Ichubbawha?? (The Sound of Me Doing Another Double-take.)

One of the desires of my heart: my stunningly beautiful back yard.

I ask you: What is UP with this serendipity thing? We just moved our daughter from her co-sleeper mini crib to a full-size crib, and she has adapted so well that I have gotten my two best nights of sleep in months… which means that my relentless drive has come out of hibernation and I started thinking about how to find more work–maybe even break into a new genre. As if I need to diversify, I know! I just would love to get into editing fiction–sci-fi/fantasy and mysteries, specifically–in addition to the Christian nonfiction and automotive work I’m already doing.

I just said (there seems to be something about saying these things out loud) to my husband that I was thinking of pursuing a new client, and ran an idea by him regarding how I might make it easier for myself to break that new-genre barrier. He said go for it, and before I could look up the company I was thinking of cold-calling, someone else came to me and asked if I might be interested in my dream editing job. Well, one of them. I have a lot of dream jobs. Well, yes! Yes, I would. It’s in Christian publishing, so maybe I’ll wait on that idea to pursue fiction work for a few weeks. We’ll see where this goes.

Lately this scripture verse keeps running through my head, and I hope that it encourages you as it has been encouraging me: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4, NIV). Every time I hear this verse, I’m reminded that I don’t have to slave for the things I want, nor do I have to choose between the relationship I want to develop with my Daddy in heaven and the dreams He has given me to pursue here on earth. “Relax, Laura!” that scripture says to me. “Just breathe, enjoy God and life, and everything will fall into place.”

And so it has, once again. Maybe I should spend more time meditating on this verse and less time ranting about Jeremiah 12:1.

Small Changes

When I was transitioning into freelance, a colleague advised me that the most successful freelance journalist he knew put out one request for new work every day to keep himself in the game. He is, consequently, one of the busiest automotive journalists in the business. Sounds like a great idea, but is it really that simple? How do you keep up with it? I spent several hours a day cold-calling companies for the first couple months, and then got distracted with current work or other projects. There was also this thing going on in the news about the economy. Maybe you heard about it.

Well, I’m back at it, networking, writing, and shaping my career into what I want it to look like before the kiddo arrives next spring, and I think I’ve found a way to build my career that doesn’t resemble crash dieting. Job hunting has a lot in common with An Inconvenient Truth: I avoided watching this movie for a long time, knowing I would feel overwhelmed at the volume of work needed to turn this planet around, and then Al gave us some small steps we could all take to do our part, AND showed us how small steps could have a huge impact. Not discouraging at all! I began to recycle more, compost, make better food choices, and lo and behold my expenses went down along with my environmental impact. I even negotiated 25% off my trash/recycling bill, because we’re so low-volume now! I just didn’t believe my little changes could make such an impact before.

Same thing with a freelance career. You know you’re your own marketer, but it’s tiring to think of having to keep up with working and networking at the same time. But what if networking weren’t as overwhelming as it sounds? What are a few small changes you could slowly make to your career to give it a boost, without burning yourself out? Here are a few:

Join LinkedIn and Twitter: LinkedIn allows you to easily keep in contact with old colleagues, and gives you access to their networks without a “let’s do lunch” effort. Twitter sounded pretty self-indulgent (“I’m sitting on the pot, reading WIRED”) until I tried it; it’s an excellent networking tool, because it allows you to notify people of new projects you’re working on, info you’re seeking, and puts you in contact with others in your industry that you’d otherwise never meet. (Please note: Blogging and micro-blogging don’t replace normal human contact.)

Cold-call Companies: This needs to be a focused effort. I researched several types of publishers I both wanted to work for and would have some credibility with because of my work experience, then called down the list. One a day would have been too frustrating–I needed to get in a groove–so I set aside several days a week when my energy was up and called as many as I could. The ones I could really offer value to responded positively. If I hadn’t tried this, I wouldn’t have found a new primary source of book editing work or gotten my first print article published in Automobile Quarterly.

Replace One Bad Habit: Just like changing your eating habits. Replace soda with juice, and juice with water, and you’ll never miss the soda. Replace people.com with gawker.com, and gawker.com with mediabistro.com, and you’ll find you’re spending free time keeping informed about news in publishing instead of Hollywood. Fewer calories, more satisfying.

Be Flexible: Writers and editors need to find a schedule that works for them in order to be productive. If you’re a night owl, spend the day exercising and networking, then write at night. If you’re a morning person like me, do the important stuff first so the to-do list doesn’t crowd it out. Don’t procrastinate your work time away, getting nothing done and feeling guilty just because you’re too tired at the moment to work. What works for you? Find that rhythm and shape your life around it. Don’t let anyone tell you what your day ought to look like, as long as you’re getting things done.

I’m sure there are many more small changes we can all make to help ourselves improve our lives and careers. What are your favorites? What works for you? Let me know in comments. I’ll post more at a later date, using your best ideas as well as any others I think of.

Ann Arbor Editors

I recently transitioned from a full-time copy chief job at Winding Road magazine, under the illustrious David E., to full-time freelancing. I made one teeny tiny comment out loud about deciding to write (finally!), and the universe rearranged my life within the week to allow me to pursue that decade-or-so-procrastinated goal. So… I procrastinated a little more and went looking for editing and writing blogs with topics that interested me–things I would geek out with my managing editor about over lunch–and found nothing. There are great blogs on time management (ahem), creative writing, and how to start your own home-based business, and several rather stagnant networking sites for editors, but really nothing I found would support my now isolated professional self the way I wanted. I’m being the change I want to see, or the support, rather. Please join me as I discuss the real nitty gritty of being a professional editor and writer: freelancing in a shitstorm economy, difficult editorial decisions, how editors and writers fit into new media business models, how to get unstuck when you’re writing, finding your life’s work, and so on.

I’ve called this blog “Ann Arbor Editors,” because I really wish there were a local networking group in my beloved Ann Arbor, Michigan, that I could lazily attend and benefit from. But the universe is not in the habit of allowing me to be lazy, at least not these days, so why don’t we create a space for all editors and writers to discuss the craft(s) and support one another’s careers and life work? Welcome!