May 20 2013

Sticky: May/June availability

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It’s quite late in May and the weather still can’t decide what season it is: snow early in the month, a few hot days, then a few days of chill rains, and now it’s back to hot sunny days before cooling off again.

As we do every year, my family and I will be attending the Wheatland Music Organization’s Traditional Arts Weekend this coming Memorial Day weekend. I’m booked up with projects for the rest of May otherwise.

June, however, is still fairly open and I’d like to add a few more projects to my schedule. Contact me at editing@lastsyllable.net if you’d like to work with me on an upcoming project.

May 3 2013

Housekeeping notes

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I’ve changed the URL to the Editorial Services page, so links on old blog posts might be broken. Static pages have been updated with the new URL, and the page is still available in the header, so hopefully this won’t cause too much disruption to anyone looking for the link.

I also installed a plugin to counter the recent botnet attack targeting WordPress sites (if you run a WordPress site and use “admin” as your username, change it now and change your password) and I deleted a bunch of old files on the back end. This shouldn’t affect the visible parts of the site.

Apr 22 2013

Sticky: April/May availability

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The move is complete! I’m typing this from my shiny new office, complete with proper desk, a door I can close, and my reference books at hand (instead of in a box). As I was saying on Twitter this morning, I can still hear the TV (faintly) and family chatter, but I wanted separation, not total isolation. I’m still close enough to have meals with everyone, help change a diaper, or participate in a game of tag (my daughter’s version is to run over and tag me, then run to her dad and tag him, then run back to me). I’ll still be unpacking boxes and setting up furniture for awhile yet, but I don’t expect any more huge interruptions related to the move.

The rest of April is looking fairly full, but I’m now scheduling projects for May and into June. Contact me at editing@lastsyllable.net.

Apr 8 2013

Getting woo-woo for a moment

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As I said in the sticky post, I moved my feeds to The Old Reader and have been weeding through blogs I didn’t read or that hadn’t updated in six months or more, and catching up with blogs that I loved but hadn’t had time to really sit with and read deeply.

I’d like to recommend some blogs of the latter type. They aren’t really about editing (see the sidebar for editing/writing blogs I like), but they share a focus on being your own self rather than projecting an image that you think is more likable or better at everything. Maintaining that image takes a lot of unnecessary work, and while the image can be a protective shell or a useful mask, it can also be uncomfortable and limiting. In the years before I took this leap, I was increasingly frustrated by the need to divide myself into a “work” persona and a “real” persona. I didn’t feel that I could be as feminist, as spiritual, as silly, as simply human, or as wholly myself while at work. So part of my work in building Last Syllable Communications is to set that image aside, take the risk of being my authentic self, and trust that clients who want to work with me – not just a warm body with X, Y, Z skills and Q years of experience, but me in particular – will connect with me and we can begin a working relationship, whether for the length of one project or over the course of years.

These are some of the blogs I read that encourage authenticity, risk, being your own self, and nurturing that sense of self.

  • Captain Awkward, an advice column for the nerdy and awkward among us (self included)
  • The Freelancery, which I recommend over and over here for freelancing advice and encouragement
  • Momastery, a blog full of light and love and brutiful life
  • Nurshable, about gentle parenting (you may find this blog less useful if you’re not a parent or have a very different parenting style)
  • Beauty Tips for Ministers, advice on dressing fashionably and appropriately at the same time; geared toward clergymembers, but enormously useful to me as I transitioned into my thirties and realized I needed to learn to dress myself again
Apr 8 2013

Sticky: Availability and April updates

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It’s rainy and gray here, the first of several rainy days forecast, and I’m doing some catching up. Enjoy some updates.

First, we have still not moved house. The delays are really wearing on my optimism, but at least things are getting done. We’re looking at another tentative moving date of “next weekend, probably, or maybe the week after.” So I won’t be scheduling many projects in April, but I am expecting to crank things up in May. Contact e-mail for project scheduling is, as always, editing@lastsyllable.net.

ETA: Yes, we are moving at long last! I’ll be mostly offline from Friday 4/19 through Sunday 4/21 for the move. I’m trying to create a schedule with minimal downtime (since putting projects on hold didn’t work out for me) and expect to be back in action on Monday, April 22.

And now the news:

A novel I edited has just been published! Check out Happy(ish) by Cara Trautman, available on Kindle. It’s a fun read, if I do say so myself, and I enjoyed working on it.

As a follow-up to my last post: I opted to start the trial period of Office 365 Small Business Premium and it might be okay. It’s prompting me to use an on.microsoft.com e-mail address until I go through a complicated process to verify that I own my domain, but I don’t use Outlook and am not sure what else they’d need that information for (I won’t be managing my site through Office). So that’s tabled until I have the spare brain cycles to figure it out. And I haven’t signed up for those classes yet; the accounting class may not end up being as useful as I thought, since what I need is tax advice for freelance editorial professionals (instead of general accounting), and I missed the EFA’s webinar on exactly that subject.

Since the announced demise of Google Reader, I’ve been able to move my feeds to The Old Reader (I’ve also seen recommendations for Feedly and Newsblur, though I haven’t tried to use those services). My initial grump about The Old Reader is that I haven’t found a way to automatically alphabetize feeds. However, when I clicked on something and then clicked the Back button, The Old Reader didn’t lose my place in the feed I was reading, for which I cheer enthusiastically. If I did that in Google Reader, it would take me back to the feed and disappear the post I was in the middle of, making no distinction between “marked as read” and “I’m finished with this, it can go away now.” So if that’s my trade-off, I’ll manually alphabetize my feeds.

And that’s the news of the moment. More as it develops.

Mar 29 2013

Coming up for air

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I sent an edited book back to its author yesterday and an upcoming project was canceled, so I find myself with some free time this weekend. Relief!

So far, I’ve found that spare time in freelancing is different from wrapping up an office job at 5 p.m. on a Friday. There’s always something more to do, some chore that I’ve been putting off (updating my LinkedIn profile, finishing that business plan, checking out a resource I’d bookmarked awhile ago…). I kind of miss the sense of freedom that comes with leaving work at work and heading off into my weekend. Then again, I love the other sense of freedom I have on a Monday morning: sipping my coffee slowly, making pancakes for breakfast, and easing into my workday as I feel ready.

In other news, I’ve made one investment today and am considering another two. First, I bought a domain name, after reading Why everyone should register a domain name and being surprised that rachelleecherry.com was available. (I’ve owned lastsyllable.net since 2005 and just pointed the new domain here.) Second, I’ve been considering a couple of noncredit college classes to fill in some gaps in my skills: Accounting Fundamentals and Grant Writing A to Z, both offered online through my local community college. There are start dates in April and that looks like a good time to take those classes.

And third, after struggling with Excel after a computer upgrade — my old laptop had Excel Starter but my new desktop doesn’t; I’ve been unimpressed with Open Office/LibreOffice, and Google’s spreadsheets aren’t reliable enough – I’m now weighing the usefulness of a Microsoft Office upgrade and whether to go with the subscription model Microsoft is pushing. The Google Reader shutdown has shaken my confidence in the cloud model. I don’t want to wake up one morning, try to open Word or Excel, and find that I’m out of luck.

Finally, a moving/renovation update: The wood floors have been sanded and finished! We’ll wait a few days for any fumes to dissipate and finally start moving in. Plumbing is all set up, I believe, minus the washer and dryer (which we’re still using at the old house). My office hasn’t been painted yet, but that won’t hold up the move. I can’t wait to get this done!

Mar 15 2013

Sticky: Moving! Probably!

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Well, it was a good thing I hadn’t booked much in early March, because I had one project extend a little longer than anticipated. We hauled a few loads of things to the new house, but there’s a lot at the old house that still needs to be packed. Over the past couple weeks, we’ve had a lot of interest in the old house and six or seven showings (including a second showing to one buyer), but it still hasn’t resulted in an offer. It has, however, resulted in much grumbling chez nous.

I had planned for us to move on Monday, but delays at the new house — this time, water damage in the kitchen, meaning the countertops had to be replaced — have meant that plumbing is still not working. The new countertop and sink might be installed by now, but I don’t think the main floor bathroom is at all usable yet. (The basement bathroom was gutted and will be finished after we move in.) TV and internet service have not yet been connected.

So Monday isn’t looking good for a moving day, but hopefully we can get in sometime next week. I don’t want to commit to additional projects in March and even early April, just because nothing is nailed down (heh) and I’ve had to write enough apologetic emails about deadlines as I’ve attempted to manage working from a house that’s actively for sale.

It would, however, be a good time to schedule projects that will begin in April and May. Contact me at editing@lastsyllable.net.