The Concierge (Blog)

In my previous post on setting work priorities, I closed with the point that once you know what’s important, the rest is just getting it done. Of course it’s not that simple. If it were, editors wouldn’t be asking me how to juggle everything. Defining the Tasks The first thing to remember is that there…

In my previous post on working effectively, I mentioned the need to set your work priorities and to focus on those, instead of scattering your energy frantically trying to do all of the ten million things you could be doing. I didn’t spend much time discussing how to set those priorities, and naturally someone has…

The other day I came across a social media post from an email marketer who said you would outwork 90 percent of your competition just by showing up every day! I nearly sprained my eyeballs from rolling them so hard. If you can outwork your competition just by showing up, you are dealing with very…

Once you’ve been editing for a while, you tend to start rolling your eyes at the newbie mistakes writers make. They name their characters Matt, Mark, Mack, Mick, and Mike and expect readers to be able to tell them apart. They invariably start the story in the wrong place and summarize the most important emotional…

After I posted my thoughts on setting boundaries with clients, an editor asked me to describe how I set expectations ahead of time. Mostly this is part of my project quote, which you can see below. I use slightly different wording for publisher clients to account for the differences in working with them—they aren’t the author,…

One of the most important things freelancers can do is set clear expectations for their work. You give a project fee, describe what it includes, communicate deadlines, and so on. These expectations are necessary because otherwise a project can turn into a zombie that keeps coming back for more, sapping your will to live. If…

Back when I was active in martial arts, I used to teach a class or two a week for my instructor. He (and I) knew that one of the best ways to get better at a skill is to try to teach it. This is a humbling process because it points out all the things…

I was turned down for an ongoing editing project recently, which hasn’t happened in a while. I’ve been focused on building Club Ed for the last year or two, so I haven’t been pursuing other projects. And most of my editing work has always come by referral and word-of-mouth, so potential clients tend to already…

I encounter a lot of novelists and fiction editors who use movies as examples of various storytelling techniques they want to discuss. I understand this impulse: it is easier to assume that everyone has seen The Matrix or can easily find the two hours to sit through it than it is to assume that everyone…