The Ergonomic Challenges of Armrests for Short People
Office chair and desk ergonomics is a well-established subject with a wealth of information freely available on the Internet. Chair height, lumbar support, and monitor height are all familiar topics for most people who spend the majority of their workday at a desk. But I want to move the spotlight over to a particular topic in chair ergonomics that isn’t discussed as much, but has huge ramifications for short people like me (under 5’4” for female-assigned bodies or 5’6” for male-assigned bodies): armrest height.
Covid-19 Changes for Editors
Almost all of us have experienced some changes in the work we do and the way we do it thanks to Covid-19. We wanted to know how those changes are impacting our members, so the Guild’s blog team recently reached out to the membership via email for stories of how the pandemic was affecting their work. We received an interesting spread of responses!
Tips for Offering Editing Samples
When I first began as a freelance editor, I was encouraged to offer my potential clients a complimentary editing sample. Something small—a few pages from their manuscript to demonstrate the edits I could offer.
It made sense, but the idea still made me cringe. Editing for free? I’d just graduated from the nine-month-long Certificate in Editing program at the University of Washington. I was ready to work as an editor. Frankly, I was ready to make money (oh, how naïve I was!).
I quickly learned, though, that one does not preclude the other.
Brass Tacks Season
Before becoming a full-time editor, I went out and picked up Sara Horowitz’s The Freelancer’s Bible. I had taken many contracts but had never strung them together as my sole source of income. Horowitz’s insightful book introduced me to the regular beats of an editor’s day: early-morning emails, the job hunt, marketing, marketing, and marketing, followed by the nitty-gritty of editing. But importantly for this post, the Freelancer’s Bible taught me how to calculate my rates.
Marketing for Editors: Takeaways from a Guild Discussion
Effective marketing includes deciding where you want to focus your efforts (perhaps independent authors), as well as how (such as presenting at conferences). All the panelists felt a professional website is important. It should describe your editorial experience, the kinds of editing you specialize in, and how you work with clients—anything and everything to show that you are the person someone wants to work with.
Networking, which can strike fear in the hearts of introverted editors, entails meeting and connecting with others and communicating who you are and how you can fulfill their needs, whether it’s being published, attracting more clients, increasing sales, or improving writing skills.
Learning From Mistakes
Has this ever happened to you? You accept a new manuscript project for copyediting. You think you’ve correctly assessed the level of editing needed and bid accordingly. Indeed, the writer claims to have already paid for an editor, though she is a bit vague as to what she paid for.
You get to work, thinking you know how many days and hours it will take to finish the project. But wait—something is very wrong. That’s an odd expression for a novel set in medieval times. Ah well, must be a fluke. She did have another editor work on this manuscript, after all . . .