I have a confession to make: sometimes I make typos. In fact, sometimes they’re not even typos. Sometimes – and this will really shock you – sometimes they’re actual spelling errors.
I know, I know: a professional writer who sometimes makes mistakes. I should resign right this very second and go and get a job that doesn’t require me to write at all, ever: especially given that I actually have a website about writing. I’m not going to, though, because here’s the thing: I don’t think minor typos are that big a deal. There, I said it. I will let you take a moment to pick yourself back up off the floor here…
Still with me? OK, let me clarify: I’m not saying it’s OK to make mistakes, and that we shouldn’t bother about them. Not at all. On the contrary, I think anyone who makes a living from writing should make an effort to ensure their writing is as clear, and as error-free as possible. Absolutely.
What I am saying, though, is that when the odd, minor typo creeps in, I don’t think it’s the end of the world. I mean, we’ve all done it, haven’t we? To err is human, after all, and I can’t think of anyone – not a single person – who has never in their life hit the wrong key on a keyboard and failed to notice it.
And yes, I know that’s what proofreading is for. But as most writers will tell you, when you’ve written something yourself, it can be hard to spot the mistakes in it. You see what you THINK is there, and sometimes errors go undetected. Or undetected by you, anyway. Here’s one of the big drawbacks of writing online, you see: for every typo you ever make, there will be at least five people ready to jump on it and crow over it. The line, “You call yourself a professional writer, but…” will be used at least once. It’s not a good scene, trust me.
Undoubtedly, some of these people are genuinely trying to be helpful. You should be grateful to these people. They’re the ones who politely tell us when we’ve typed something wrong (and tell us by email, too, rather than pointing out the mistake in public and drawing further attention to it), and allow us to correct it without trying to make us feel like idiots for making it in the first place.
Then there are the rest.
These are the people who take a disproportionate amount of delight in every tiny typo. These people DO think typing errors are the end of the world, and they have made it their mission in life to point them out. I’m not talking about major errors, either: the ones that have somehow passed through an entire publishing process involving numerous professional editors and proofreaders, and yet have still somehow managed to end up printed in giant letters, on posters or adverts, or other places of maximum exposure. Hell, I’ve pointed out those kind of mistakes myself.
No, I’m talking about the little mistakes. The ones that are so obviously typos that they can’t possibly be mistaken for anything other than a slip of the finger. The ones that don’t alter the meaning of the text, don’t make it any harder to read, and don’t really have any importance other than to illustrate the fact that the author is, indeed, a human being, and that human beings sometimes make mistakes.
Those are the kind of typos I don’t think are the end of the world.
Sure, if there are lots of them in a single piece of writing, or if they’re very distracting, making it hard to focus on what the writer is trying to say, that’s a problem. If they’re consistent mistakes, which crop up time and time again, that’s a problem too. If they’re present in a super-important document, like your CV, for instance, or that email you’re sending a prospective employer, boasting about what a great writer you are? Houston, we have a problem. And if they’re written in 20 foot letters, and plastered onto the side of a building, that’s a pretty big problem, and I hope it never happens to me.
So no, I’m not defending typos, or saying we should all just be as slapdash as we like, and not care about our errors, because clearly that would be a Very Bad Thing indeed.
But if you’re the kind of person who jumps on every tiny little mistake a writer makes, crowing unpleasantly over it and generally behaving as if the world just ended, I’m asking you to maybe cut us some slack, here.
Let he who has never made a typo cast the first stone, I say.
Everyone else should just be glad it’s not their typo…
Is it possible to make money working from home as a proofreader?
This is one of the questions I get asked most often, and the short answer is: yes. It is.
I happen to think most things are possible if you work hard enough, though, so perhaps a better question here would be: is it EASY to make a living working from home as a proofreader?
Actually, I suspect this is what most people who ask the first question reallywanted to know anyway, and the short answer to that one is: no. It most definitely isn’t.
This will possibly come as a surprise to some people. There seems to be this preconception amongst people who want to work from home that proofreading is an easy way to do it. After all, there are all those adverts in magazines and newspapers promising that if you just send away for their correspondence course, you’ll be earning a small fortune in no time, all from sitting back at home and doing what you love best: reading.
There’s also a popular misconception that proofreading itself is easy.
This is an idea that tends to be held by people who go around telling everyone who’ll listen that they can’t read a newspaper (or blog post, as I know to my cost) without instantly focusing on all the errors in it, and how they’d “be really good at proofreading”. And I should make it clear that I’m not saying they wouldn’t be.
But proofreading as a profession is much more skilled than most people tend to give it credit for. Professional proofreaders complete rigorous training and testing, and do a job which involves many hours of intense concentration and fact-checking. They are often experts in their particular fields (publishers of books about history, for instance, like to employ proofreaders who specialise in proofreading historical texts, while publishers of medical textbooks prefer proofreaders who understand all those medical terms. That’s not to say there aren’t exceptions to that rule, and that people without specialist knowledge can’t ever become proofreaders, but it is something to bear in mind) and do much more than just correct typos and nitpick over grammar.
Add to this the fact that professional proofreading is a highly competitive field, especially for those who want to work from home. As noted above, proofreading is something a lot of people think they’ll be good at. It’s something anyone who has completed a correspondence course from the back of a newspaper (Note: I’m not saying for a moment that all such courses are pointless, simply that you need to tread carefully) is able to claim some degree of “qualification” in. Because of this, there are lots of would-be proofreaders for every possible work-from-home job, and the result of all of this competition is exactly what you’d expect it to be: people end up charging very low rates in a bid to win the job, employers come to EXPECT proofreaders to charge very low rates, the profession becomes undervalued, and it becomes hard to make a reasonable living at it without working around the clock for not very much money.
Now that I’ve spread all that doom and gloom, though, let me just lighten the mood a little by saying that all hope is not lost. People DO make a living working from home as proofreaders: of course they do. And if you really want to join them, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t give it your best shot.
To give yourself the best possible chance, I’d advise you to:
- Get a well-respected qualification
Strictly speaking, you don’t actually need any qualifications to be a proofreader, but it’s a good idea to get some if you can: it’ll help prove to prospective clients that you really do know what you’re doing, and if you want to proofread for large publishers, they will expect you to know the British Standards Institution symbols. (Small businesses, particularly online ones, probably won’t use these.) In the UK, the Society for Editors and Proofreaders is the professional body for proofreaders. They run training courses (yes, some of them can be done by correspondence!), maintain a register of qualified proofreaders, and are a great source of advice and information for those starting out in their career as well as those who are more established.
As I said above, you’ll have a much better chance of landing a job as a proofreader if you’re able to say you specialise in a particular subject. This is most true for those looking to proofread for publishing houses, but it can also be true of people looking to make a living proofreading for small businesses, etc. If you already have a degree or other qualification, that could be a good start: if not, think about your hobbies and other interests and consider targeting jobs in those sectors, where you have a little bit of knowledge ad are familiar with the terminology used.
Again, despite popular opinion, this isn’t an easy way to make a living from home. You won’t be sitting around in your comfortable chair, flicking through a great new unpublished novel with a box of chocolates by your side. It’s hard work, and can be very tiring. (That doesn’t mean it can’t be fun too, though.)
As with so many freelance jobs, it’s often a matter of who you know rather than what you know. Sad, but true. If you’re able to, doing some work experience with a publisher may give you a better chance of getting some freelance work for them, but it’s also a good idea to network as much as possible (without being pushy) with the types of people who may become clients.
Finally: don’t send letters or emails to prospective clients telling them their writing sucks and they need to hire you as a proofreader. Just trust me on that one…
Remember my Second Head? The one that rears up periodically from my existing head, making me look like the results of some kind of genetic experiment gone badly, badly wrong?
Yeah, it’s back.
It arrived on Monday night. At first I thought it was going to be just an ordinary, common or garden spot, but nope, Second Head, right here. It is, once again, right slap in the middle of my forehead, positioned for maximum impact, although this time it’s a little higher than the last Coming of the Head. Just to mix things up slightly, you know?
Once again, no amount of makeup will cover The Second Head, and, indeed, attempts to do so serve only to make it more noticeable. Gah.
The only strange thing this time around is that I don’t quite understand why The Head is here? I mean, why now? The Second Head generally times its appearances to cause the maximum humiliation (first day of new job, graduation ball, etc), but I have no particular plans for this week, so either The Head has got its dates wrong, or something is about to happen that I just don’t know about yet. Like, I’ll open the door to find a TV crew there, or will return home to a surprise party or something . Or maybe I will simply manage to get myself arrested, and my mugshot will forever show that, yes, I was That Girl With Two Heads. I say it again: gah.
Also: two appearances within a few months of each other, Head? What new torture is this?!
I am SO getting a fringe after this…
Tagged the second head, The Ugly
A few weeks ago, I decided – pretty much on a whim – to start tracing my family tree. I think, like most people who do this, I was secretly hoping I’d find out I was directly descended from Cleopatra or something, although, as it turns out, that would be pretty difficult because, with the exception of one adventurous branch of the family who emigrated to the States in the 19th century, only to return ten years later (possibly thrown out?), it would seem my ancestors have spent hundreds of years diligently mining coal all over Scotland, except for a few renegade souls, who mined clay instead. I’d imagine it was a bit like living inside a DH Lawrence novel, only grittier, and more Scottish.
My ancestors also appear to have cunningly avoided doing anything that might have drawn attention to themselves throughout their lives, which makes them a little harder to trace. I didn’t read all of those Famous Five books as a child for nothing, though, so I have persevered, and one thing I have managed to find out (mostly because it was, er, already known to my parents) is that my maternal great-grandparents, and their parents before them, lived in Helensburgh, which is a little town on the Clyde, in the west of Scotland.
Anyway, this Sunday was Easter, obviously, but it was better known in our family by the much more important title of “My Mum’s Birthday”, so, to celebrate, my dad thought it would be a nice idea to take my mum “back to her roots”, so to speak, and take a little drive to Helensburgh. And because Terry and I like to hang around like a bad smell all the time, we went too. Look, here’s me and my mum having a whale of a time in the local cemetery! Happy Easter!
 Helensburgh cemetery Honestly, if there’s a better way to celebrate your mother’s birthday than by taking her to a graveyard, I don’t know what it is. Happy birthday, mum!
Unfortunately, our ancestors continued to be elusive, and we didn’t manage to find any of their graves – we think they’re probably unmarked, or marked by a tree or something – so we drew a blank there. We did, however, have a few addresses we knew some of them had lived in, and we managed to find those. Here’s me, Terry and Rubin looking slightly suspicious as we loiter outside the building my great-grandfather once lived in:
 West Princes Street Note: he was not a dentist. And actually, despite what I said above, these Helensburgh ancestors weren’t coal miners either, or even clay miners. No, my great-grandad was a plasterer, which I would imagine was quite daring of him at the time. We visited a couple of other streets we knew the family had lived on, but although most of the rest of the streets were still intact, and dated back to the late nineteeth/early twentieth century, the buildings the early Forever Ambers had lived in had been knocked down. We’re assuming this had nothing to do with our family, but you never really know…
Anyway, because nothing works up a good appetite quite like poking around graveyards, we retired to the waterfront to eat ice cream and bags of greasy chips. Here are the disembodied heads of me and my parents floating above a host of golden daffodils:
 Daffodils: host of I have my eyes closed because, seriously, you have no idea how many photos I have managed to ruin by doing that. It’s like some freaky skill I have, to always know the exact moment the shutter will close, and to close my eyes in sympathy with it. Here’s a rare shot of me with my eyes open, just after lunch:
 moi I like to think my ancient ancestors once stood on this same spot, gazing pensively out over the Clyde and thinking deep thoughts. Sadly for them, though, they were probably too busy huddling together for warmth or weaving rough sweaters out of coal, or whatever people did in those days, to have much time for pensive staring. Which was probably a good thing, really, because look where Pensive Staring has got me?
After that, we drove along the Clyde to Loch Long, which is a loch, and is long:
 Loch Long: both long and loch-like Loch Long has no associations with my ancestors, as far as I know, but my uncle did almost catch his death of cold once in Arrochar, on its banks, so it sort of counts.
Then we went to Loch Lomond, which, again, has absolutely nothing to do with our family, but which is just nice. Its banks were looking suitably bonny, I thought:
 "Mountains, Gandalf, mountains!" (for Erin) And then we came home. So, in conclusion, we didn’t find out too much about my ancestors, but a good day was had by all:
 Happy Easter!
Tagged ancestry, easter, family tree, helensburgh, loch lomond
 I'm laughin at yoos! Yo, peeps, Rubinman in da house! Yes, it’s really ME, the R-Man! I’m here because, it’s like, I read Amber’s last entry? The one where she’s whining about me peein on that “radiator”? And it was as I thought. They see me peein’: they hatin’! So, like, here’s my side of the “story”. I think you’ll find it’s quite different from what Amber tries to to tell yoos.
So, I have called this entry “Watergate”, and the reason I have done that is because it’s about me peeing in the house. Hee! Do you see what I did there? Do you? Do you?
Anyway, yes, I have been peein’ in the house. Like, A LOT. I’ve not just been peeing ANYWHERE in the house, though: the Rubinman is more cunning than that. No, I’ve been peein on the radiator in the office, and I’ve been doin it every chance I get. Which, like I said, is A LOT.
Before I go any further here, I just want to clear one thing up. Amber and Terry? Them? They’re all, “Wah, Rubinman! Peeing on the radiator is not big and is not clever! Wah!” But, as with so many things in life, They are WRONG about this. Wrong, wrong, WRONG. They are so wrong they could not BE more wrong. Because peeing on the radiator IS big. And it IS clever. And don’t let anyone ever tell yoos differently, kids, srsly.
Here is how I do it, just in case yoos need any tips: I wait until They go to see “Gym” and THEN I do it. They go to see this “Gym” dude almost every day. WHO IS HE? Who is this mysterious “Gym” and why do they go to see him so much? (Also, I gotta say this, but they dress like a couple of asses when they go to see “Gym”. Sorry, but it’s true. Lycra pants, Amber? Really?)
Anyways, I put up with this “Gym” crap for a while. And then one day I was just like, NO. ENOUGH. I’m not puttin up with this ONE SECOND more. Because I like it to be all about me all the time, you know? And when it’s all about “Gym”, it’s not all about me? So, like, this “Gym”, dude? He is takin the attention that is rightfully mine. Srsly, I am ALL about the attention, so I am totally goin to hunt down this “Gym” and I’m going to bite his bum. It’s, like, Gym? If you’re readin’ this? You better worry, dude, and I’m not even jokin.
So, it’s like, that’s the story of WATERGATE. (God, I totally crack myself up sometimes, I really do.) I’m goin to keep doin it until they crack. I think that might have been today, actually, because when they came into the office and they saw the pee, their faces were all mad and they were, like, goin insane? Hee! And what’s funny about THAT is, they haven’t even found the pee I did ON MY OWN BED yet, either. LOL!
Smell yas,
RUBIN
P.S. WRONG
 No one puts Rubinman in the corner!
Tagged rubin
Absolutely nothing has happened here since The Great Wall of Clothing was removed from my hallway, so this is one of those completely pointless list posts, which I’m pretty sure no one will read anyway, because you’ll all be off enjoying the Easter break. Speaking of which:
- Easter! Whee! It’s easily my favourite holiday because:
a) It’s the start of Spring.
b) You get chocolate
c) You don’t have to actually DO anything, unlike, say, Christmas, which involves many, many hours of shopping, and not the kind of shopping that’s fun, either, let me tell you.
d) Did I mention the chocolate?
Now that I’m completely self-employed, I managed to completely forget about Easter this year until yesterday, when I suddenly realised I don’t have to do any work tomorrow, and can have a long weekend. Yay!
- I actually feel really, really guilty about planning to take tomorrow and Monday off, though. Oh, the extravagance! I expect the Internet will totally fall to pieces without ME here to watch over it and that will be oh-so-awful, won’t it?
- I’m still planning on taking a break, though.
- I will probably spend much of it lolling around in bed, reading.
- Rubin will probably spend much of it peeing on the radiator in the office, because that’s what the little toad does for fun these days. WHY? Why must he do this to us? It’s not like he doesn’t get the opportunity to “relieve” himself before we go out, because he most certainly does and, actually, we’ve had to become pretty insistent on this point lately. Also, why does he only do it when we go to the gym, and at no other time? Does he resent the gym? Is he jealous of it? Is he trying to tell us something? WHAT?
- I totally thought I had more things to put on this list, but apparently I REALLY just wanted to get that whole thing about Rubin and the radiator (again: WHY?) off my chest, so I will just wish you all a happy Easter, instead. I hope no one pees on your radiators!
Tagged easter, rubin
I’ve been talking in my sleep again, folks. In the early hours of Monday morning, for instance, I apparently rolled over in bed and said to Terry, “Don’t worry: I’ll be your wall!” Which is nice. Well, I mean, everyone needs a wall, don’t they? He can lean on me! Or… sit on me! Rubin can… well, probably pee on me, but you know, still nice.
Sadly for me, though, the only wall I have been encountering recently is the wall of clothing in my hallway:
 The Great Wall of Clothing. Dog not included. Terry brought this little lot down from the attic for me on Sunday afternoon. What’s scary about this (other than the WOLF lying on top of it, obviously) is that this pile doesn’t even include all of the coats and jackets that are also up there. Whoops.
You see, because our house has approximately no storage whatsoever, I’m forced to actually DO that thing magazines are always advising you to do, whereby you kind of “rotate” your wardrobe, putting half of it into storage when the seasons change. I don’t really do it on a seasonal basis, because we don’t actually have seasons in Scotland, but at this time of year I will generally throw some of my winter coats up there, and also some other stuff that I have suddenly and inexplicably decided I can’t stand to give wardrobe space to for one second longer.
The idea, of course, is that in a few months time, I get it all back down again, and if I STILL don’t think I’ll wear the whatever-it-is that’s up there, I give it to charity. The problem with that though? Well, once my clothes go into the attic, they generally remain there for… well, forever. Because I basically forget what’s up there. Then I think to myself, “Oh, I really need a whatever-it-is!” and I go and buy one, forgetting that there’s already about twelve of them in the attic. I’d like to say this is why I have something like ten black sweaters/cardigans, but they weren’t even IN the attic, so I guess I’ll have to come up with another excuse for that one. Insanity, maybe.
Anyway, this Sunday I decided it was time to put an end to the madness. Two massive bags of Stuff went to the charity shop this morning, and a bunch of other Stuff was re-instated in my wardrobe, where it’s currently being given a Second Chance. I hope it doesn’t waste it.
Meanwhile, Terry installed a hanging pole in the top of the wardrobe in the office, and went out and bought these:
 Coathangers FTW!
I like to hang things up. No, I mean, I REALLY like to hang things up. I’d hang up everything if I could. Even underwear. OK, maybe not underwear. But I try to hang as much as I possibly can: I hate folding because everything just ends up horribly creased (see Space: lack off) and also, I invariably end up just wearing the items from the top of the pile over and over again, then replacing them when they get old, while the stuff at the bottom just lies there, forgotten and lonely. This way at least I can see what’s actually there, get more use out of what I have, and hopefully nip that whole “black sweater” thing in the bud.
I can also go shopping. Because, obviously, that’s what all this was all about…
Tagged clothes, sleep talk
After all of the complaining that went down in the comments section of my post about Terry’s results, I figured it was time to lighten the atmosphere a little with one of our regularly scheduled “surprise” posts. Sadly, there are only a couple of these left to go, but one day last week (or was it the week before? Seriously, they’ve all started to blend into one another…) I happened to look out of the office window to see this:
Yes, Terry had “engraved” our lawn. It was very cunning of him, and it has actually made us wonder if it would be possible to kill ALL the grass in our garden in this way? I mean, we’ve killed almost everything else in the garden (yes, that is a dead plant you can see in the pot behind the “engraving”), why not the grass? You think I’m joking, but that just means you haven’t read all of my entries about how much I hate and detest gardening yet. The other option is to simply do nothing and allow the garden to return to the wild. I’m considering that one, too.
Tagged birthday, gardening, surprises, Terry
… and Terry’s kidney is absolutely fine, nothing to see here, move along please and all that jazz. All of the blood results were in the “best they could possibly be” range, and now that’s been confirmed I can go ahead and admit that I? Was totally freaked out by yesterday’s test. Not that I really thought there was anything wrong with Terry, I hasten to add: this is a man who takes eight gym classes a week and goes rock climbing on the weekends, so it was pretty clear he was in fighting form, but… it was the date. The date worried me. The universe, you see, has a funny way of messing with me, and making sure that what SHOULD be happy dates in my life become memorable for all the wrong reasons.
For instance:
December 15, 2003 – Terry and I get engaged. Whoopee!
December 15, 2005 – Terry has a kidney transplant. Damn.
And, OK, the transplant was technically a “good” thing. But it’s all relative, isn’t it? I mean, it wasn’t such a good day compared to, say, all of those days in our lives when Terry HADN’T needed a transplant. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that getting a transplant you badly need = good, actually needing a transplant in the first place = a bit of a bummer, to be honest. Could’ve totally lived without that one, thanks all the same, Universe.
(December 15th is also Terry’s “Name Day” in Greece, but that has no real relevance to this story. Just thought I’d throw it in for good measure, though.)
But it doesn’t stop there. For instance:
Boxing Day 2003 = the day Terry was diagnosed with end stage kidney failure, and a little bit of my sanity shattered forever.
Christmas Day 2005 = the day he got out of hospital.
Again, getting out of hospital is clearly a good thing. But what would’ve been even BETTER would’ve been if he’d never actually had to be in there in the first place. See?
Anyway, this strange habit of us spending meaningful or important days in our lives in hospitals has made me a little bit superstitious. I should say here that I’m not normally superstitious in the slightest - show me a ladder, and I will happily walk under it (something will probably fall on me, mind you, but that’s just par for the course with me) – but in respect of what we’ve come to call “That whole weird thing with the dates”, I will admit to just a smidge of superstition.
Which is why, when Terry and I had the following conversation a couple of months ago, I was left feeling ever so slightly concerned:
TERRY: I got my next appointment in for the transplant clinic. It’s for March 10th.
ME: But! But! That’s my birthday! OMG, That Whole Weird Thing With the Dates will happen again!
Two days later…
TERRY: So, I called the hospital and asked them to change the date of my appointment.
ME: Oh, you didn’t need to do that. [Thinks: you totally did, though] When did they move it to?
TERRY: March 31st
ME: So… they moved the appointment from my birthday to our wedding anniversary? Almost as if they are hell bent on doing the tests on a Significant Date?
TERRY: Oh. Yeah, I guess!
ME: We. Are. So. Screwed.
And so, while yesterday was a lovely day for us, and we were happy to be celebrating our 2nd anniversary (thanks for all the good wishes, by the way – much appreciated) there was also a small part of my brain that was, well, freaking the hell out, until the moment we got back from the restaurant and Terry checked the results online.
And all was well.
Whew.
Tagged kidney transplant, Terry
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