Business Is Lookin’ Up!

With great delight we came to an agreement with the new client, a charismatic gentleman with a lot of wit and talent who’s willing to pay us a living wage. I’m thrilled! We’ll back each other up on the copyediting and proofreading, and I’ll do the heavy lifting in the content consultation (which may read “rewrite it”).

Another client is in the wings, but that looks a little dubious. Don’t know if anything will come of that but kind of doubt it.

Meanwhile, my designer friend had no problem changing copy editor to copyeditor, one word on one line, and the result still looks great!

I spent a fair amount of the day, when I wasn’t reading opaque student copy, rewriting our website content. Now Tina needs to add her part, and once DesignerMan comes across with a logo, we’ll be ready to fly with that.

Another advertiser surfaced with an expression of interest in buying space for a real ad (not a blackhat SEO device) on FaM. So that also is very pleasing. Last month, as I may have mentioned, combined ad revenues and editing pay came to about what the college is paying me. If we could make that a regular thing, I could stand down off all the grinding composition courses. Might keep the online magazine writing course, which this semester attracted an amazing 20 classmates, all them claiming they’re actually interested in learning to write.

If the combined business enterprises generated that amount 12 months a year, one or two sections would add enough to allow me to live without having to draw money out of savings, at least for a while.

Meanwhile I have a running head start on the e-book I intend to publish. Its backbone will be how-to advice on minimizing financial stress, but it will be fleshed out with recipes, reflections, and various idle essays from Funny.

This will be the Funny’s 1,635th post. Can you imagine? There’s more, too, still marooned on iLife—a bunch of it didn’t come over when I moved to WordPress.com. Guess that’s all going to go away when Apple’s new Cloud service takes over. Oh well. Anyway, there’s a ton of copy on this thing that could be converted to books.

Caught a nasty cold this weekend. It was Day School Sunday, a chivaree celebrating the Anglican church’s large flock of private schools. About 75 choristers of grade-school age joined us (they, and all their parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, godparents aunts, uncles, and accountants: the place was overflowing!) for an hour and a half’s hoedown.

Of course, naturally, I ran very late for choir and I’d forgotten to fill my water thingie as I was racing around trying to get robed and find the stuff I also didn’t have together to haul upstairs (and downstairs, and upstairs). As I was running for the choir loft I realized the water thingie was empty. A tide of bouncing young bodies was flooding out of the choir room, and it was like swimming upstream to get back in there where the water dispenser is.

Sooo…. I filled up the water cup from the public fountain, watering hole for two score and fifteen germy little kids, all the while thinking d-o-o-o-o-o-n’t d-o-o-o-o-o-o-o t-h-a-t!

Chalk up one point for the still small voice.

By the time I got up this morning I was convinced I had a strep throat. Drove around trying to find a clinic for a test this afternoon, but none of the outfits that advertised they would do it actually were doing it.

It’s settled down into a heavy cold and laryngitis now. Sore throat is fading, so I think it’s just the fall miseries.

What the heck. It means I don’t have to go to choir practice Wednesday, and I probably won’t be able to sing on Sunday, either. Since Wednesday is my Day from Hell, I secretly welcome a break that evening.