Making peace with uncertainty

23 Aug 2019

I've reached the conclusion that a sustainable freelance editorial career is less about 'being a good editor' than it is about mental resilience and the ability to cope with –…

The same but different

10 Mar 2019

Last year, I wrote a blog post about the High Line in Manhattan, in which I used my walk through the urban park as a structure on which to hang…

Freelancing and mental health

15 Mar 2018

Note: I agonised over whether I should share this post at all, especially on my work blog – but I decided it is better to talk about these things. I…

The long haul

2 Feb 2018

I reached my tenth anniversary of freelancing almost without noticing. It would be nice to say that the precise cast of the light at this time of the year alerted…

Stealth marketing

5 Sep 2017

Most editorial business owners need to do some sort of marketing to keep things going. Even those who claim mainly to rely on word of mouth to bring work in…

Managing time – your own and other people’s

10 Jul 2017

Working successfully as a freelance editor involves knowing (or learning) how to do several things very well. Obviously we need the technical chops to be able to do our job…

The answerless editor

28 Mar 2017

Editors love answers. They spend countless hours tussling over the right answer to things, with each other and on their own, even if in the end they conclude that the…

Crunching the numbers

13 Jan 201713 Jan 2017

I'll start this post with a confession. I've been freelancing almost exactly nine years, and I've sort of been making it up as I go along. It all began when I…

New year, new challenges … new clingfilm

1 Jan 20171 Jan 2017

On 30 December, on a slow news day (for me), I tweeted about clingfilm. The story behind the image goes that last summer we spent a week or so camping in…

Recapitating the chicken

19 Oct 201619 Oct 2016

Recently I've been running around like the proverbial headless chicken, worrying about work and various personal projects – finding too much to do in the time, feeling at the mercy…