What sort of proofreader and copy-editor would I be if I didn't dabble a little in writing too ... Feel free to browse through my latest journal entries below.

You may think it’s strange but I couldn’t work on your text all day every day for a sustained period of time– I think I’d go insane, particularly if it’s an intense and laborious piece of work. Variety is the spice of life for me. I’m not saying it’s the same for every editor, in fact I’m sure it’s not, but for me it is.

I tend to break my working day into two: one period till lunch and the next for the afternoon. I’m usually juggling projects and that’s just how I like it.  I find it too hard to keep focused on one piece of writing for a long period of time. I get bored and lose concentration, and I wouldn’t do as good a job as I should if I’m not fully engrossed in what I’m doing. Sometimes taking a break from one piece will rejuvenate me for the next time I’m working on it, or I might go away and come back with a fresh eye and a keener perspective.

Is it usual to like one piece of work over the other and hence spend more time on one? Well, yes, I suppose that can happen, but I’m well aware I have deadlines to meet and clients to keep happy, so I’m quite regimental about stuff like that. I know what I have to do in a day and I get it done.

What suits best is when I have two pieces of work on that use the different sides of my brain, so say a developmental edit of a fiction book which is engaging me creatively and then a proofread of a non-fiction book where I’m using the logical side of my brain to check running heads, contents pages and page numbers. It’s like that saying, ‘A change is as good as a holiday’. It’s definitely not where work is concerned – but the idea is something similar!