My most essential tools

December 15, 2025December 15, 2025Leave a comment

Some may ask, “What tools are most essential to your editing business?”

Honestly, I have too many to list in one blog post, so I picked five. This list is in no particular order. If you are starting an editing business, you may wish to look into obtaining each of these.

A laptop computer dedicated to my editing and my business functions. I certainly don’t want to get important files on which I am working mixed up with other people’s files. The awful truth is that for my first two years as a freelance editor, I shared a desktop computer with my husband. Although it was not often that he and I wanted to use it at the same time, it was not a good setup. I am ashamed to admit that I got my laptop only during the COVID-19 pandemic, when my husband had to work from home.

A Dropbox account. Any cloud storage would have sufficed, but I prefer Dropbox. Another shameful thing I must admit is that for the first year of my freelancing, I saved all of my work on USB drives. *cringe*

Toggl, the timekeeping system, and a website that converts time in hours:minutes:seconds to decimal hours. My use of Toggl is very basic; I use the timer to clock my working time. Performing an internet search will give you a choice of time-to-decimal converters. You can also convert time to decimal hours with Excel. But you can’t get paid without knowing how many hours you worked!

My daily planner, courtesy of At-A-Glance, on which I plan which days I am going to work on what. Some people prefer planners that are computer software, but when it comes to scheduling, I am from the old school.

The bank accounts and credit card which are dedicated to my business. It is very important to keep business money separate from personal finances. It makes things much easier at tax time—not to mention in general.

If you are a freelancer, what are some of the tools you deem absolutely essential?

Who’s “DAT”?

April 21, 2025Leave a comment

Running an editing business requires paperwork. (I use the term “paperwork” loosely, because much of it is filled out online.) I live in Maryland, and besides start-up forms when you first launch your business and tax forms to the IRS and the state, you must fill out and submit DAT forms every year by April 15.

“What are DAT forms?” you ask.

DAT stands for Department of Assessments and Taxation. It wants to know how much money your business made each calendar year. It also wants to know about the personal property your business has and how much it is all worth.

For Fiedler Editorial LLC, I used to have to fill out two forms. One is the Annual Report, which I still complete, and the other is the Personal Property Report, from which I am now exempt. Since I am a single-member entity, the Annual Report is pretty painless. All I have to do is list my department number (you find this out the very first time you fill out such a form), answer several questions about my business by checking boxes, and list my gross earnings for the year. The questions are fairly straightforward, and if you do not understand something, there is a phone number for DAT on its website. The only caveat is that you have to remember to list your gross earnings for the year, not your net profit. Thankfully, I read instructions well, so I have never made this mistake.

The first few times I filled out DAT forms, I had to complete the Personal Property Report, which was an absolute pain. I basically went about giving the required information by listing every single item of property my business owned on a piece of scrap paper (this included the carpeting and window blinds in my home office). Then next to each item, I wrote how much I paid for it and calculated its final value using a given depreciation formula. Finally, I placed each value into a column based on categories (one column for computer hardware, one for furniture, et cetera) and added up each column. It is recommended to make multiple copies of the Personal Property Report and do at least one rough draft.

Thankfully, after a few years, the rule became that a Personal Property Report was required only if the value of the business property was a certain amount of money or greater. The value of my business property was lower than this amount, so I did not have to bother with that form any longer.

What required forms in your state are a headache for you?

My love-hate relationship with printers

February 26, 2024Leave a comment

Printers. Just about everyone who has a computer needs one. How else would we make hard copies? How else would we create things to pin to our bulletin boards? I could go on forever.

I love printers (specifically our HP DeskJet 4155e).

I love them because they can take blue, yellow, magenta, and black ink and combine them to form a vast pallet of colors.

I love them because they are fast. I am old enough to remember the slow, noisy dot matrix and daisywheel printers of yore. The one at my home is an inkjet.

I love them because it is not too difficult to install and change their ink cartridges. If I can do it, anyone can—even if I sometimes have to refresh my memory by viewing a YouTube tutorial. My mother bought a Brother printer a little over a year ago and I installed the cartridges in it without any problems.

I love them because they connect to my laptop via Wi-Fi, without messy cords and cables dangling off desks and waiting on the floor to trip me.

I love them because they do their job without audibly saying, “Don’t tell me you’re printing this!”

That being said…

I hate printers.

I hate them when the paper jams. Granted, this rarely happens with ours, and I don’t think most modern printers jam much, if at all.

I hate them when the cartridges run out of ink. This always seems to happen when I am printing something very important, and it is why I always order ink ahead of time so I can keep new cartridges handy.

I hate them when they go offline for a reason I cannot figure out to save my life.

I hate them when they stop being supported by their manufacturer and refuse to print in color or to print correctly. Then I need to buy another whole printer. Planned obsolescence.

How about you? Do you love printers or hate them? Or both?

Friends in client places

December 18, 2023Leave a comment

When some freelance editors launch a new business, their first clients are their friends because they need work and their friends know this. This was the case with me five years ago when I first hung out my shingle as an editor. My first client was the spouse of one of my friends, and the project went very well—in fact, this person has had me edit other things for them since.

Following this, the friend whose spouse employed my editing services began using me for editing a short time later. Years have passed, and I have done a lot of work as a contractor for the company for whom my friend works. It has been highly enjoyable and has paid me well, as has the scientific work I have done for clients whom I do not know personally.

Some editors would not dare have friends (or family) as clients. I have read discussion list posts in one of my professional editing organizations in which a poster literally says, “No friends!” when speaking of their client base. Although I respectfully disagree in principle, I can understand why an editor would have this policy.

Would you want to have one of your good friends as your boss? Although a freelancer’s boss is not the client (a freelancer is their own boss), they want to make the client happy, and will do whatever it takes to do so. If the friend/client is unsatisfied with the final product, this undoubtedly puts a strain on the friendship. If the friendship is strong, the subpar result can be forgotten, at least eventually. But if the friendship is not strong enough…you get the idea. Personally, I am choosy about which of my friends I would take on as clients. I must ask myself, “How would this person act if they were a traditional boss?” The friend I mentioned earlier in this post has been a wonderful “boss,” so to speak, but other friends I have, while being great people, I would not want as clients.

If you are a freelance editor, do you have any of your friends as clients?

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

October 5, 2021October 19, 2021Leave a comment

What’s in a business name, more precisely?

I recently changed the name of my editing business and the change took effect in late September. My original name was “Suzelle Fiedler, Proofreader LLC.” I changed it to “Fiedler Editorial LLC.”

The latter, I believe, sounds much more professional than the former. The former name was one which I pretty much made up on the spot one evening after realizing that my business needed a name. (Duh.) It turned out that, at the time, I had confused copyediting (what I do) with proofreading (something many people think I do). I wish to emphasize that this happened three years ago, and both I and my business have grown by leaps and bounds since.

As I said earlier in this post, the name change took effect in late September. Would you believe that I first put the wheels in motion to change my name back in late July? I had to pay a sizeable amount of money, make phone calls, get my Articles of Amendment from the state where I live, and then wait until my state recognizes the new name (eight weeks–and I did not know it would take that long).

After that, I had to close the bank account of my formerly named business and open a new account under the new name of my business. This was terribly hard. It involved several trips to the local bank and dealings with some people who were not nice, to say the least. Last week, the new account was finally established. Yippee!

However, today I got a package at my door from the bank. It contained things which I had never gotten when I opened the first account with the old name. I had only asked for checks. Instead, I got things that I don’t even know how to name, much less use. And so tomorrow I must haul myself to the bank again, this time with the box, and ask what went wrong.

After all of this, do I regret changing the name of my business?

Absolutely not!

The new name is much better than the old, and I am very glad that I have it now.

Have you ever changed your business name? How easy or hard was it for you?