My mom, Sonia Morris, was a founder of Language Lanterns Publications Inc. along with her sister Roma Franko.
At the time of her passing, Mom and Roma had published 15 volumes of translations of Ukrainian literature into English, accomplishing this immense task after they both retired from the University of Saskatchewan. Roma translated, Mom edited, and I helped out with proofreading and the website.
Roma intends to publish five more volumes over the coming years that Mom had already worked on, and I will help Roma achieve that goal. It'll be a challenge filling Mom's shoes, but it's the least we can do to honour and respect her memory.
In today's National Post, the RCMP takes on the Mafia in Montreal, "sowing descent and confusion among gangsters."
I guess this means: "You're going down, punk!"
From a listing for the History Channel on the Zap2It online channel lineup:
"Strategic bombing is the tactic of dropping explosives on the enemy nation."
Huh? At least we're not bombing ourselves...
There was a puzzling headline on page A6 in the National Post today:
Arctic Waters Melting As Temperatures Pass Records
Huh?
The BC branch of the Editors' Association of Canada featured a presentation on writing, editing and the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics at the April meeting tonight.
Sam Corea, Manager of Editorial Services for VANOC, the Vancouver Organizing Committee, talked about communications, media relations, and editorial services required by the Winter Games.
The amount of paperwork in terms of manuals, guides, maps, brochures, media kits, reports, schedules, etc., that needs to be produced is staggering, though Corea hastened to add that with sustainability being a major goal of the Games, VANOC was exploring alternatives to printing as much as possible, and would ensure that all materials were printed using recycled paper.
VANOC is already contracting external writers, editors, translators and photographers, and will be handing out work to more in the future, so Corea encouraged attendees to keep an eye on the VANOC website.
Other ways to get in on the action include the 2010 Commerce Centre and BC Bid
I attended a report-writing workshop put on by the BC branch of the Editors' Association of Canada today. The presenter was Diana Wegner, who teaches in the communications program at Douglas College.
The workshop had a stimulating mix of presentation time and excercises, and even though I do not do a lot of report writing, I found the material useful. It started with a review of research report components followed by a comparison of the writing process as opposed to creating a final product for the target readers, and then got into the nitty-gritty of revising for coherence.
I found Wegner to be a knowledgeable and stimulating presenter, and would recommend the workshop to anyone interested in clear research and writing.
Speechwriter Colin Moorehouse gave a rousing talk at an Editors' Association of Canada meeting in Vancouver tonight.
Moorehouse runs the Fearless Freelancing website, on which he provides advice to freelance writers.
He said most editors undersell their services, often because clients do not understand or appreciate what they do. He pointed out that you are saving clients time, and time is more important than money. So the key is distinguishing how you help people solve problems that are frustrating them.
If you're a writer or editor, and you have a chance to hear Moorehouse speak, don't pass it up!
I ran across the Open Source Media site the other day. Its goal is to collect the best in blog reporting.
"At Open Source Media, we believe... that freedom, openness and transparency in media is an inevitable result of the technological advances that have given every citizen the chance to breathe deeply of the news, thought and opinion that hovers in the ether between us... the phenomenon of blogging... (is) the modern equivalent of the Gutenberg revolution, a way of putting not just published material in the hands of the public—but publishing itself."
I'm doing a paper on the effects of blogging on traditional media and corporate public relations for a media theory course I'm taking in my Master of Arts in Applied Communication program at Royal Roads University.
This supports my thesis that blogs are changing traditional mass media.
I'm heading off to Victoria tomorrow to start my Master of Arts in Applied Communication program at Royal Roads University. The online distance-education program starts with an intensive three-week residency on campus, so I will likely be updating this blog even less often than I usually do.
Looking forward to being a student again, but a bit nervous about how this will fit into continuing to run my business over the next two years while I'm hitting the books. While the program is designed for people who are working full time, they say to expect 20-25 hours a week of study time.
Overall, I'm excited, though I hate to miss a good chunk of the salmon spawning season in Byrne Creek!
I was accepted into the Master of Arts in Applied Communication at Royal Roads University about ten days ago. I didn't blog about it, because it's still sinking in.
I'm really looking forward to the program, however it will be a big change in lifestyle for the next two years starting Oct. 17. The program is designed to be completed while working full time, with the courses said to take about 22 hours per week.
Each year of the two-year MA starts with an intensive 3-week residency on the beautiful Royal Roads campus in Victoria, BC, while the rest of the work is done online.
It's exciting and a bit scary going back to school after a 20-year hiatus. I aim to apply what I learn to growing my business, and anticipate making new friends and contacts.
Of several errors in Jacob Richler's "The Scooter Diaries" article in today's National Post, the following one takes the cake:
"... I like Vespa's style -- because the first image the brand name conjures for me is a young Jean-Paul Belmondo, helmetless, tearing down some street in Rome with an unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lower lip and a babe hanging onto his waste..."
Yuck!
Review - The Canadian Writer's Guide, 13th Edition
This "Official Handbook of the Canadian Authors Accociation" is a collection of bite-sized articles on a wide variety of topics of interest to aspiring and published writers.
Ranging from prose to poetry, from the business of writing to finding an agent, it can be read cover to cover, or flipped through at leisure to find topics of interest. Articles range from a page to four pages in length.
It also contains extensive listings of writing groups, contests, and private and governmental funding sources.
Yikes, this blog has gone from near-daily posts to only nine so far in the month of August, and several of those have been rather short.
If I do have any "fans" out there, don't worry because in a way this is a good sign, for we've been very busy with work this summer. July and August both entered the list of top-ten earning months for our little company since we started it in February 2000.
It's nice to feel wanted, however we're back in the old home business dilema -- when you have plenty of free time you have little free cash flow, and when you're making money, you have no free time.
We have prevailed upon our major clients for a one-week camping vacation this autumn, and while we need the break, I also feel guilty as a few smaller clients are quite dependent upon our specialty of on-demand, fast-turnaround translation and editing.
I need a clone, or another translator-editor team I can trust to work to same-day in/out deadlines on occasion, using a variety of different style guides.
That's the other home business dilema -- at what point are you regularly earning enough to subcontract work out? Some months the hours pile up like crazy, however other months we've got plenty of time for streamkeeping activities and other volunteer work.
Well, the queue still has several items stacked up, so enough ruminating. Back to work.
I've been gradually trying out Open Office for word processing and spreadsheets. It saved my bacon the other day when a client sent me a file that kept crashing Word 2000.
I opened the file with Open Office Writer and started working on it. However, I soon discovered that I wasn't up to speed on OO, and I really needed to pump out the job quickly, so I saved the file and tried opening it again in Word, and voila, no more crashes.
One thing I've noticed that I miss in OO Writer is indication of cursor line and column position on the status bar. I get a lot of work editing newspaper articles, and I need to know these stats for headline length, etc.
I searched the OO website, and discovered that OO Writer can't do that, yet. However my search didn't turn up if the team plans to add the feature. I hope they do!
We arrived home in Burnaby last night after a couple of days camping on the road back from the Editors' Association of Canada conference in Calgary last weekend.
I'll post a few entries over the next day or two about our travels, however first I'd like to share a free-writing excercise from the conference. We were asked to write "to" a thing, keeping our pens moving non-stop as soon as they hit the paper. I chose computers.
To computers: You seduced me with your power, the magic of green or yellow characters dancing across a screen. You let me combine work with play, and even let a bit of that adolescent hot-rodder continue to express himself into middle age with gigahertz instead of horsepower, graphics cards instead of mag wheels, oodles of RAM instead of Edelbrock intake manifolds. You have made me dependent upon you to put a roof over my head and keep it there. Without you, my business would die. You make me uncomfortable because while initially you empowered me, I am now almost totally dependent upon you. That's why I'm eagerly looking forward to spending three days camping on my way home, far out of WiFi and cell phone range, isolated from email and clients. Three days of freedom before I am bathed in the glow of your screen again, mesmerized.
The Editors' Association of Canada annual conference continued today on the SAIT campus in Calgary.
I attended several useful sessions in the afternoon, followed by the annual general meeting, which was run efficiently, yet with humour.
As with any non-profit association, there were calls for volunteers, however as this is my first year in the group, I kept my head down. I already volunteer with the Stream of Dreams Murals Society and the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers, which is enough. :-)
We just got back from a great banquet, which was enlivened, or disrupted, depending on one's point of view, by the sixth game in the Stanley Cup finals. Unfortunately, Calgary lost in double overtime, so there was no point in heading downtown after the banquet....
We enjoyed interesting conversations with many people, and look forward to a couple more sessions before the conference winds up tomorrow afternoon.
We went to the opening reception for the Editors' Association of Canada annual conference yesterday evening on the SAIT campus in Calgary.
It was my first conference, and it was interesting to start putting faces to some of the names that appear from all over the country on the association mailing list.
My wife and I met many friendly and vocal people.
This morning Alberta Lieutenant-Governor Lois Hole gave a rousing keynote address on the importance of public education and libraries. It was an inspirational speech, ending with her saying she looked forward to the day when teachers and librarians were rewarded as well as hockey players. :-)
(Editors were later assured there would be a TV in a corner of the room with the volume off during tonight's banquet, which coincides with game 6 -- Go Flames!)
The first session I attended today was "Can Editing be Taught" with a panel made up of Kathy Garnsworthy, Maureen Nicholson, Frances Peck, Rosemary Shipton and Ruth Wilson.
It was entertaining and informative, with the conclusion being "yes and no." Some skills can be taught -- the craft side of the profession, however others may be innate -- the art side.
I look forward to more sessions this afternoon.
Why do western newspapers and magazines continue to publish cutesy stories about Japan without checking facts?
In the April 26, 2004, Maclean's, Steve Burgess writes: "Such unusual touches and jarring cultural snapshots have caused westerners to put Japan under a microscope for years." OK, one would assume that he would then have a passing acquaintance with his subject.
However, he later states: "Japanese writing features three different sets of characters. One of them is reserved exclusively for spelling out things that are not Japanese, such as the signs of foreign-owned restaurants." Not true.
If you look at the main photograph accompanying the article, it shows several Japanese companies displaying their names in katakana, the script that is supposedly reserved only for foreign words, or even in English characters, for huge outdoor advertisements.
I have beside me a Japanese-language catalog from electronics retailer Yodobashi Camera from my last trip to Japan a few months ago. The Yodobashi Camera logo is in katakana. Inside the catalog names of leading Japanese companies including Sony, Nikon, Canon, etc., are rendered in katakana, or simply in English characters.
Better take another look into that microscope!
I attended Jim Taylor's informative and entertaining "Eight Step Editing" workshop today that was put on by the BC branch of the Editors' Association of Canada.
It was well worth the $90 fee. I won't steal Jim's thunder, I'll just say that anyone who has to write or edit anything would benefit from this workshop.
Jim has an excellent 76-page booklet that he hands out to participants, which contains plenty of excercises that are done in the workshop, and at home.
He puts on an excellent presentation, full of humour and wit, and leaves participants begging for more.
Highly recommended!
Start and Run a Copywriting Business
by Steve Slaunwhite
Another how-to book in the Self-Counsel Press small business series.
Our business is mostly translating and editing, however I found this book a valuable read. Much of it applies to any freelance creative business.
Lots of good tips on setting rates, getting organized, marketing and promotion, and dealing with clients.
The National Post screwed up bits and bytes in the Feb. 26 paper in an article on broadband ISP download speeds.
They took the data from broadbandreports.com which clearly states that it is measuring kilobits, however somehow all the references in the article became kilobytes. They further screwed things up by defining kilobytes per second as "kbps" which in fact is kilobits per second.
There is a good explanation of download "speed" on the broadbandreports.com site.
I gave my wife the best Valentine's Day present she's had in years -- the whole day to herself, while I attended an Editors' Association of Canada workshop :-).
John Vigna presented "Thinking Like an Entrepreneur: Growing Your Writing & Editing Business." As I recall, John has been running a writing and editing business for about three years now, and appears to have picked up a lot more business sense in that period than some of us who have been toiling away on keyboards for much longer.
Business plans? Managing cash flow? Marketing? Networking? All topics I suspect most creative types don't like to think about, yet that are crucial to success.
John told us about how he'd had a stellar rookie year, with gross sales that far surpassed his expectations, and then how in his second year he'd slacked off on his marketing and soon found himself pinching pennies.
By focusing on marketing basics, he pulled himself back up, and during the workshop he ran us through those basics, plus a number of excercises to see how we were doing, and where we needed to improve our business skills.
I can relate to John, as we too started out strong, had a stellar second year, and then became complacent, only to see sales slide for two consecutive years.
So it's back to the basics. We have to write a new business plan, and update it regularly. We have to devote more time to marketing instead of waiting for work to find us.
What a great way to spend Valentine's Day! My wife, who is also my business partner, got the day to herself, and I came home charged up with new plans for making money. How romantic :-).
There was a business tip from local publisher and internationally known speaker Peter Legge in the Vancouver Sun the other day.
He pointed out that if you get up an hour earlier every day, that gives you 365 more hours a year, or 15 extra days per year, to accomplish your goals. Well, duh. But the simple math got me thinking -- and feeling guilty.
My wife and I run a home-based translating and editing business, and if there are no pressing deadlines, it's seductively easy to roll over for another hour when the alarm goes off. With no commute, and no fixed starting time, it's also easy to watch some 1 1/2-star movie on the TV past midnight.
We talked about this, remembering with amazement the days when we had full-time jobs in Tokyo and got up at 6:00, made and ate breakfast, packed lunches, and trotted out the door at 7:15 to catch the train downtown.
What's happened to us? Wouldn't we like to have 15 extra days a year? Hell, with our present level of discipline, we could shoot for 30 extra days a year!
I used to scoff at all the tricks people who work from home say they use to maintain discipline and to remain focused on work. I now realize we've been in a long, slow, nearly imperceptible slide that has accumulated over the years.
So it's back to business.
When the alarm goes off, I will get up.
Thanks, Peter.
A plumber paid us a two-hour visit today, and the labor charge came to C$162.50. That's C$65.00 for the first half-hour, and then C$65.00/hour for the balance.
I don't begrudge paying a professional tradesperson to do something that would likely take me two or three times as long to accomplish, and perhaps with questionable results. What gets my goat is that while the average person swallows paying a plumber or car mechanic such rates, quotes for translation or editing that are anywhere near that hourly figure draw gasps of surprise.
I know a plumber has years of training and thousands of dollars worth of tools. So does an editor. I have a total of seven years of university, and thousands of dollars worth of computers, software, and reference books.
Dealing with companies or other people in the trade is fine, and in the end I gross at least as much per hour as the plumber does, and on many jobs even more. It's the calls from Jane Public who needs help with a resume that irk me. Why would she think she could pay me less than, say, an electrician?
Part of the problem is the hundreds of less-than-professional editors and translators out there who are willing to work for a pittance. By selling out for 8 cents a word for translation, or $15.00/hour for editing, they demean our craft.