Yesterday, I posted about big grammatical blunders and mentioned that I have an editor who looks at my work before I send it to clients. He’s really more of a proofreader, actually, since most of what he does is pick up typos and similar errors. This raises an important question, though: As a freelance writer, should you partner with an editor to ensure that clients get a clean copy of your work?

The answer isn’t a clean cut-and-dry yes or no. Here’s my advice:

Yes, hire an editor if…

• You have writers working under you and don’t want to proofread all of their work yourself.
• You’re a notoriously bad typist.
• A client has mentioned in the past that your work needs improvement in the area of typos.
• You can afford it and hate looking over your own work.

No, do not hire an editor if…

• You’re an excellent proofreader yourself and have time to look over all of your work at least once or twice.
• Your client had his own editor/proofreader (and your work is pretty clean, for the most part).
• The person you’re writing for is a middle man - ie, they own a writing business and work with the clients (and, again, your work is pretty clean, for the most part).

There’s one exception to this that I want to mention. If you land a really high-paying gig, it might be worth it to you to hire an editor, even if you think your writing is typo-free. You don’t want a wayward letter to put your job in jeopardy, and if the gig really is super high-paying, you should be able to afford paying someone a small amount to edit for you.

Personally, I use an editor/proofreader for about 50% - 75% of the work I do with clients (outside of network blogging). We’ve negotiated a price per page, but I know that some editors are paid by the hour or even per word.

Do you use an editor?

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Image via Flickr.

Here are some of my favorite posts from (gasp!) June of 2005:

• Google Helps Me With Spelling
• What Makes a “Real Writer”?
• Commercial Writing Is a Lucrative Venue
• When Life Interferes With Writing
• Should You Write For Free?

Enjoy this blast from the past.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)

I am so not a copy editor, and I am so appreciative of the good ones I know!

I’m doing the final pass on my book about how to write a book. I call it a pass, rather than an edit because I know I’m missing things. I always do! I am not one of those people who is good with tiny details.

If you looked at my cottage, you’d see what I mean. At first glance it looks pretty good, but I haven’t made my bed in days! And I’ll bet there are dust bunnies, maybe full grown dust rabbits under the coach. After months and months I still haven’t totally gotten my office together. Does anyone know where I can by 10 frames really cheap?

So I’ll do the best I can, then I’ll turn the manuscript over to a real copy editor and try not to blush too much when it comes back with correction marks all over it.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

Books are not only hard to write, the manuscripts tend to get long and messy. I’m going through the draft of my book about writing books and my headings are all messed up. I also changed typeface for the body somewhere in the middle. Plus, I started drafting in double space and then, as I got closer to completion, switched to single, except there are three or four sections that didn’t get switched.

As I’m editing and realized it was past time to set up a style sheet for the book. A style sheet simply defines the style, like typeface, type size, header size and placement, how many returns before a new chapter title, etc. etc. etc.

Currently the one for the book about book writing includes the following:

• 8 returns to chapter title
• Quote – Ariel 10 itl, author not itl
• Drop cap first word of chapter
• Body text Georgia 12
• Chapter title Verdana 12 centered
• Heading 2 – Verdana 11, left
• Heading 3 –Ariel 3, itl

Just so you know, in my shorthand, itl equals italics; chapter titles are also heading 1, headings 2 and 3 are what you and I think of as subheads, but tagging them as headings allows Word to create a decent table of contents.

Now that the style is written down I don’t have to try to remember it all. I’ll probably make some additions.

The take-away? Make your life easier with style sheets for book-length manuscripts.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)

Yikes! I’ve been working away, editing a book proposal for a client and suddenly, at the start of sample chapter 2, nothing was making any sense at all. And this is a chapter that’s had several drafts. In fact, it’s the chapter the client likes best.

All of a sudden I realized I was hungry - seriously hungry.

Twelve Steppers use the word HALT to remind themselves not to get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. They know that if they’ve got any of these going they are more vulnerable to slipping back into their addiction.

I find HALT also works for me, and I suspect other writers. I don’t know about you, but when my writing is going well, I can loose all track of time. That’s what happened this morning. I grabbed a bit to eat, and you know what, that chapter is pretty good.

Don’t always assume your writing sucks… make sure your in shape to read it with clarity.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

(www.thegoldenpencil.com) A while back I tracked the top five or ten posts here and they rarely seemed to change much. Today I looked and wow! Here are the top five with some comments by me:

1. Testing Lulu.com - this must be part of the ever-increasing interest in self-publishing.
2. Should The Government Monitor ‘Net Content? An Odd Couple Posting - could it be people are finally getting interested in protecting the Bill of Rights? I hope so!
3. Publisher Problems With Amazon Continue to Grow - Shame Shame! - with self-publishing on the rise, interest in this issue only make sense.
4. The tag Work at Home comes in 4th - and who wouldn’t want to!
5. ClickBank Gives Excellent Customer Service - maybe it’s the customer service angle, or interest in ClickBank.
6. Top Dos and Don’ts For Freelancers – A Guest Blog that’s always worth reading
7. Words as Art - yeah, this is a fun one.

Why seven? Because the next group are jobs, the front page, etc.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

b5media’s list of blogs grows so fast that I often miss something that might be of interest to you. This morning I stumbled into One Book Two Book, a blog about books for kids of all ages.

Turns out it’s only a few days old, meaning none of us are too far behind. If books for kids are of interest you’ll probably want to subscribe to this blog.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

Image from http://www.sxc.hu

Heather Johnson, over at bootstrapper.com has assembled a list she calls The Top 100 Freelancer Blogs. There are 16 blogs for freelance writers here, including The Golden Pencil and some other favorites, as well as some that are new to me.

But the rest of the list is well worth exploring. There is, for example, a section just on Copywriting and Marketing, another on Design, etc. etc. You get the idea. I suggest you explore the list a bit. I have a hunch you’ll find at least one or two you want to bookmark.

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

No clue why, but this morning I don’t seem to have a single idea for a blog in my head… except this one. You know, the old write-about-the-idea-of-having no-ideas trick. All professional writers can come up with this one when they get well and truly stuck.

And why am I mostly idea less this morning? Who knows, and I’m not even sure I care much at the moment. Because I have a couple of secret weapons. The first is my ever present list of blog ideas. This is a simple word file that lives on my desktop. Currently there are 39 ideas listed there, about 2/3 of which I’ve already written about at one point or another. When I do write about one, I strike through it so I know I’ve done a blog, but so I can also read it. I’ve found many topics can be done over and over again, and some spark additional ideas.

My other secret weapon is a feed reader. I use FeedReader3, which is free and dirt simple. When I start the program (I know, some people leave their readers on all the time.), it populates itself with the blogs I’ve chosen and their most recent headlines. I’ve got enough blogs in there to be sure to find at least on topic anytime I look.

As I’ve been known to say, “ideas are truly everywhere.”

Where do you get your writing ideas?

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.

CopyBlogger has a great post today called: Just Say No to These Three Enemies of Clear and Direct Writing. Although I find the title a bit unwieldy, perhaps violating his rules against both something called metadiscourse and pretentiousness, the points are well taken.

Another way to sum it up might be: Keep it simple! It’s amazing how often simple writing works well.

What’s your favorite writing rule?

Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.