Regarding Bill Walsh's latest post on the copy editor's responsibility to check phone numbers, all I can think about now is an editor working on a piece about 1980s pop music and coming across "867-5309/Jenny" and getting an earful after dialing it.

Stewie: [picking up the phone] Hello, operator. Hello ... Oh, God, that's right, you have to punch in the numbers nowadays. Uhhh, I should know this. Oh yes, [dialing number] 867-5309, yes, that's it. Wait, that's not it. Damn you Tommy Tutone!

You work at home in peace for almost a year. The street you live on is a quiet side road. You back up to a park with a stream. Many nice families live here. Many people are away from home working each day. Sometimes a mother walks her baby to the park. You hear birds singing in the trees around the house. All respect the neighborhood.

Then some months ago, someone buys the on-the-market-forever house diagonally from you across the street. A teen boy (the word boy on purpose) comes with that someone, and suddenly that old garage that sits not far back enough from the street houses an evening garage band from time to time, and the street is filled with football-throwing, loud-whirring-motorbike-riding, rowdy teens all day and night who refuse to get out of the street when you drive by and give you the Outsider kid look out the corners of their eyes. New neighbors move in below with a number of kids of all ages, and these kids join other loud kids on the street from time to time. Your brain starts to fall out of your head as you desperately try to focus on neuropsychology articles while that damn motorbike does a bumblebee impression up and down the long street, over and over. You don't want to close the windows, damn them. It's sunny and breezy out and why should you have to? On regular nights some other male friend visits in his souped-up car and revs up the engine to sound his large muffler pipes and then races back and forth like we live on a drag strip. Then you find your sideview mirror bent into your car and a white streak on the rounded plastic of it, and you're happy that it's not broken but you know that someone must have smacked right into it, and you never had this happen before those congregating kids.

Maybe it's because I grew up on a very busy street and never heard kids playing right outside my windows, and believe me I try to be zen about it all and smile at the joy I sometimes hear in their screams, but when their raucousness (and no, I'm not being a middle-aged crab here; it's not their expressing their "kidness" that gets me, as this street has had young kids playing and laughing outside before) keeps me stuffy and behind in my work, I get a bit worked up. I just keep repeating to myself, "Remember, we're renting. Eventually we'll leave. Remember, we're renting. Eventually we'll leave."

So how is this possible? As soon as the new ymail address became available today, I was right on it. Immediately. The minute it came up. I wanted copyeditor@, or editor@, or editing@ or ANYTHING generic like that. But NOOOOO! They were ALL taken. Seriously. Everything I could think of was taken. It's just like f'ing concert tickets when you log on to get some right away, to no avail.



So they say, Oh, try to put something unique on it. No kidding, Sherlock. I could do that on the regular mail.



This sucks.

Every one in a while, fellow freelancers--whether it be on an e-mail list or a blog or a meeting with other freelancers--bring up rates, and I must admit, this topic always gets me edgy. I make what I make and accept what I accept based on my experience, time with the company, and so on. I take lower rates from certain companies because I know exactly what is expected of me, how much it takes to get the work done correctly, and how demanding that work is when compared to another type of work. All of my work, high and low paying, add up to my salary, and I'm happy with that.

It's clear that we ALL should be making the highest rates possible. But all projects are different, and some freelancer (who I probably don't know and can't assess) stating that he or she gets XX dollars from this type of publisher (or worse yet, a specific publisher) and feels that XX should be the industry standard doesn't accomplish much on its own. Maybe the pool has 20 people in it and 5 work much harder and better than you do and 5 do passable work and make less. The only person who knows that is at the publisher, and that person isn't saying. I've been that person (and tried to fairly distribute rates in a range I was allowed to work in). I know.

Yes, yes, if we all know and agree that XX dollars for academic work or XX dollars for fiction work is a competitive going rate, we can all push for those rates and make the world a better place, blah blah. EFA already has a list and that doesn't seem to get publishers all scared enough to offer those rates. And freelancers worry: What if I am accepting a lower rate and the publisher snickers about me because everyone else is getting more? (I recently was happy about a new rate to hear later that it's apparently the metro industry standard. Oh well.)

I guess if this discussion must come up on a regular basis, I would add that the rate needs to be discussed with all the details of the job: How long have you worked for them? What do they want you to do and how do you do it (coding/tagging, electronic, traditional paper, multiple passes, author interaction, PDF editing, formatting, etc.)? What type of schedule are you expected to keep? Are you very fast and computer literate? How long have you been an editor? What is your relevant experience? Where do you live and what kinds of financial situation are you in? On and on. These things all add to what someone will and should accept in a rate.

Here's what I think: Look at the project. Think about the effort it takes you. Look at your rate. Are you happy? When you write out your final invoice, does that total make you satisfied? When was the last time you asked for a raise? If you feel you need more, then make your case and ask, or ask again. If you are denied, do you want to keep doing it at that rate? If not, look for other, better paying work. If you really like the work and can afford to do it at that rate, keep doing it.

Maybe I'm too simple. ...

Oh my. I just was holding a banana in one hand and in the other dialing the cordless phone to talk to my parents. Then as the phone was ringing, I put it down and held the banana to my head. Then I looked at the phone on the table and wondered why it was making a ringing sound when it should be fruit.

I thought it was just folksy talk, but now I see it's true. My brain has officially gone away for a while. And when I really need it, too!

I've pretty much decided that I'm going to create a separate blog for my freelance editing thoughts and links and comments and so on. Of course, I won't have time to do this until next year, but the intent is there. I'll let the thought sit and see if later on I feel that I could maintain and enjoy two blogs in that way. At the very least I should have a search function on this one so that people can look for "editing" or "freelance" items, but I'm too lazy right now to look into that.

Hot enough? Geeze. We just got the AC units in the windows yesterday. I think that central air has just moved up on the list of hopes on the house-hunting list. (Next to a wood fireplace, of course.)

Been editing and proofing all day while R is DM to the final stages of his Tomb of Horrors campaign. The guys are almost done now. Been lots of whooping going on. I hear that one is a bear.

Picked six more tomatoes off the plant on the porch. The peppers are starting to fall from the blossoms, just tiny rounded nubs of green stretching out. 

I'm headed off to see if I can stop editing for the night. Have I done enough pages? I have planned a break in the near future, and I'm excited about that. Some real family time.

An interesting post from Lori Cates Hand:

Learn Way Too Much About Your Neighbors From Their Yard-Sale Books

One of the first places I look when I go to a new house/apt. is the bookshelf. So important what they like and read! Now I'll have to check the neighbors, although our town sale day just went by.

Wasting Time ...

I have been paying attention to HOW I do what I do during the day so that I can cut out all the terrible time wasters and be more efficient so that I don't sit there at night and wonder why I didn't finish half of what I wanted to do. Here is an example from this morning already:

* I am editing an article that needs to be formatted a certain way.

* I check the style guide and then go to my hard drive and open an edited file of one of those types of articles from the last issue I worked on. The formats don't match. I spend about 2 minutes wondering about whether the PE changed the style for this issue on the style sheet. Should I go with that style now? But it's the last issue in the volume, so maybe earlier articles in this volume now won't match up.

* I look around my desk for 2 minutes to try to find this journal folder I keep of all examples, style guides, etc. I realize I never got it out for this job, so I walk to the case and take out the folder, then flip through it and look at sample pages of this type of article that I printed out for myself. But wait, these samples are from 5 years ago now when I had the journal at my previous job. Damn.

* I go online to see a sample of this type of article from a more recent issue to compare the style. I can't access a free peek without my account. (Although I asked for free access to their online PDFs, the client never got back to me on that, so I had to set up a regular person account to try to see some free issues.) I look for my account access information in my stack of passwords I keep, but can't find it. I try logging into the Web site with numerous possibilities but am denied. I go through two different email address accounts and their folders looking for the email that tells me my access info, but can't find it. This eats away tons of time, which I finally realize.

* I get frustrated that I have wasted so much time and finally just decide to set this article up the way that the style sheet indicates because the articles are basically formatted that way now and so someone on the other end is probably moving toward a new format.

The lesson here is that I should not bother wasting my time trying to verify all this info. If the client does not provide me with direct access to current online material and they do provide me with a style sheet, then I should just go with what the sheet tells me to do and not worry about this. But of course, I can't NOT worry about it, because that is what I do: ensure consistency. It's a trap.

Then of course I blog about it ...