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I'm not on holiday. I'd just had enough of the weather, and being your own boss has its perks. You can instruct yourself to down tools and go make a bad approximation of sangria for later.
Today I am sat in my room, listening to traffic and road rage.
The weather is muggy, and sticky, and disgusting so everybody is cranky.
And, there are all sorts of crossing points, bus stops, and traffic lights here.
Y'know, the ingredients for general confuddlement at the best of times and this is not the best of times.
Other than occasionally having to tolerate road rage, and other peoples taste in music played far too loudly via their car speakers, I quite like living at a crossroad. Feels rather fitting, being as in medieval times this is exactly the sort of place they'd have buried the likes of me with a stake through my heart (and possibly beheaded) so my spirit didn't go wandering and upset the living. More than living in an oppressive medieval feudalistic society was already doing.
Where are we at now? Oh yes, the point where I asked myself, how does one go about becoming a freelance proofreader and editor?
It's a good question and it required research. Fortunately, I happen to be a big fan of research, you should see the rabbit holes I end up diving down for fun.
I found out pretty quickly that whilst Google will tell you stuff, the writers' and editors' groups I was already a member of, gave me far more practical information.
They are full of writers and editors discussing writing, editing, and publishing. With plenty of 'Where do I find...' or, How do I...' questions from writers and prospective proofreaders/editors scattered throughout. I took a lot from these groups before it occurred to me pursuing it might be an idea. I'm finding them a fabulous means of conducting current market research. It's writers literally telling me what they want to see in proofreading and editing services, it's other proofreaders and editors discussing the job, or detailing how they went about getting to where they are now. They're also a wonderful place for nattering about writing in general. I rather like it all.
I spent a lot of time between relatively useless Google, and very helpful social media groups, looking into this. Top three takes for me:
An actual proofreading and editing qualification.
I found out very quickly that the consensus is academic qualifications in literature or whatever are all well and good, but unfortunately that does not mean you're qualified to offer services. You need to undertake specific training. I also found out some people are pretty rude about things like that so I made a mental note to order a thick skin.
It is true, until I started my diploma I didn't fully understand how editing works. I certainly didn't understand the complexities involved in proofreading. That's an artform in its own right.
Ok, so I have this one in hand already, what else?
Demonstrable experience and references.
Again, the consensus seems to be qualifications are great, but, writers also want to see evidence of providing a good service to past clients. They want to see client references, testimonials, or a portfolio of previous projects. There's plenty of people out there that have all these. Unfortunately, offering low prices won't necessarily mitigate this either. There is a wariness around low pricing, what it means for quality, and what it says about credibility of the provider. The general opinion seems to be, low pricing is a red flag unless it is someone recently qualified trying to grow their portfolio.
Establishing credibility.
AKA setting myself apart from the scammers, and well-meaning, unqualified people that do not know how to provide the service professionally. The sort of thing that gets branded, 'establishing client confidence' in corporate speak. There's a lot of those, especially the first category. Reading those threads is an interesting exercise in how to, and how not to, go about things.
The first one, I was already in the process of getting, so, demonstrable experience and references. Well, I did have some editing experience, it's just it's from 2017. So it exactly current so it isn't exactly valid.
So, the other two. Both worth a discussion by themselves.
The bad approximation of sangria was very nice by the way, a breeze had picked up by then. I enjoyed both.
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