The Summer Shift: wobbly workflow

As we head into November and the days get shorter, I’ve been looking back on what’s been an up-and-down summer, and not just in terms of the weather.

Back in July, I wrote about a shift in what I’m working on, away from a long-term lexicography project and back to the regular freelance juggling act. The lexicography work hasn’t finished altogether, but from the start of August, I dropped down to significantly fewer hours. I had a new writing project lined up and I thought I’d managed to arrange my schedule to balance the two projects fairly evenly for the remainder of the year. So, how’s that been going?

Delays, delays, delays

The new project, writing a workbook for a new coursebook series, was due to use authoring software that I’d been told would need setting up before I got started. This was pencilled in to happen towards the end of July/beginning of August, then I was due to start work on my first unit at the end of August. The set-up, which I thought might take a couple of days, turned out to be incredibly messy and dragged on in dribs and drabs for weeks – waiting for replies to emails about problems I hit, waiting to arrange a call with an IT person and all hampered by the fact it was summer and key people were ‘on leave’.

Frustratingly, at the same time, there were changes going on in my lexicography work too which left me unable to carry on at several points as I waited for things to be implemented in-house. Those delays weren’t especially long, but just happened to coincide with the delays on the other project leaving me twiddling my thumbs and watching my income slip away. It might seem nice to have time ‘off’ right in the middle of summer, but they were the kind of delays where I was checking my email each day hoping for progress, so I couldn’t really use the time to do much else. And all round, it left me with worringly few paid hours through August.

And we’re off!

The software issues finally got resolved at the start of September and I got started on some writing just a week or so later than planned. I settled into the rhythm I’d envisaged for a couple of weeks, with roughly a third of my weekly hours on dictionary work and two-thirds on the writing project.

Because it was the first unit of a new project, there was a bit of time waiting for feedback and redrafting, then the unit had to be passed up the line for approval before I could carry on. Annoyingly, this once again coincided with a bit of a pause in my lexicography work and a few days of thumb-twiddling. Luckily, I had a talk to prep, so managed to fill the time productively, albeit unpaid.

October overload

I’d hoped to make a start on my next WB unit before I went away to the Euralex conference at the start of October, but for various reasons, it didn’t happen. That left me playing catch-up for a couple of weeks when I got back and working well over the number of hours I’d usually put in at my desk. It was only a handful of extra hours, but because it was a new project and new software, the extra focus and concentration involved really took its toll on me physically.

Finding my flow

As I’ve explained before, in order to manage a chronic pain condition, I need to work in relatively short bursts spread out through the day and through the week with plenty of breaks in-between. That’s super-easy with lexicography work that breaks down naturally into short stints. Activities for a workbook should also be fairly modular, but as this is for C1 level and each unit includes relatively long reading and listening texts, it’s easy to get caught up and spend longer stretches at my desk focused on getting a section sorted and not wanting to interrupt the flow while I’ve got everything clear in my head. The authoring software is also proving to be especially fiddly, which means greater stress and tension through my shoulders and hands manipulating the mouse to get the formatting correct.

When I talk about work taking a strain on my health, people often tell me to “be careful” and “take it easy”. I know the comments are well meant, but they’re also slightly grating because they infer that it’s somehow my fault and that I should just organize my work better so that it didn’t impact my health … which of course, is vastly easier said than done! When you’re trying to get your head around a complex new project, dealing with various inevitable stress factors (delays, miscommunication, looming deadlines) and you’re also under financial pressure, “taking it easy” isn’t always feasible.

Settling down

Thankfully, the writing project does seem to be settling down, with some of those initial teething problems sorted out. I’ve also pushed back a bit on the schedule, which has concertinaed up slightly from what I’d originally envisaged. I don’t want to extend deadlines too much because it’s a fee-based project, so if I take longer working on it, I effectively lose income, but a bit of shuffling by the odd day here and there, I think will make for a slightly easier workflow. 

Deadlines on sticky notes to allow for reshuffling!

 

Last week was moving towards being a slightly better balance of hours and towards the end of the week, there was a sense of feeling more on top of things. This weekend was also my first fully non-working weekend in several weeks (although I did write this blog post!). So, I’m hoping I can find a better workflow through November and December at least … before the added stress of needing to find new work from January onwards starts to kick in! It’s making me wonder how I’ve managed for the past 25 years of freelancing! A few easy years of ticking along with one project and I feel like I’ve rather lost the knack of the freelance juggle.

Disability Pride month: writing with one arm behind your back

July is disability pride month and at the start of the month, I attended a webinar by the Authors with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses (ADCI) group of the Society of Authors. At the time, I was laid low with Covid, but it provided lots of food for thought and I’ve been mulling it over since.

My situation

I don’t think of myself as having a disability, but I have been living – and working – with chronic pain for more than 20 years. It’s something I’ve written about previously and how it affects my ability to work. A few years ago, it was really debilitating with constant pain throughout my upper body that left me struggling with even the basics of life. As is common with chronic pain sufferers, the pain volume control on my nervous system had got turned right up to the max.

Thankfully, over the past few years, I’ve got my condition much more under control and have dialled things back to just the site of my original injury – a dislocated right collarbone. I now spend a lot of my time pain-free and the pains I do experience are localized and often no more than passing tweaks and twinges.  However, whilst things are hugely better than they were, I’ve discovered that I still need to operate within certain limits. Last year, I started on a new project that involved quite focused, detailed sort of work. It didn’t take long for my pains to flare up again quite badly and I realized I couldn’t overdo things. After a few weeks, I reduced the number of hours I was working and things settled down again. Since then, I’ve been working 15 hours a week on my main project, with a handful of extra hours on admin and other small projects, up to a maximum of 20 hours a week. And that seems to be a comfortable, sustainable level.

It's great to have found a balance that works, but I’m aware that as a freelancer, it’s not always easy to guarantee a regular workflow at the same level and, beyond my current project, I’ll be back to trying to take on enough work without overloading myself physically. And of course, part-time hours also means a part-time income. I probably earn around 60% of what I could if I was able to work full time, which brings me down to well below the average income in the UK – although not low enough to be eligible for any kind of support.

Inclusion and access

Getting back to the webinar, one of the key topics of discussion was inclusion of those with disabilities and chronic illnesses within the publishing industry in general and more specifically what can be done to improve accessibility for writers. One speaker talked about the use of accessibility riders – a document that sets out someone’s accessibility needs at the start of a contract. It’s a really interesting idea and one that’s backed up legally in the UK by the 2010 Equality Act. Of course, it’s relatively easy to imagine the kind of adaptations an employer might make for an employee who, for example, was a wheelchair user and needed ramps or an adapted desk setup. What’s less straightforward is the kind of adjustments needed for people with invisible disabilities and chronic conditions. And of course, once you get into the freelance realm, the responsibilities of those you work for become much more of a grey area.

In my own case, the practical adaptations needed are not obvious. For several years when I was first diagnosed, I tried using voice recognition software to avoid too much keyboard use. It was something that publishers didn’t have a problem with and even supported; in part because I had my own software, so it didn’t require any input from them! I remember one publisher even inviting me into the office to give a demo and taking a real interest in how it worked. However, I gradually realized that keyboard use isn’t actually an issue for me, it’s navigating and formatting with a mouse that causes me pain. You can navigate using voice software but it’s really tricky and frustrating, so I eventually gave up. I’ve tried a whole variety of different devices and settled on a combination of a graphics tablet which I use with my left hand and a regular mouse which is just better for certain tasks and which I use (sparingly) with my right. That means that I try to avoid tasks with lots of fiddly formatting, including lots of work on digital materials which tend to have annoyingly mouse-heavy templates or authoring software.  

Back in the days of working in a headset with increasingly frustrated cries of "scratch that" and "undo that" coming from my office!

Perhaps more significant for me though is the amount of work I can manage. As I said above, 15-20 hours a week seems to be sustainable and those hours need to be evenly spaced, not bunched up into short intensive bursts. Does that mean that I just have to put up with a lower income? Would it be reasonable to ask to be paid for hours I’m not able to work in the name of equity? Perhaps where there should be more flexibility is with workload. Ruling someone out of a project because they’re not able to work a lot of hours in a short period is surely discrimination.  It’s sometimes possible to negotiate taking on a smaller chunk of a writing project, but not always. And of course, taking on a smaller chunk of work means accepting a smaller fee and the inevitable gaps between lots of short projects which is harder to manage, means more admin and is financially loss-making. Spreading a piece of work over a longer timescale would be a better solution all round but would require changes in scheduling and longer deadlines. That should be perfectly possible in publishing, but often doesn’t happen because of poor planning and squeezed schedules. It’s a source of frustration for most freelancers, for me it’s either a source of pain, or more likely, rules me out of work.

Awareness

Should I be more transparent about my condition? Should I have an accessibility rider setting out what I can manage and what adjustments I might need? I certainly don’t keep my health a secret and many editors who I’ve worked with over the years know about my situation; although they don’t always fully understand the implications. I know of well-meaning editors who haven’t offered me work on projects because they thought it would be hard on me physically, when actually it would’ve been fine. Especially with the ups and downs of a chronic condition, they may have dealt with me at a time when I was really struggling and had to cut back or pull out of something and assume that the same applies going forward. That’s especially problematic given the big improvements I’ve seen in recent years. And of course, I don't know how many editors have just chosen not to offer me future work because they thought my health limitations would just be too much trouble ...

And I don’t always mention my health and its limitations.  In part, that’s a conscious decision. The changes I’ve made to control my condition recently have largely been about mindset and a mind-body approach to pain control. In short, I’ve shifted my mental focus away from the pain and stopped letting it define my life. So, I don’t want to have to keep making an issue of it in a work context. If I don’t anticipate something being problematic, there seems no need. So sometimes “availability” just ends up doing a lot of heavy lifting. When I say that I don’t have enough availability to take on a job, I’m sure people assume I have a packed schedule, when in reality, they’re often just asking for more hours than I can comfortably commit to, even with a completely empty schedule.

The ADCI webinar brought up many other issues, some relevant to my own situation, some less so. There’s the issue of variability for those with chronic conditions, managing work through good days and bad days, good patches and bad patches, good energy levels and dips - and how that affects schedules and deadlines. There’s the concept known within the community as ‘spoons’, something I could really relate to when my condition was at its worst, which you can read about here if you’re interested. And then there’s representation of people with disabilities and chronic conditions in what we write, including in ELT materials. But that’s a topic for another day, I think.

Writing rhythms

On most ELT writing projects, the work (and your life for the duration of the project!) gets divided up into units. For a students' book, that might be 10-15 quite large units, but for many of the sort of self-study, language practice type materials I work on, there can be anywhere between 20 and 50 short units which may only be 2-4 pages each.

At the start of a new project, you spend a bit of time getting to grips with the brief and playing around with the first unit or two to establish how they're going to work. Often, the format's already quite fixed in the brief, sometimes you have a bit of leeway to play with. Then once everyone's happy, you get your head down and start ploughing through unit-by-unit.

What interests me is how different people go about tackling each unit. Do they sketch out the whole thing then go back and fill in the details? Do they do it on paper or straight into a Word doc? Do they start from the beginning and work through each activity in turn? Or do they start with a core component, such as a reading text, then work outwards from it? A lot, of course, depends on the type and scope of the material, but even within that there's quite a bit of room for variation.

For the past couple of months, I've been working on some self-study vocab practice materials. There are 50 units altogether (across two linked projects) which is kind of daunting, but also quite nice as it means I've settled into a rhythm of roughly a unit a day. For each unit, I already have a (more-or-less) predetermined set of vocab items to practise across a number of activities. It's heavily corpus-informed, so I'm researching the vocab items to pick out features to highlight (typical usage and context, collocations, typical colligational patterns, etc.) and also using and adapting corpus examples in the activities. For the first few units, this was my approach:

 

The major downside of this was that I found myself running the same corpus searches numerous times. So, I'd explore vocab item A extensively in the initial research stage, then I'd find myself searching for it again several times to source examples for each exercise. I revised my approach after a few units so that I still did my research stage as before, but then sketched out a rough plan of the different exercises, e.g. exercise 1 focus on noun collocations, exercise 2 focus on following prepositions, etc. Then I ran a corpus search for each vocab item and added examples to several of the exercises at the same time. This seemed more efficient and I settled into it as a way of working for the first 15 units or so.

As is so often the case though, totting up my hours regularly as I went along, I realized I was spending much longer on the work than I'd budgeted for up-front. That meant that because the project is for a fixed fee, my hourly rate was nose-diving. It also meant I was getting behind schedule. After a bit of a review and discussion, it turned out that a lot of the extra work was just down to there being more involved in the project than I'd originally bargained for – isn't it always the case?! With no more budget available though, I had to try and rein in my hours regardless. So I came up with a new way of working.

On the plus side, it is much quicker because I'm only researching each vocab item once, then just reshuffling the results to create the exercises. On the downside, I'm not able to wait until I've researched all the items to see how the unit's going to shape up. So, if you like, the whole process is slightly less data led. In some units, it works out fine and the examples I've selected shuffle neatly into nice, coherent exercises. Other times, I find that a feature or exercise type starts to suggest itself towards the end of the vocab list and I realize I haven't noted relevant examples for some of the earlier items. Then I either have to squeeze the material I have into exercises which aren't a great fit or I have to go back and look for better examples for some items. For some units, I use up most of the examples I've collected, for others I'm left with a whole page of unused material at the end.

So often, ELT writing is a balancing act between how you'd like to work and what the time and budget allows. In this case, the hurry-up initially felt a bit uncomfortable, but as I go on, I think I'm settling into my rhythm again and making it work.

My coronacoaster II: underemployed and restless

Back at the end of May, I wrote about coming to the end of a stretch of work and not having anything more lined up as publishers froze projects and pulled work in-house. Since then, things have been kind of mixed.

Ups: On the plus side, I seem to have a number of projects lined up for the autumn. If everything comes off (which admittedly is far from guaranteed!) I should have a fairly steady stream of work from the end of Sept through into next spring. There’s a nice mix of projects; some corpus research and some writing, some vocab-focused materials and some more general English. It’s a relief to know there’s work coming up, although I’ll be happier when I get some more definite confirmations, schedules and contracts in place. As ever with freelancing, a lot of initial offers are tentative and it can seem to take an age before they’re confirmed, leaving you in an awkward planning limbo.

Downs: On the downside, it’s been a very quiet summer. Since the end of May, I had a few odd hours in July and August on one on-going project. Which was good – and a nice project to work on – but only added up to something like 25% of my usual working hours through June-Aug. That project’s had a (planned) pause since the middle of August and was due to start up again last week, but has now been delayed.

Restlessness: Like most freelancers, I’m not good at being underemployed. I can cope with the odd quiet patch if I know I’ve got something coming up, but especially with not much else to do at the moment (because Covid), I soon get restless and grouchy. Thankfully, the UK’s had a surprisingly good summer this year which has made things a bit easier. When the weather’s warm and sunny, it’s easier to potter in and out of the garden, go for nice long walks and as things have eased up, meet friends for socially-distanced, outdoor coffees. Last week was tough though. First, I had the let-down of expecting work to restart then finding out it wasn’t. Plus the weather was rubbish – grey and rainy and positively autumnal. I’m generally pretty good at keeping myself occupied, but after more than 6 months at home, I admit to getting distinctly bored. I’ve done plenty of walking, but as I don’t have a car, I’m tied to only walking from home and having done the same routes a thousand times, I’m really starting to crave a change of scene now.

Time for a break: Thankfully, this week, the sun’s back out and on Friday, we’re heading off for a week away – woo hoo! - our first holiday for a year and my first night away from home since February. We’re not going very far, just a week in a holiday cottage on the Isle of Wight, but it’s right by the sea and I’m sooo looking forward to just being somewhere different.

So I just have a handful of days to get through feeling restless, unsure whether there’ll be any work this week or not, and not 100% confident that the projects I have pencilled in for when I get back will pan out as I’m hoping. It feels a bit odd to be taking a holiday after doing so little work over the past few months, but boy, am I ready for it and the chance to properly switch off.

My coronacoaster

Up until now I've been grateful that my work's been relatively unaffected by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and aside from the odd wobble, I've been able to plod on much as usual. It's increasingly looking like there's been a bit of a coronalag though with things set to change from here on in ...

Early uncertainty: Back in mid-March I wrote about the initial effects the developing pandemic was having on my working life. Starting with a trip to Prague that was cancelled due to the virus at the beginning of March, a whole series of conferences and other events were called off over the following weeks leading to uncertainty about what was going ahead and whether or not to prepare or book things, then the mounting lost income. When everything shook out, it turned out that I lost just over £3K altogether (in lost fees and non-refundable expenses), which wasn't quite as much as I'd first feared.

A new normal: After that, things settled down and while everyone else was coming to terms with lockdown and new ways of working (or no work at all), I settled into what felt like a fairly steady-busy patch of work at my desk. I had a couple of on-going writing projects that just carried on much as before. No Zoom meetings here! I whizzed through one project in April and struck up a really nice working relationship with the in-house editor who was working from home. The other project became a little more disjointed and drawn out than it should have been, mostly because it had lots of interdependent strands and some of the contributors were more affected/distracted by the crisis.

Mostly, I was thankful to be busy and to carry on with my work routine much as normal. I had a few wobbles in the early days of lockdown just because of the general uncertainty about how things were going to work, how we'd get shopping and how my parents (both in at-risk groups but not nearby) would cope. But gradually things settled down into a 'new normal' and with some fabulous weather, I felt very grateful to have a lovely garden to retreat to for tea breaks and at weekends. I realized that I didn't miss going out and seeing people very much at all ... and in fact, found myself probably communicating with friends and colleagues a bit more than usual via email, social media and the odd Skype call. The lockdown rules in the UK allowed for 'daily exercise', but for a whole host of reasons, I didn't feel comfortable with going out every day, so initially I stayed at home most of the time, only venturing out for a walk or to the shop about once every 5 days. I was quite happy just pottering in the garden and didn't much feel like I needed to go out.

Change in the air: Then towards the end of April, news started filtering through that ELT publishers were cancelling or freezing writing projects and freelance contracts were being cancelled. Thankfully, I was able to finish off a project for one publisher just before their cut-off point and the other project, for a different publisher, carried on. However, that's now come to an end, so as of today, I have no work and, apart from one short job later in the summer (fingers crossed), little prospect of anything new coming along from my usual clients in the foreseeable future. 

Physical effects: When things started looking iffy, there was another patch of uncertainty about whether what I was already working on would get cancelled and, with my partner currently unemployed, how we were going to cope financially. That set off another bit of a wobble. My chronic pain which had flared up at the start of the crisis along with the tension floating around then got quite bad again and I really started missing my regular walks.  For me, walking is in part about just getting away from my desk and clearing my head but also from a physical point of view, it's a chance to release the tension that builds up around my neck and shoulders. When I walk, I stride along quite fast and allow my arms to dangle and swing by my sides literally shaking out the tension. Walking recently though has become a very different and altogether less relaxing affair. Because I live in the city centre, anywhere I walk involves an initial stretch along some fairly narrow and often busy pavements. Trying to social distance means lots of coronadodging - trying to anticipate where other people are going and step aside to let them through or move out their way. And then there's the annoyance about people who stroll two or three abreast down the middle of the path making no effort at all. I tried going out early in the morning to avoid the crowds, but I'm just not a morning person, so it was a struggle and left me feeling out of kilter for the rest of the day. I sought out less crowded routes, but they turned out to be mostly along slightly dull residential streets - it was a novelty at first being able to wander up the middle of traffic-free roads, but ultimately they weren't terribly inspiring. By the beginning of May, I decided I really need to get out again, so resolved to be more chilled about the 'busyness' and over the past couple of weeks, I've started walking a bit more regularly again. Some walks have been more relaxed and successful than others, but I'm getting better at enjoying it again.

The next phase: So sitting down at my desk this morning with no work to get on with, I'll do what I usually do during lulls in work:

• I'll put out feelers to all my usual contacts, even though I don't expect positive replies, you never know ...
• I'll update my website, LinkedIn, etc.
• I'll catch up on some admin and do my accounts
• I've also slightly unexpectedly got quite a few ideas buzzing round my head. Initially, I have a few blog posts to write - which are good for keeping my work-brain ticking over and also do no harm in keeping up my 'profile'. But there also a few potential self-publishing ideas bubbling under that may or may not come to fruition.

From a financial perspective, I have a little bit of breathing space - as a freelancer, you get paid in arrears anyway, so the income from the work over the past couple of months will come through over the next month, then I've applied for the UK government's self-employed scheme, which will see me through for a couple more months. After that, who knows. It remains to be seen what will happen with ELT publishing both in terms of how the big publishers react and also what new opportunities may arise. At least as a freelancer, I'm used to uncertainty and rarely have my work schedule planned out for more than a few months ahead, so provided I have enough in the bank to pay the bills for the next couple of months, I guess I'll just have to wait and see what comes up.