I'm excited to be exploring a career in freelance copy-editing! I'm happy to have you visit.
With this first post, I would like to introduce myself to you. I am a forty-something mom of two, lover of one who resides in the magnificent state of Montana. For all but the last two of those forty-odd years I lived in the charismatic little town of Big Sandy, hidden away between Great Falls and Havre, dangerously close to Canada. (It's only dangerous because the wind blows pretty much unhindered across that great country before it slams into the Hi Line fresh from the North Pole in the winter. One can freeze quite quickly if not appropriately prepared.) It was a wonderful life, mostly, but one or two of the last rough patches led me away from home. I look back from my happy present with fond memories and forward with a fresh outlook. It's all good.
Growing up and making a home in a rather remote community of about 450 people (it was closer to 600 when I was a kid) gave me unique insight into serving others and hard work. I built and ran a small greenhouse when I was 14, and mom and I enjoyed that for over 20 years. I was offered a job at the local lumber yard when I was 14, too, so with school and the plants I was busy all the time. I got married the week before I graduated from college with my Associate's Degree in Business Administration, worked another few years at the lumber yard, a little in the winter at my grandfather's CPA office preparing taxes, and filled in the quiet times for a few years after my daughter was born with an afternoon shift at the local dry goods store. Somewhere in there I drove truck for a customer harvest crew, taught Sunday School, and produced the weekly parish bulletin at St. Margaret Mary's. My son was born in the mid-nineties, and when he started school I worked at the local newspaper for a year. I dabbled in scented oils and dried flowers, selling my wares alongside the bedding plants in season. All the while I lived in the rural areas around Big Sandy, helping on first my parent's and then the in-law's farms.
Shucks, that sounds just exhausting. Sometimes it was. It was also rewarding and edifying, and it made me who I am today.
Well, that and the mail routes I drove as a sub for fifteen years, the local car wash we bought, and then the lumber yard that I eventually bought from my first boss and successfully ran for four years. Then it got seriously exhausting, excruciatingly complicated, and things rather came undone. The rest is the subject of a book that can't be published until after I'm dead, or at least until some of the real-life characters have passed on. But you can still shop at the lumber yard - my sister runs it now.
Within all of that is the humus that my love of reading, writing, and editing grew in. It shows up clearly in my long strange list of occupations once or twice. I have sharpened my skills in the past couple of years working with a great start-up, MACK Productions, Inc, a Billings event planner. I met lots of great people setting up Family Life Expo events and the related websites and Facebook pages. The great gals there helped me sharpen my digital skills and creativity, and I'll never forget them (because they're still on speed-dial!). So I'll start again, building a portfolio as I go, trying not to forget that what I can do with words does not feel so natural to everyone.
Until next time,
Corinna
