15 ways to be a better editorial freelancer

This year, Wordstitch is celebrating its 15th anniversary. Since February 2009, I've worked as an editorial freelancer with over 100 clients on over 65 million words' worth of projects. I've become an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading and a member of other editorial and freelancing groups and associations. I've been privileged to learn from an immense range of talented and inspiring people.

I've also (gasp!) inevitably made some mistakes and have a not inconsiderable pile of things I'd have done differently with hindsight.

So, to celebrate my 15 years as an editorial freelancer, I've collated some of the lessons I've found most helpful. Here they are in no particular order. I hope they inspire you in your quest towards your own next milestone as a freelancer (whether editorial or otherwise).

1. Be you

We all have a public persona – a version of ourselves that we present to the world. This is inevitable and probably necessary for our mental health. But make sure your professional self is genuinely a version of you. Sometimes the best advice you give to your clients will come from unfiltering yourself.

2. Don't leave the 'business stuff' so you have to play catch-up

Keep records. Analyse your data (and learn from it) as you're going along. Keep your professional development current. Start a system for making your blog posts evergreen from the beginning. Network in little bits. Leaving any of these things (and myriad other tasks) until later means that when you have fantastic new ideas for developing your business, you'll have limited scope to enact them as you'll be trying to catch up with all the things you should have been doing as you went along.

3. Beware of financial anchors

For years, my mental 'anchor' (or set point) for fees was a specific per-1000-word rate that was offered by one of my earliest clients. I knew the rate was woefully out of date (both in terms of real-world inflation and in terms of my own growing expertise) and I was gradually raising my rates, but for ages I couldn't totally cut loose. For me, the trick was ultimately to switch from thinking in terms of money to thinking in terms of the value I give my clients and the experience I can share with them.

4. Your time is your own

To paraphrase Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time series, 'Don't jump whenever anyone else says "toad".' Unless you have a contract that explicitly says otherwise, you decide when you do the job, when you respond to the email and when you are available. How you allocate your time is up to you.

5. Leave something in the tank

For many years, I damaged my health by working too hard. I also kept ending up on a rollercoaster where I'd unrestrainedly enjoy a non-client-work aspect of my business for a while (such as social media) and then lose the will to face any aspect of it for an extended period. For me the trick has been keeping something in the tank: as much as possible, retain that hunger to always be doing more of every aspect of your business.

6. Take ownership of change

You will have to change your business, the details of how you work and potentially even yourself as the world changes around you. Accept this and try to stay ahead of the curve. Make changes you choose before you have unwanted change pushed upon you.

7. Other people's businesses may not be as glamorous as they appear

Beware of becoming despondent at the apparent perfection, scale, glamour or success of other freelancers' presences online. Most freelancers are just individuals who learn as they go along, and there is no magic to anyone's success. Continue exploring what works for you.

8. Follow your own path

Following on from the previous lesson, if you need to, apply this old editing maxim to yourself: 'leave good enough alone'. If you have a minimal online presence but you're earning what you need and your clients are pleasant, is this enough for you? Your path is your own: don't try to force yourself along someone else's.

9. The text is secondary

Words exist for communication. Grammar and style rules can be enormously helpful and there is no substitute for understanding them inside out. But they are not why text is written. Remember that what you are ultimately doing as an editor is helping people to connect with one another.

10. Your worth as an editor is not (necessarily) demonstrated through volume

Editors sometimes show their experience and worth the most when they carefully choose not to make a change.

11. Embrace all feedback

Unequivocally good feedback is nice. But neutral or bad feedback is a gift that will help you to avoid receiving more of the same in the future. All feedback is an opportunity to look for clues about what your clients do and don't like, so you can do more or less of it. I've written more about this here.

12. Use checklists

I've deliberately mostly refrained from referring to specific tools and techniques in this list, but checklists are an exception. Checklists improve everything (see also spreadsheets improve everything). I wrote about this in my post on handling large editorial projects.

13. Longevity as a freelancer comes from knowing yourself

Part of what makes freelancing so hard is that you are your business. As such, your personality traits (positive and negative) directly affect your success. Being a successful freelancer over the long term means doing the mental work needed to recognize when you’re getting in your own way – and working out how to change that.

14. Find a community

Many of us go into editorial freelancing partly because we like solo working. But at some point in our careers (maybe often), we all lose perspective about something, whether it's related to an editorial matter or how we're operating our business. Exposing ourselves to others' ideas – and not just when we're in a crisis – is a fundamental way to live better business lives.

15. Look it up

This one's just for editors. Even if you've been in business 15 years, look it up. Even if you've been in business 50 years, look it up. Unless you truly know it to be 101% true, look it up.