd like that? I've studied advice from the veterans and examined other profiles, and still don't see any glaring differences between mine and theirs, but these are the main points that I've been able to come up with:

1. Describe, describe, describe!  As an English teacher, I would call this "elaboration". Describe your experience, your education, your work ethic, and especially any mad skillz you happen to possess! (Please, don't spell skills with a "z" in your profile...) Be specific, but not wordy. Be professional and personable.
2. Pictures in your portfolio are cool. Document thumbnails are not all that exciting, but when I finally realized that some of the books I had edited were actually being sold on Amazon, with covers and everything, I was actually able to upload the pictures of the book covers along with the link to the book (I love Amazon's Click to Look Inside feature!), and now I can say I have a much prettier portfolio.
3. Chose only the most brilliant, shining examples of your work for your portfolio. If it's not great, it's not worth using it just to pad your pile of work. Also, PDF files are the way to go for providing work samples in your portfolio. Apparently, not everyone can open a .docx file (again, who knew?), but PDF is pretty universal. 
4. The early bird gets the worm! Or, at least, gets more consideration. This is pure assumption on my part, but it stands to reason that the faster you move on something, the more favorable it looks to the person whose job it is to pick you. Just sayin'. That, and the idea that the earlier you apply, the smaller the crowd of applicants and the better chance you'll have of being noticed.

So.... these are the things that I have re-evaluated about myself and my game plan. And suddenly, since I began planning and writing this blog post, I'VE GOTTEN A JOB ON SITE #2!! Awesome. Still a long way to go to before calling it a career, but it's a start. Of course, it didn't hurt at all that there were only 4 applicants for this one. See? Sometimes, all it takes is sending in the right proposal at the right time. Or, as I like to call it, pure Divine Intervention...

Survivor - The Eye of the Tiger

I love the story behind this song - Sly Stallone himself called up the band and asked them to write a song for his movie (Rocky III) because he couldn't use Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust". They asked if they could watch the movie to get some inspiration, and though he was hesitant at first, he finally allowed them a sneak peek. They caught the phrase "the eye of the tiger" in the dialogue, and the whole song was finished in an hour and a half.

# of proofreads: 22

# of edits: 39

All You Zombies, Hide Your Faces...

O Summer, Summer, wherefore art thou, O Summer?  Methinks thou hast stolen away like a thief in the night....  and there I go mixing up my references.  The point is that I seem to have taken an inadvertently extended leave of absence in my blog-writing endeavor. Truth be told, the entire summer has passed by in a sleep-deprived haze of rotating house guests (which was awesome!), sporadic writing work (sometimes not-so-awesome - more on that to come), and the struggle to establish a routine for a baby who, at the tender age of five months, decided that he no longer needed to sleep through the night (totally NOT awesome) - hence, this blog's title.  And it wasn't until after I had chosen the title (because that's exactly how I've been feeling, minus the craving for brains) that this conversation actually took place:

Oldest Son: "Mom, are you ok?"
Me: "Yes, I'm all right.  Why do you ask?"
Oldest Son: "Because every time I come home from school, you look like a zombie."
Me: "Thanks for noticing, Dear."


Anyway, for those of you who have been anxious and just dying to find out: Yes, I did get my pool!



And it was truly worth it.  My backyard feels complete, I feel like a true Floridian, and all feels right with the world. 

But I digress.  The other thing that happened over the course of the summer was that I learned a lot about what I want to do, what I don't want to do, and how very much I don't know about the whole business.  Over the past few months, I've done various jobs for some repeat clients.  Most of them were editing / proofreading jobs, but one job involved writing web content for sites selling a product or service. And while I'm generally good with writing assignments, this one had me doing some fairly deep soul-searching and identifying the valuable lessons that I've learned in my professional journey thus far.  And they are as follows:

#1: I really, really don't want to write web content.  I don't like it. (In my head, this is in Tigger's voice, i.e. "Yuck! Tiggers don't like honey!") Some people may be able to just spit out truly compelling wordage in order to sell products and services; I'm not one of them.  My proofreading OCD makes it nearly impossible, and it should not take a person three or more hours to write 1,000 words when given detailed information and paragraph-by-paragraph instructions. Moral: I should never again apply for one of these jobs, nor should I ever accept an invitation to apply. It's not my thing.

#2: This is what I DO want to do: Proofreading. Editing. Writing on MY terms. Yahoo graciously accepted one of my stories for publication - A Timeless Rose  (well, I volunteered to do a "flash fiction" piece, forgot about the deadline, and then wrote it in three hours, hoping they would still accept it after midnight... they did), and judging from the number of page views, people must think it's a decent story.  As for the proofreading and editing, well, that's just what I do, no matter what I'm reading or if I'm getting paid. I love it, and I'm good at it.  'Nuff said.

#3: Applying for jobs is exactly like starting a new English class in college where, in order to get a good grade (or in this case, a job), you have to know how to modify your writing style to make the professor (or in this case, the client) approve of your talent enough to give you said good grade (or in this case, said job). Only now, I don't get a whole semester to figure it out. Most of the time, it's a crap shoot. You just write your cover letter / proposal, and pray that whoever reads it knows how to recognize competence when they see it.

#4: People can be shady. They can be sneaky, manipulative, stubborn, and quite short on common sense. I'm disheartened by how many clients will contact me for free work - they'll ask me to edit a sample or test, and then I never hear from them again. That was such a hard lesson to learn, because you want to be able to offer up proof of your skill, but when your portfolio is a little light, you feel like you have to say, "Sure!  I'll show you what I can do!" (I get a mental image here of a small dog, waiting for the command to do the cool trick so she can get the treat that's coming.) But slow down there, Rookie! The talk around the water cooler is that, apparently, certain clients will ask several contractors for a "trial edit" and distribute different sections of the same article or book.  Do this enough times, and voila! The whole thing has been edited for free!! Well dagnabbit, I refuse to be a party to this scam. From now on, my portfolio, sparse as it is, will have to speak for itself.

I'm sure I will continue to add to this list of lessons as the months go on.  In the meantime, I will curl up with my brand new copy of the Chicago Manual of Style and my Publishing Ebooks For Dummies and  learn how to hone my craft. 

In the meantime, enjoy this flashback, which is - surprisingly - about Bible stories.  Thank you to The Hooters for a beautifully paradoxical song...

All You Zombies, The Hooters

# of proofreads: 29

# of edits: 39

Say, Say, Say What You Want...

I've always been immensely impressed with writers who seemingly have the talent to ramble on intelligently about anything - especially newspaper columnists who have to do it on a regular basis.  I don't know about you, but when I'm forced to think of something on the spot, my brain tends to completely shut down, and the only thing I can focus on is the fact that I can't focus on anything.  So, once you've come up with a good reason to write, and you have the time to sit down and do it, what do you write about?

Well, speaking as a professional (I can say that now!!  I've been paid!!!), it helps a lot when you have clear, concise instructions from your client.  So far, I've written about automotive products and how to get rid of a certain household pest.  Not quite as glamorous as I thought it was going to be, but it's a start, and I can call it "experience".

But what if you don't have someone to give you instructions, and you're writing just because?  When it comes to writing in general, they tell you to write what you know.  Unfortunately, the things I know best at the moment are limited to: the inside of my house, having a teenager and two kiddos under 3, the fine art of one-handed multi-tasking, and how to clean up previously inconceiveable messes.  If I was being logical about it, it would really make more sense to write about what I don't know - there are, for sure, MANY more viable options in that category!  This, however, presents one of the more profound instances of irony I've ever encountered.  How do you create a flowing prose regarding things beyond your ken?  So, my optomistic side chooses to see this as an opportunity to find out about stuff.  I actually have a working list of the stuff I'd like to learn about:

• pool functions and maintenance (see previous post), 
• Scotland (thank you, Diana Gabaldon!), 
• antiques (I believe that anything over a hundred years old is fascinating just by virtue of its age and has at least one interesting story to tell), 
• herbology / ethnobotony  (again, thank you, Diana Gabaldon!), 
• the ins and outs of regular and ebook publishing (books are cool; knowing how they come about can only be a plus), 
• and I've also always been extremely fascinated by the Elusive Duck-Billed Platypus.  (I'm mostly kidding about that last one, but that is always my husband's go-to answer for trivia questions, regardless of the topic, so I thought it sounded good.)

Hopefully, one of these topics, or maybe a combination of them, could turn into the next New York Times #1 best-seller.

I'm thinking that maybe a platypus who lives in Scotland could be a pool-boy by day and a botanist by night and he stumbles across an antique with a shadowy past....

I've previously mentioned my hopeful assumption that a Great American Novel was somewhere inside me just biding its time.  I was thinking that the inspiration would hit me, and it would be a perfect, unique idea -  sheer brilliance - and I would just sit down and write until the story was told.  The idea for Twilight came to Stephanie  Meyer in a dream.  Why can't I ever dream cool stuff like that?

It doesn't quite happen that way.  A couple of years ago, I got tired of waiting for inspiration to hit me over the head and decided to just go looking for it.  So I sat down to write, having absolutely no clue what I was going to write about.  And I discovered that, well, writing is kind of hard work!  But I also discovered that the key to unlocking the fantasy world I had wanted to create was to be proactive and just do it!  The ideas that I had been waiting for so long to just come to me were actually there all along - but I had to purposefully go looking for them!  Amazing how that works, huh?  Little did I know the can of worms I was opening with that, though - I've now got more characters, plot twists, and flashbacks than I can shake a pen at.

So now I've got an Official Work in Progress.  There's no telling when it's going to be done or even how often I'll get to work on it.  So far, the process has been pretty cool - some things, I have to work for and struggle over, but sometimes the characters just take over and write for themselves.  And I've even had some other random ideas spawned from all this extra brain activity.  Whether or not it will all be remotely interesting and / or captivating to the General Public remains to be seen.  I sure hope it is.

And so, to tie it all in (because that's something that good writers do!),  knowing what you want to say and being able to translate that into what amounts to good reading is, essentially, the key to any writer's success, whether it be a novel, a text book, a newspaper article, or a sales ad.  And whatever it is that you want to "say, say, say", just sit down and do it already!  It sure as heck isn't going to write itself!

*Thank you Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson for one of the best duets ever!
Say, Say, Say

# of Proofreads: 25
# of Edits: 36

When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going

So, before I get into the actual subject matter here, I have to relate the Bizarre Thing that happened on the way to this post!  I was sitting on the couch, pondering good lyrics for post titles, and the song "When the Going Gets Tough" popped into my head out of the clear blue sky.  I thought to myself, Hmmm..... Relevant, but maybe a little too cliche'?  I mentally filed it away as a possibility and continued meandering through the monster-sized box in my brain labeled "80's Songs".  Not two minutes later, I picked up the TV remote to scroll through the cable guide for something interesting.  Coming to the Palladia channel, I saw "80's Rewind Concert 2011".  I thought, Cool!  Maybe this will give me some ideas,  and I pressed the select button.  Lo and behold, there was Billy Ocean, in all his dreadlocked glory, singing..... "When the Going Gets Tough".  I'm sure, Dear Reader, you are just as flabbergasted as I was.  Talk about your freaky coincidences.....  I don't know about you, but I'm taking it as a sign.  Hence, today's title.

And now for the relevant part.  Obviously, I am the "Tough" who is getting going in this metaphor. "But what 'going' is getting tough?" you may ask.  (Thank you for asking!)  And I will answer that I have recently become a Floridian.  Wait - this in itself is not the tough part.  The tough part is that summer is quickly approaching, temperatures are rising, and, at present, there is no pool in my backyard. 

Shocking and scandalous, I know.  But who knew that the burning desire for a backyard oasis would be the motivating factor to kick start a career?  This brings me to the deeper issue and the point of this particular blog post, which is: why do writers write?  My short answer at the moment is, of course, that I need to pay for a pool.  But the fact is that I've been writing for much, much longer than I've considered trying to make money from it.  I used to write random editorials and poetry in high school because I needed to ramble and it looked like I was doing work and I could get away with not paying attention.  (Don't judge - I was always an honors student!)  I've also written more essays and term papers and reports than I care to remember.  One of the joys of being an English major was always trying to figure out how to write for each professor in order to get an A.  And it was different for every one of them.  One time, an obnoxious, power-hungry T.A. took points off my essay for using the British spelling of "behaviour" -  I had to remember not to do that again!  But I digress.

The written word has always fascinated me.  Books are passports to any time and place you want to go.  The twists and turns of plots can be as heart-clenching as a roller coaster ride.  A rare few amazing books have kept me reading into the wee hours of the morning, and then I've had to spend the rest of the pre-dawn hours readjusting my mind back to reality because I'd been drawn so far into the story.  That's some good writin'!!  And I've always wondered - and hoped - that maybe I had a story like that somewhere inside me.

In the meantime, I'll do what I can to earn a pool payment.  I can honestly say that this editing / proofreading / writing thing is my dream job at the moment.  I love it enough that it doesn't matter that I'll never get rich doing it.  But I can lounge in my pool and pretend that I am.


# OF PROOFREADS: 18
# OF EDITS: 22

Time Won't Give Me Time

I had originally intended to write a little bit every day - just to get myself into the habit of sitting down to write, stimulating the flow of entertaining ideas and cascading words onto the screen.  Enter reality.  As I ponder the angle of writing about writing (I do love some good irony), I realize my biggest issue at the moment is - drum roll, please - TIME!! 

Now, to be clear, I have to distinguish between the writing I do as a contractor and the writing I do because the words just have to be written down or lost forever.  Obviously, money and deadlines are immensely important, as well as building my professional reputation, and therefore, take priority.  However, it blows my mind that at least 4 of my all-time favorite authors, who have written multiple and immensely successful novels, started writing when they had Young Children!!  Yes, Stephenie Meyer, J.K. Rowling, Diana Gabaldon, and Nora Roberts ALL had young children when they first put pen (or pencil) to paper and produced a first novel.  Amazing.  To be honest, sometimes, I'm fortunate to get a shower during the day, much less sit down at the computer and type when a brilliant idea pops into my head.  I have a feeling that the talk-to-text feature on my iPhone is going to become my bff....

In any case, I'm reminded of some words of wisdom that I once heard someone say, somewhere, at some point regarding relationships: If you're important to someone, they'll find time for you.  This, I think, is applicable to anything in our lives.  We spend our time doing things that are important to us, whether it's working time, family time, chill time.... or writing time.  If it's important to me, I'll do it. 

On a side note, I'd just like to express my contention, no - Firm Belief - that a relevant title for ANYTHING can be found in 80's song lyrics.  This one is courtesy of Culture Club and their song "Time".  Thank you, Boy George.  =)  That is my promise to myself and to you, my dear reader - that all of my blog posts will be titled thusly.  (I may have made up that last word - Spellcheck says so - but I'm leaving it alone because I feel it's appropriate.) 

Baby just woke up.  My immediate priorities just shifted....

# OF PROOFREADS: 15
# OF EDITS: 12

The Very Beginning: A Very Good Place to Start

     I've always thought of myself as a writer.  Unfortunately, besides the Great American Novel that is in progress inside my head (not unlike half of the American population), the only writing I've ever done has been for the sole purpose of receiving an excellent grade in order to boost my GPA, which is a situation that has not been relevant in my life for more years than I care to contemplate.  So, I've decided that if I'm going to try to pass myself off as a writer for more professional purposes, I should probably do some actual writing - even if it's only for practice.  

I've always had a love / hate relationship with the process of writing:  I love the process of putting words down on paper (or screen), and I love forming sentences and coming up with the cleverest of words and phrases so that whoever my reader is (mostly my teachers) enjoys the experience of reading it.  And this is also what I've always hated about it - the massive struggle to come up with the cleverest of words and phrases, which leads me to the reason behind my blog title and the biggest handicap to my writing- 

     My name is Jane, and I am a compulsive proofreader.  

So far, I have read back through what I have already written here no less than 6 times and have already edited several words and sentences.  Oops, just did it again.  A few more times.  


Strength or weakness?  I guess it depends on how pressed I am for time.  But I can guarantee that I'll sit here and stare at the post button for more than a little while before I click on it, re-reading this again for anything I can do to improve it.  At some point, I'll just have to tell myself to be done with this one and move on.  Now seems like a good time to do that - my 2-year-old has gotten a hold of some chapstick.  But not before I read it one more time.....