Proof against error

This week I did a proof reading job for a 24-page in-house magazine that had obviously been written and laid out with care and attention to detail. There were some small corrections to make, but the entire magazine was well-written and most of the changes were to correct minor style inconsistencies.

This is how proofing should be. It was a pleasure to do the job and I’m confident that I was able to do it well.

During my career, there have been occasions when the term ‘proof reading’ has been stretched to mean some pretty hefty editing. I’ve sometimes been asked to ‘proof’ copy that doesn’t seem to have been read through to make sure it makes sense, or that is hundreds of words too long to fit on the page. In cases like these, you end up working so hard to edit the text that it’s difficult to feel confident that you’ve spotted all the errors.

Of course, we’re all prone to error. As a writer I know how easy it is for mistakes to creep in - which is why proofing is such an important part of the publishing process. I genuinely enjoy proof reading because I’m contributing to a professional, error-free document. And when the materials are as well-presented as this week's proofing job I feel that I’m working with my client as part of a team that really cares about both its product and its audience.

New toy - a red netbook

This weekend I bought a new Samsung N220 Plus netbook, allowing me to fulfil my dream of writing on the go (mainly in coffee shops, I expect).

It’s taken me ages to decide which netbook to buy. I knew I wanted a 10.1-inch device that would be big enough not to strain my eyes and small enough to carry around easily. Over the years I’ve sometimes travelled with a full-sized laptop, an experience that impressed upon me me the importance of size and weight in these matters. I also wanted a decent amount of power from my netbook, and although my relationship with my new Samsung is still young, it’s looking good on that score. Reviewers seem consistently contented with it, although some suggest adding a memory card to speed up performance. I’ll wait and see what I want to do on that score.

Since I’m no technology wizard, my decision was largely based on the computer’s look and feel, and I don’t think this should ever be overlooked. As a writer, I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to have keyboard that’s responsive and comfortable to use. I’ve now tried the keyboards of a huge range of 10.1-inch netbooks and I’ve found many of them difficult to use, whether that’s because they’re too cramped or because the keys feel a bit spongy. During my search, I’ve tried the Samsung keyboard again and again, and every time I’ve been impressed by it.

Then there’s the screen. It might seem a bit optimistic given the UK weather, but in my mind’s eye all my planned trips are accompanied by glorious sunshine. In reality, even if it’s dull outside, indoor lighting can play havoc with reflective screens. So a clear, non-reflective screen is important, and that’s what I’ve got with the Samsung N220 Plus.

Lastly, there’s the colour. Compared to many other brands, the choice of red or green for this netbook is quite limited in comparison (I think it may also come in black, but I haven’t seen any of those around). Since I’m a fan of Paul Auster, whose novels often feature a red notebook, that’s the colour I chose. In the end, performance is more important than colour to me, and I like to think that’s where Samsung’s effort has been directed. Time and coffee-fuelled experience will tell.

Swimming with the current

During my first few months since leaving office life to become a freelance writer, I’ve realised how important it is swim with the current – you can go with the flow, but you still have to work to stay on course. It’s a challenge that’s immensely enjoyable.

One of the beauties of a freelance writing career is that, in theory, you can go at your own pace. Ideally, you have a steady flow of jobs and you know how to manage your time, so you can fit the work around your other interests and responsibilities in a tidy pattern. In practice, that ideal world is rarely glimpsed, especially when you’re in the process of establishing yourself. There are times when you’re snowed under with work and you have to put in the extra hours to meet client deadlines. Some clients will show an interest or even approve your quote for a job, but then hesitate for a while before giving the final go-ahead, and you have to be ready to get to work when they do. At other times, the flow of work slows down and your focus turns to lining up jobs for the future.

It’s important to remember that a large chunk of this type of work is unpaid – you’re establishing a business and you have to put the effort into researching the market, coming up with ideas and promoting your services. Any time that isn’t spent earning money needs to be spent figuring out how and where to earn it. For me, that’s one of the most enjoyable parts of the job because it gives me room to explore.

For me, a full working day is essential, even if it’s less rigidly structured than a nine-to-five office job. My day used to include dog-walking in the morning before setting off for the half-hour journey to the office. Now I can use that time for work, start early in the morning and then take a long break mid-morning to give the dogs a good walk when the park is less busy. Once I’ve done a full working day, and if I have nothing urgent to finish, I might knock-off during the late afternoon. But I’ll still put in a full day’s work whether it’s on delivering projects for clients or looking for new jobs.

So here are my tips for directing your workflow:

·         Work a full day, even if you don’t keep to strict office hours

·         Keep a list of jobs you can do during quiet work periods – these could pay dividends in building up future business

·         Swim with the current – be ready to work flat-out one minute and then at a more measured pace the next. As long as you keep at it, it should balance out.

Silence and stars in the Radnor Forest

We’ve just got back from a short holiday in Wales, where we stayed in a cottage with no television, no mobile phone signal, and no stress. I think it’s the seventh time we’ve been there but we never get bored of it and the dogs love it. There are walks in the Radnor Forest and farmland all around, and a splendid wood burner to keep you warm when you get back.

Labradoodle or sheep? Fargo blends in with the locals.

One amazing thing about such splendid isolation is that the nights are really dark. We city-dwellers are used to our stars being obscured by light pollution, so it's magical to step outside and see nothing but stars in the night sky.

There was one element of the peace and quiet that I wasn’t so happy about: the neighbouring farm was silent. Where there would usually be the sound of barking sheepdogs and cattle looking over the garden fence, there was nothing. It turns out that the farmers, who’ve been running a small but highly-respected organic meat farm, have had to call it a day. They’ve loaned some of their fields to other farmers for grazing sheep, but their own livestock is gone. It’s a real shame because they couldn’t have tried harder to make it work. Country life might be idyllic if you’re on holiday, but it can be incredibly tough if you’re trying to make a living and I admire the people who do it. And I miss those barking dogs.

Almost human? Fido's feelings

Last week, researchers refreshed the debate on whether dogs can feel ‘human’ emotions, with news about an experiment with food bowls that might suggest optimistic or pessimistic attitudes among the dogs that took part. Anything that can help us to understand our dogs’ behaviour, especially if that behaviour is caused by anxiety or stress, must be a good thing. But I’m not sure measuring dogs against a human yardstick is the answer.

Since dogs tend to live closely with their owners in a domestic setting, we have many opportunities to relate to their emotional state, and like most dog owners I’m sure my dogs lead an emotionally rich life. Our dogs don’t share our language, so a lot of their emotional and thought processes are a mystery to us. The popularity of ‘dog whisperers’ like Cesar Millan, who seem to understand the language of dogs better than most of us, is testament to that mystery and our urge to unravel it. But does that mean we’re witnessing ‘human’ emotions in our dogs?

By suggesting that dogs might be optimistic or pessimistic, the research draws attention to the vast and subtle range of possible motivations for dog behaviour. In the experiment described, a food bowl was placed at ambiguous points between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ locations, where the dogs had grown used to seeing two other bowls – one containing food, the other empty. The ‘optimistic’ dogs ran to the ‘ambiguous’ bowl in search of food, while the ‘pessimistic’ ones didn’t.

I’m sure those dogs had their reasons, but I’m not sure the experiment proves that an optimistic or pessimistic outlook was the cause. If a dog didn’t look for food in the new bowl, perhaps it was confident that food would appear in the ‘positive’ location and saw no need to investigate. I also know from experience that some dogs are anxious about unfamiliar objects, and this might affect their inclination to explore a bowl in an unfamiliar place. Without being a part of the trial, I don’t know for sure what conditions it was conducted in, but surely it’s also possible that, with a highly developed sense of smell, some dogs already knew whether the bowl was worth investigating, even from a distance.

When Charlie was quadriplegic the vet warned me that, in order to recover, he had to ‘want’ to walk again. Whippets are very adaptable dogs, and one of the concerns was that, as such, he might accept a level of disability and get on with it as best he could – but if he had accepted a life of reduced mobility, would that make him pessimistic? Or would that level of acceptance and ‘getting on with it’ make him an optimist? I just don’t think it’s that easy to attribute optimism or pessimism to levels of acceptance.

This is not to say that dogs can’t be optimistic or pessimistic, as well as feeling a huge range of other emotions. I think that, over thousands of years of canine domestication, there’s been a long-running cultural exchange between humans and dogs – how else would we be able to communicate as well as we do? But as this study makes clear, there are gaps in that communication.

It would be arrogant to assume that dogs don’t feel any of the emotions we feel, but there’s also arrogance in the assumption that canine emotions must mirror those of humans. Perhaps the root of the riddle lies in the fact that, as humans, we only have our human emotions to refer to in our relationships with animals – it’s an imperfect measure, but it’s all we’ve got.

Out of the office

This summer, I cut my ties with office life and struck out as a freelance writer.

I’ve got two main obsessions - dogs and words. I'm lucky to be able to earn my living by writing, and my ideal job would be to do that while hanging around with my dogs. Freelancing is something I’ve always wanted to do, but leaving office life means making a scary leap into an uncertain world. In the end, as I was preparing to make that jump, I was pushed by my dog.

In June this year, Charlie the whippet (that's him in the picture) collapsed in the garden and lost the use of his legs. We took him straight to the emergency vet who confirmed him as quadriplegic, probably due to a neurological problem in his neck. Charlie was referred to another vet for an MRI scan the next day, revealing a prolapsed disc and some other conditions in the vertebrae of his neck, which had caused damage to his spinal cord. He had major surgery to remove the tops of his vertebrae and decompress the cord.

Charlie refused to eat for most of the six days he spent in animal hospital. Whippets are already naturally slender dogs, so Charlie was a worrying sight, but luckily he started eating properly again as soon as we got him home from the hospital. Then we began a long process of rehabilitation. Charlie had to reroute his neural pathways so he could first roll upright, then stand up and learn to walk again. I had to take him into the garden and hold him upright whenever he wanted to go to the toilet. He’s nearly 12 years old, so as the vets constantly reminded me, his recovery would be slow - in fact, it took over three months of hard work.

At the time, I worked as a writer for a professional membership organisation, and although they were very understanding about me working from home so I could look after Charlie, they wanted me back in the office full-time as soon as possible. But I realised I didn’t want to go back to full-time office work at all. In fact, while it was a job many people would be happy to have, it had already become something of a dead end for me. I had no ambition to gain any kind of a promotion in an office environment. All I wanted to do was earn a living from writing while spending time with my dogs, and suddenly I couldn’t find one good reason why I shouldn’t do that.

So I handed in my notice, and here I am now. Charlie’s story has a happy ending because he’s walking – even running – again, albeit a bit lopsided. But it’s also meant a happy beginning because it’s prompted me to make what I think is one of the best decisions of my life, both as a professional and as a dog-owner.

For all the appeal of freelancing, it does lack the security of a full-time job. It's early days yet and I know there'll be a lot of hard work involved, but so far it hasn't felt that way. And it’s a different world, being at home while everyone else is at work. You get the chance to see a whole other side of the place you live in.

I’ll tell you about how we get on, and many other things, in future posts.