Category: Ramblings

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Goal Setting with a Theme

When setting goals, we are told to use SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. We are encouraged to define our goals with clearly defined constraints and requirements to achieve the goals (specific), using something that we can measure our progress against (measurable). While it's important to dream big, we should never set ourselves up to fail by shooting for the stars from word go when there are a lot of little steps that we need to take along the way (attainable and realistic), and we need to put time limits on those goals (timely).

While I strongly believe in the ethos behind using SMART goals, it's the R in SMART that I believe is a little troublesome.

Commonly, I'll see R as Realistic, but I think Relevant is a better word to use. We might set a goal based on a certain task, but does that task have a purpose that is in service to our long-term hopes and dreams? For example, building that active Twitter following probably won't be of any help to the writer whose target audience is filled with young readers.

Today, I want to talk about shifting our SMART goals into something that has a stronger relevance to not only our hopes and dreams, but with our subconscious motivations too.

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Daylight Savings… Curse you!

Every six months, the clocks change by an hour. And every six months, I go mental as I try to reconcile the clock changes on my daily and business life.

It might be only an hour, but that's only if you focus on the one time zone. If you are like me, you live your life based on multiple time zone (having an international business), so it's not just one hour that changes. Nope. It's one hour one month as Daylight Savings starts in one time zone, but it's another hour the next month as Daylight Savings ends the next month. And by the end of it, the clocks have moved two hours and you lose total track of everything.

Every six months, I face this two-hour shift, and sometimes the results are me grumpy because I'm up at all godly hours in the morning.

Let me tell you of my crazy when the clocks shifted in New Zealand earlier this month.

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Are we dumbing down language?

Recently, I took a grammar refresher course to help with some aspects of my editing. I took the course because often enough I encounter something in ProWritingAid or in conversations with other editors that I don't understand. The terminology occasionally goes over my head. So, I thought that perhaps a refresher course would help with some of the terminology confusion.

The course certainly did do that, and I was glad I took the course. However, there were a few comments that actually irritated me—and they all revolved around this philosophy that we're dumbing down language.

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Living in a Near-Cashless Society

Conversations within my various editors' groups occasionally turn to ways of accepting payments from clients. You get the conversations about using PayPal and similar services. There are the conversations about payments in cash. You get those hilarious conversations about clients wanting to pay via a royalty share, complete with boasted claims that the royalty share would be worth millions.

But whenever the conversation turns to clients paying by check, the group is often amazed by my response.

As much as checks might be nice for some people, I can never accept payment via check. No bank within New Zealand will allow you to deposit checks anymore. Even cashier's checks are now a thing of the past.

There is normally one person who asks how we pay our bills if checks are no longer accepted, likely assuming that we pay for everything via cash. But my answer to this question tends to shock them even more.

New Zealand has become a near-cashless society. Everything is paid for by way of electronic transactions, most of which occur via internet banking.

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Sample edits are at the editor’s discretion

A few months back, I was approached by a writer to do a developmental edit, which isn't anything out of the ordinary. I am a developmental editor, after all. But there was something in that initial communication that really didn't sit well with me.

Initial communications with a writer tell me what type of client you're likely to be. And this one…

The email dripped with entitlement and superiority, making me question whether this particular writer was even ready to hear criticism about their writing.

It was a random email that seemed to have come out of nowhere with a file attached (an OpenOffice file, no less). There was zero information about the manuscript—no genre, no word counts, no synopsis, no summary. Just negative commentary, saying that they were unable to find my prices on my website for developmental editing (which is odd, because I know for certain that they are there—and in an easy-to-find location too). But there were also the following lines in the email.

"After I receive my sample back, I will wait for a week until I'll let you know if I'm interested or not.

Thank you for your time, and I wish you best of luck!"

So… Zero information about the project and this underlining demand for a sample edit. To top it off, there's the attitude that suggested a person who thinks editors are just waiting around for clients to give them the privilege to edit the writer's work.

Did I mention how those initial communications can tell an editor about the type of client you're likely to be?

Had this particular writer approached things just a little differently, they would have likely gotten more than just my boiler-plate quote and the comment that I don't offer free sample edits.

There are soooo many things wrong with this particular opening communication, the most important of which is the assumption that all editors will provide a free sample edit when a client demands such.

But sample edits are at the editor's discretion. And of those editors who do offer free sample edits, not all of them will edit any old sample you send them.

It's time to get down to the realities of sample edits.

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