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Excuse the very whingey negative blog post. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been a bit miserable lately. Normally, I really like autumn. My boots get to come out of hibernation, which is good because I love my boots. September contains my birthday, and the SfEP conference. And both of those things were very… Continue reading October sucks

I need someone to invent all these things, please. A search engine that’s as effective as Google, but is called something like thisisforworkIpromise.com. An app that can differentiate between the time you spend on Twitter marketing your business and engaging with your community, and the time you spend looking at baby animals with things on… Continue reading Things that need to exist

Am I allowed to say that one of my favourite sessions at this year’s SfEP conference was… my own? Well, looks like I’m saying it anyway, arrogant arse that I am. Although, in my defence, the session wasn’t about me and what I had to say. I was just there to lead a panel of… Continue reading Editing with kindness

I need to concede my “SfEP’s Sweariest Speaker” crown to Chris Brookmyre. Most editors are not brilliant at knowing the first lines of pop songs. Which meant our team won chocolate. If you’d like to get a cheap laugh, name your quiz team “Kevin”. It in fact was possible to love Emma Darwin more than… Continue reading 30 things I learned at #SfEP2019

Ah, punctuation. Where would we be without it? In run-on sentence hell, that’s where. The power of these tiny little marks in helping us to communicate effectively with our fellow human beings never fails to astound me. But also, punctuation is hard, yo. So here is my guide to each punctuation mark: . The full… Continue reading A Very Serious Guide to Punctuation

What’s the worst part of parenting? Is it the sleepless nights? Slime stains on the carpets? Having DanTDM constantly on the TV? Or is it the guilt? Parenting guilt is horrible. I had so much of it during my daughters’ early years – every time I had a problem with their health, or their behaviour,… Continue reading Holiday guilt

Writing is hard, yo. That’s why I’m forever in awe of anyone who actually manages to finish a novel. And when you’ve finished your novel, you’re still not done with the writing. Because then you’ve got to write your back-cover copy, sometimes called a blurb or a synopsis (although those two terms sometimes mean other… Continue reading The writer’s nemesis: back-cover blurbs

People who know me or have followed me for a while probably already know that while I love editing, and I love working at home, I hate hate hate the marketing that is a vital part of running a business. Loathe and detest it with the fire of a thousand suns. Or at least, for… Continue reading Personal branding: you do you

I took a pretty huge step this week and started working with a business coach. The main reason this is a huge step for me is that I really dislike parting with money. So what’s one of the first things my coach talks to me about? Outsourcing. Yes, apparently one of the secrets of success… Continue reading Outsourcing

My last post was about not blogging, and hey, guess what? So's this one. This is probably not a very good blog post for me to write, but I’m going to do it anyway. I have some news for you. You don’t have to blog. This is probably not really news to anyone. But perhaps… Continue reading You don’t have to blog