“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” — Malcolm Gladwell
I’ve edited about two pieces of long-form digital content a day, every day, for a decade. In this blog post, I’ll draw on that experience to unravel five content writing myths so you can make more-informed decisions about your digital marketing strategies. Read More
This month I’m celebrating eight years in the business of English editing. I’ve spent more time working as a nonfiction editor and proofreader than as a geologist, the profession for which I trained till PhD level. It’s about time that I looked back at my freelance editing career to see what big lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Up until the end of my doctoral studies, I’d been a procrastinator. Completing an abstract for a conference would take me a week, drafting a literature review, a month. I liked writing but couldn’t focus on it when I had a deadline to meet. Any writing task was too much for me to handle in an efficient manner.
But writing my PhD thesis had to be different, I told myself when I could finally see the finish line. I couldn’t afford to procrastinate. My PhD scholarship was about to expire, I didn’t have the money for a prolonged stay in the UK, and I didn’t want to be on the island anymore. So, I decided I would leave Cardiff in three months, bought a one-way ticket back home, and then opened the folder “PhD stuff” on my laptop. It was thesis o’clock. Read More
You can improve a presentation by paying attention to the choice of illustrations, text, fonts, colors, and all the other details of a slideshow. Make sure every element is visible, the text is free of errors, and the colors don’t send the wrong message.
But the best way to improve a presentation is to show it to someone who has no idea about the topic of your presentation, ask them what they think about it, and use their feedback to tweak the presentation. Read More
Publishing a paper, a book, or an article is hard work. When you succeed, it feels amazing. When you don’t, all you want is to put the failed project behind you and move on. But you shouldn’t. Not so fast, at least. A failed writing project is more than wasted hours and effort. It can teach you a lot.
Here are some of the most valuable lessons you can learn from a failed writing project.
What’s it like to be a freelancer? If you’re not one of us, you’ll tend to believe the freelancing myths populating the analog and digital worlds: If you’re a freelancer, you work only a couple of hours a day, pick your clients, have no boss, and can set your own schedule. Just add “you can wear your pajamas all day” and the freelancer stereotype cocktail is ready to serve.
Over the years, I’ve heard all kinds of comments about freelance life, covering the whole spectrum from funny to offensive. Here are a few:
Maybe a major event happened in your life that reshuffled your priorities. Or you’re thinking about switching careers and no longer need an advanced degree. Or maybe you’ve been offered a great job that won’t leave you time to continue your doctoral studies.
In any of these scenarios, answering the question “Should I quit my PhD?” shouldn’t be too hard for you.
But if you’re like many doctoral students, you’re considering quitting your PhD because you no longer love your research, you still haven’t got the data or funding you need, your doctoral advisor ignores you, or you feel your research is going nowhere.
In these other scenarios, “Should I quit my PhD?” is a difficult question. To find the right answer, you first need to examine a lot of things. These include your reasons for choosing to pursue a doctorate in the first place, your reasons for wanting to quit, your alternatives, your economic situation, and much more.
Having been in your shoes, I know how hard it is to make the right decision. The following information is meant to help you decide what you should consider before you make a choice. Read More
I was born in Bucharest, Romania, and learned English when I was 11 years old. Two decades later I became a freelance English editor.
When I was a fledgling research scientist, I didn’t know there was such a thing as a freelance English editor or proofreader. Only publishers had copyeditors and proofreaders on staff, I thought. Research scientists who had manuscripts in need of revision didn’t hire freelance English editors. They asked a colleague whose first language was English to review their drafts. That’s what people around me were doing. I didn’t. I should have. Read More
