The Worth of Pain
I am not used to gut-kicks. This makes me a wimp, probably. Nonetheless I am trying to read the event; walking around it, allowing the emotions, listening to them, all the enlightened actions. "Of course it hurts," said Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence. "The trick is not minding." I'd say the trick is not letting the hurt be your boss. Damned good trick.
I had a contract gig as a copy editor for an academic journal at our university press. Hallelujah, what a fun time we had, the editors and I, it felt like a fruitful collaboration. I put in my time, pored over the articles, sent them to the editors, the editors sent them off to the production coordinator, I got paid. Ta-da!
Then an e-mail from the press' production coordinator for journals -- the proofreader had had to re-copy-edit all the pages I turned in, re-key the notes sections, basically re-do all my work -- apparently the "Chicago Style" I had learned is not THEIR "Chicago Style." But did they call me? No, not until the work was nearly done. "There was no time to call you," the production coordinator says.
Upset all around, the editors won't talk to me now, and the production coordinator is going out of town for a week so has no time to investigate what happened -- whether the proofreader had been sent original files, not the edited files. So basically, I'm the bad guy here, the one who put the press and the journal hundreds of dollars over budget.
I look back at my work history in light of this, and I would really like for this to be the last time an attempt to make money in a "normal" work situation blows up in my face.
I would really like my "non-normal" projects to start paying off. I don't want to do "normal" any more. I don't want a "job," I want what I love to do (writing fiction, mixing specialty butters) to be my income.
It's time.
I had a contract gig as a copy editor for an academic journal at our university press. Hallelujah, what a fun time we had, the editors and I, it felt like a fruitful collaboration. I put in my time, pored over the articles, sent them to the editors, the editors sent them off to the production coordinator, I got paid. Ta-da!
Then an e-mail from the press' production coordinator for journals -- the proofreader had had to re-copy-edit all the pages I turned in, re-key the notes sections, basically re-do all my work -- apparently the "Chicago Style" I had learned is not THEIR "Chicago Style." But did they call me? No, not until the work was nearly done. "There was no time to call you," the production coordinator says.
Upset all around, the editors won't talk to me now, and the production coordinator is going out of town for a week so has no time to investigate what happened -- whether the proofreader had been sent original files, not the edited files. So basically, I'm the bad guy here, the one who put the press and the journal hundreds of dollars over budget.
I look back at my work history in light of this, and I would really like for this to be the last time an attempt to make money in a "normal" work situation blows up in my face.
I would really like my "non-normal" projects to start paying off. I don't want to do "normal" any more. I don't want a "job," I want what I love to do (writing fiction, mixing specialty butters) to be my income.
It's time.