At the end of April, I attended the ACES 2026 conference in Atlanta. ACES is a US-based organization for editors in many industries, including journalism, book publishing, and corporate communications. Basically, it’s a society of people who work with words for a living. Here are some of my takeaways: Community is crucial.I got to meet and connect with a lot of people, including editors I’d only met before on Zoom or in a Slack channel. It was so energizing to be around other people who...
27 days ago • 2 min read
Spring is busy. Somehow this surprises me every year. The weather is amazing, the daylight lasts longer, the activities stack up, summer plans are being made, and end-of-school-year events start lining up. And that book on time management I've been meaning to read since January is still sitting next to my bookshelf. But honestly, I love spring. I don't feel like I have the time to get to everything I want to, but that's okay. I can enjoy the season for what it is and focus on what is most...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
I have a reading problem. I am not reading as much as I want to be. Sometimes it’s because my eyes can get tired after a day of editing on a computer screen. But I’d say the bigger source of my reading problem is that reading makes me so sleepy. I have tried so many things. I will read on a couch or my reading chair instead of my bed. I will read right after my first cup of coffee in the mornings. I will read in the early evening instead of right before bed. It pretty much doesn’t matter. If...
3 months ago • 1 min read
I need you all to know something. Even though I get paid to catch errors in manuscripts, there is a good chance you’re going to see a typo in my own writing here and there. I’m always SO annoyed to find one after people have seen it. But you know what? I remind myself that 1) I’m human and 2) this only helps my work. How, you ask? Because all of us need an outside pair of eyes to check behind us. There is something about the brain that decides it’s going to gloss over the words when it’s our...
3 months ago • 1 min read
In the month of January, the Freelance Editors Club read Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. And full disclosure: I haven’t finished the book yet. I know, I know. BUT. This book has totally snuck up on me and is causing me to view how I do certain things in a whole new way. The author makes an argument that we should not be afraid with experimenting with things and evaluating how those trials go—like a science experiment—rather than setting a...
4 months ago • 2 min read
I’m not a big video game player, but I’m definitely not not a video game player, either. Nintendo 64 was my jam as a kid, I got really into Skyrim: Elder Scrolls in 2013ish (surprising, right?), and I spent a lot of time playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild in my oldest kid’s newborn days when I was nap-trapped. But I’m more of an opportunistic player. I don’t have a ton of free time, so I’m usually reading or watching a show in the evenings. But I kept hearing about Dreamlight Valley and so I...
4 months ago • 1 min read
I don’t always love to look back and reflect. In theory I do, but I really have to be intentional to set that time aside to pause and see what’s working and what’s not working in my personal and work life. So when we had a reflection workshop in the Freelance Editors Club in December, I had an aha moment that I’m confident is going to stick with me through 2026 (and beyond, honestly). And it’s this: I tend to minimize what I do for work when I’m talking with people in my day-to-day life. If...
5 months ago • 1 min read
I just learned how to play chess. Okay, technically I learned when I was around nine years old, but I only remembered that the knight is the horse one and it makes an L-shaped move. So I'm not counting that. Duolingo recently added chess to their app, and I got hooked. I'll be honest—I get annoyed with the constant ads asking me to upgrade. But I gotta say, the way it teaches chess worked really well for me! And now I play it a few times a week for fun. (This is starting to sound like an ad....
6 months ago • 2 min read