The Accidental Editor

The Accidental Editor
By Michael LaRocca

I've been editing from home for ten years. I did it part time for five years, then quit my "day job" and started working from home full time. I've done this from Hong Kong, mainland China, Thailand, and Vietnam. Have laptop will travel. This was not planned. I stumbled into it and am still surprised.

Oh, and "full time" means 20 hours a week. Less if I'm not feeling so motivated.

From age 15 to age 36, I worked at least 40 hours a week every week, without vacations, holidays, or sick days. Give me a day off and I'd go work at my second or third job. Then I went to Hong Kong for a one-month vacation which lasted over two years. Since I was there on a tourist visa, I couldn't legally work there.

First, I wrote four novels and found publishers for them. (I had some drafts in his personal "slush pile" to work with.) Then I apparently ran out of things to say, so I became an editor. I worked for my publisher until they went out of business, and then I went freelance.

In Hong Kong and mainland China, the "company name" was simply Michael LaRocca and then ChinaRice.org. I taught Advanced English Writing at a university during the day and edited from home on evenings and weekends.

Part of our decision to move to Thailand was burnout with teaching in China. Since I had to do something else to get a visa and work permit, I became a full time freelance editor. Actually, that's not right. To paraphrase Erika Napoletano, you're not a freelancer, you're a business owner. Act like one. That's what I did. I registered Calico Consulting as a Thai business and got permission to live in Thailand that way.

Eventually my "act" had me lecturing at the medical department of Chiang Mai University, editing hundreds of medical reports, and obtaining my visa and work permit through the school. And still editing freelance on the Internet for my real income.

Now the company has evolved into MichaelEdits.com, and I run it from Hanoi, Vietnam. I remain the company's only editor, working from home by Internet. A handful of my customers are those doctors from Thailand. Others are novelists from all over the world, and still others have been sending me their weekly and monthly newsletters for at least four years.

That's one way to keep a decrepit old editor and his lovely calico cat supplied with banh my and imported tuna.