The most pressing job I have to do this week is proofreading. The entire job is a whopping 527 pages, so I expect it to take the entire week. In fact, it’s been added to one of my planning spreadsheets so I can see how many pages a day I need to clear in order to finish the job this coming Friday at the latest.
Yesterday, then, I finished off yesterday’s blog post. I thought I’d done it on Friday and scheduled it, but that afternoon meeting took most of the day and I must have just closed down and forgotten about it.
I cracked on with the proofreading straight away, pausing between chapters to make a cup of tea or have dinner. I thought this entire week would be more of the same.
However, I’d done quite a few pages when the client sent me an email. The author is sending in a bit more material, so that will affect my target time on the job. We had a chat about a different job, and as that one is pretty much ready to go just as soon as I’ve consolidated my corrections with the proofreader’s suggestions, we decided to switch priority.
So I finished the chapter I was on yesterday, and the intention is to switch to the other book today. They’re quite different books and I have to also switch from one author’s style to the other inside my head, for consistency. With the focus changing, I went into my planner and made the necessary changes to due dates and page counts, etc.
I proof-read 48 pages of Book 1 and put it to one side.
When I’d had enough proofreading, I pulled out Catch the Rainbow and added 501 words, bringing the current tally to 26,606 words. I would have done this at the start of the day, but it’s highly likely I wouldn’t have wanted to stop. So I made it my reward instead, at the other end of the day.
And that’s it. That’s ALL I did yesterday.
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That’s still a lot. Proofreading requires a lot of energized focus.
I had one friend once who couldn’t believe I got paid for ‘reading’. He asked if anyone could do it. I suggested he give it a try… He never mentioned it again, ever.