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Dear John ...

In the spring edition of On Course, we asked you to send in either a poem or a 500 word account of a day in your life in publishing. Congratulations to Pippa Mayfield and Michele Clarke, who both win a day’s training. Here is Pippa’s winning entry...

No one warned me about the impact of snoring when I went freelance, but it’s been useful lately, whilst working with an author in a time zone a few hours ahead of me. Awoken c 4.30 a.m. by the sound of wildebeeste migrating through the bedroom, I sigh, trudge back to the Mac and, blissfully undisturbed, pen another unit’s worth of comments to arrive with a probably sickening thud in the author’s Inbox in time to get feedback before the end of the day. And all this before breakfast.

The wildebeeste depart around breakfast time and I then take a leisurely hour or so for some domesticity. This is when in-house editors remember that they can’t print the book without that bit at the back that they often ask me to do, so I then find the appropriate messages in my Inbox. John, maybe Book House could consider an ‘Imaginative Email Correspondence with Freelancers’ course? If I had a fiver for every email called ‘Work’ or indeed ‘Work?’ ... Anyway, I’m very grateful, of course, but concerned that the former is an insulting imperative or that the latter casts doubts on whether my chosen lifestyle constitutes a profession. But emails do provide the office banter which I would otherwise miss, so I hope they keep them coming.

Whether there’s a strict plan for the day depends on how close the deadline is. This is, after all, the beauty of being freelance. Generally pretty computer-based for the most part, it can be a little sedentary. However, every so often a change of scenery arrives in the form of A3 proofs, which demand the use of the dining room table. This takes me out of earshot of email alerts and whilst technically I could walk three yards and turn on daytime TV, strangely I don’t feel the urge, so my clients can be reassured that they are hiring someone with half a brain cell left.

One thing that doesn’t change with being freelance is the last post panic. I am nearer my local Post Office than I ever was to the in-house Post Room, but there is still a flurry of activity at about 4.30 p.m. to send a jiffy bag back down the M6.You’ll note that I’ve now been up for twelve hours, but once the in-house editors have all gone home, the evening is handy for doing those things that they ‘wondered whether you could fit in’, as long as I’ve got on well with the main project earlier in the day. I’m lying – it never fits that neatly ... would that it did! But anyway, as these requests ensure that there is plenty on the horizon, how could I complain?

The wildebeeste Foley artist suggests a later dinner, hoping that I will actually pack in for the evening afterwards, but if we leave it too late, the snoring has started before I’ve even shut my eyes, so it’s back to the Mac...

By Pippa Mayfield

Freelance

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