1995: age 19
Leave home in the top of the South Island, Te Tauihu, for the University of Canterbury.
Vow never to:
- live in Tasman District again (stifling small towns)
- get married (why would you?)
- have a kid (too much work, not enough freedom).
Can I be trusted to keep my vows?
1998: age 23
Leave Aotearoa for the US and become a radio producer.
Stumble across a husband and replace no-marriage vow with wedding vows.
New husband doesn’t want kids, so that’s a vow we can both keep.
2003: age 28
Return to Aotearoa with American husband.
2004: age 29
Work for the Department of Conservation as a receptionist in the Far North, Te Hiku. Buy a house.
2005: age 30
Learn we’re having a baby.
Two vows broken … but we’re so excited!
Now, how to make money?
See ad in The Listener about learning to be a proofreader. Hmmm. Work from home?
Internet businesses are not a thing yet – and we’re on rural dial-up – but we see the potential. And it would be portable.
There are many hurdles, but we have a few months to figure it out.
Work by day; study by night. Learn to use little red squiggles to mark up.
Effortlessly grow rotund.
2006: age 31
Sylvia and Matthew Bauer win the Wellington Sustainability Trust’s Sustainability Award in 2008.
Graduate the proofreading course, give birth to a business and launch the sweetest baby girl.
Terrified and excited with little idea about how to be an editor, business owner or mother.
Baby steps for everyone.
Take out a small business loan for computer equipment.
Get my first job proofreading the local paper’s property section. Does the bathroom have indoor–outdoor flow to the deck? Hope not. Is it in a sort-after location? Sought of.
2007: age 32
Baby and business celebrate their first birthday.
Patch together some part-time work with building the business.
2008: age 33
Baby and business celebrate their second birthday.
Leave the Far North and move to a tiny flat in Wellington.
The Department of Conservation’s head of publishing kindly meets me for coffee.
Put an audacious ad in the Yellow Pages for ‘government proofreading’.
Kind Contact says she’s got a job for me. It’s more of a typing job (inputting lost comments from hard copy back into a document), but I’m thrilled.
A ministry calls after seeing the ad in the Yellow Pages (the only client our ad ever generated). They’re going to courier a job to me. I’m thrilled and terrified again.
Contemplate proofreading in a one-room flat with a toddler dancing and making playdough sculptures. Too hard. Head to Newtown Library and mark up the ministry’s hard copy. Turns out to be the first and only time I use the red squiggles I’d learnt on the course.
Kind Contact says she has a real editing job for me. Too late. I now have a part-time job as a PA. We had to pay the bills somehow.
But wait. In another bold move, I put my husband forward for the work. Suddenly he’s part of the business. The job turns out to last 18 years – we’re still doing it today.
Set up a rudimentary website. Our few government contacts start to get us other jobs.
Go on a lot of coffee dates – nerve-wracking at first. Resolve to turn this country mouse into a professional country mouse, come across confidently but still be myself.
Wellington Suits are a strange species with their power suits and fancy shoes. But everyone has feet underneath and is just trying to make a living.
Reach out to some other editors. They become delightful long-term friends, and we pass work to each other. A client calls editors a “collegial bunch” – well put.
Decide that word-of-mouth marketing works better for us than advertising. The government’s publishing staff is a small group of people who change jobs frequently.
They take our name when they move and pass it around.
Learn that doing a great job every time, and being genuine and easy to deal with, is what keeps work coming our way.
2009: age 34
Baby and business celebrate their third birthday.
Move back to Te Tauihu to be near my parents and our family and community. Another vow broken, but this is a great place to raise a kid.
Wonder why New Zealand doesn’t have a professional body for editors. Consider setting one up but have no time for such shenanigans. Instead, I join IPEd, which makes their Kiwi cousin very welcome.
2011–2023: age 36–48
Sylvia and Matthew Bauer with their ‘birdie’, Kaiteriteri, Tasman District, 2023.
Baby and business grow up.
The business grows. Increase our turnover by about $10,000 each year until we’re finally financially sustainable. Ditch my last part-time job. Joy! Still anxious if we don’t have work booked up at least a month in advance.
Buy a house and gain a mortgage. Register our intellectual property and our company, and register for GST. Feel legit.
Continue the client coffee dates.
But staying connected with clients and tendering for editing jobs takes time and effort – up to 40 hours for a large contract. Contact government procurement staff. Is there an all-of-government contract we can tender for? No-one knows where proofreading sits – we seem to fall through the cracks.
But we always seem to field more enquiries than we can manage, which is a good problem to have. We subcontract other editors or pass extra work onto other people.
In 2018 IPEd starts its Aotearoa New Zealand branch. Thank you IPEd and haere mai (welcome) to Aotearoa. The door opens to so many wonderful editors and training opportunities.
2024: age 49
Baby and business turn 18 and come of age.
Finally, the government issues a tender that includes editing and proofreading. Maybe this will cut down on paperwork, contracts and tendering time.
Our 18-year-old “baby” leaves the nest. Bye-bye birdie, we’ll miss you. Fly back often!
2026: age 51
Baby and business are 20.
The all-of-government contract has cut down tendering time, but we’ve had less work.
Business becomes more hand-to-mouth, maybe due to AI, government budget cuts or competition from other suppliers.
With birdie gone and savings in the bank, it’s not as scary now. Instead, it feels like an opportunity to reassess and shake things up a bit.
What next? Good question. I’m working on an answer to that.
But in the last 20 years, I’ve learnt so much about editing, motherhood and running a business.
I’ve also learnt that some vows have a best-before date. Breaking a vow can lead to breaking another, and some vows are sweetest that way.