Tag Archives: for hire

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.

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 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.

Feb 23 2013

Sticky: Finally moving in March!

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The rest of my February is booked solid, but I’ll be taking time off and minimizing my workload in the first couple weeks of March. Enough of the renovations will be finished by March 17 that we’ll finally be able to move in!

So I’ll be spending the first part of March packing the rest of our things at the old house. (We’ve moved an awful lot of times in the past 10-12 years and it’s a huge pain to work full-time, come home, and then spend all your free time packing. I have the luxury of not doing that this time, so I’m not going to.) Internet should be installed before moving day, so I should be able to get up and running right away (knock on wood!). I won’t be accepting work with tight turnarounds in mid-March, though, just in case.

As always, I’ll update here with the latest, and my contact email is editing@lastsyllable.net.

Jan 2 2013

Sticky: January and February 2013

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Happy New Year! I hope you’re all recovered from the revelry and merriment of the holiday. (It was pretty boring chez nous, honestly.  I was too busy working yesterday to make mimosas and a big breakfast like I’ve done in years past.)

As I said in my last post, I’m now a full-time freelancer and available for all projects: writing, copy editing, proofreading, closed captioning, audio proofing, and research and fact-checking. I’m booked through mid-January and scheduling projects for late January and February.

Contact me at editing@lastsyllable.net to book me for your project.

Dec 17 2012

Sticky: Availability into 2013

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As of today, I’ve transitioned to full-time freelance, which opens up my availability quite a bit!

December does tend to be busy because of the holidays, and I’ll be moving house in January (move date TBD, once plumbing problems at the new house are resolved). However, I’m confident that those things won’t eat into my overall schedule too much.

I’m also opening up to all projects now: writing, copy editing, proofreading, closed captioning, and audio proofing.

Contact me at editing@lastsyllable.net if you’re interested in having me work on your project.

Oct 15 2012

Still swamped, yay!

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Sticking my head up for a moment to reiterate that I’m in the very midst of the busy October I expected. Yay! This is a good thing! Many good things are happening all at once! I’ll let you know in a few months how well my experience matches up to the Freelancery’s paradox, that the time to get new clients and new work is “when you are busy as hell and don’t have the time.”

At the day job, I’ve juggled my schedule a bit to work with a later ending date. Over at the new house, I’m picking paint colors and giving my input on renovation decisions, which have indeed become a pleasant diversion. We decided to make a few more of our planned changes before we move in, so there’s a bit more dust and a bit more to do at the moment. (Why not, right?) Back at the old house, quite a lot of packing still needs to be done, and we’ll start moving boxes and bins and things once the floors are done at the new house. It’s all like having a brand-new baby and I sleep when I can.

I have a few posts drafted here, but they’re low on my priority list. I’ve got an ideas folder with things to write about or pitch or do differently, so once the move is complete, I’ll have lots to post about.