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