Brenda and I, two resourceful entrepreneurs, began our journey 30 years ago. Unwilling to work under a boss, Brenda and I started doing freelance secretarial work. We took our services to Rand Afrikaans University, now the University of Johannesburg, and other universities in Gauteng, as well as supermarkets and any other place we could, using every available notice board and shop window to advertise our services. Our idea was to start an advertising magazine, and we seized the opportunity to attract advertisers.
Things were very different in those days, and when it was close to the advertising date, we invited friends to help us put the magazine together. With no laptops and very few desktops around, Brenda had to design the magazine on a very ancient desktop computer, highlighting the technological challenges technology at the time. We gathered some friends together to paste the magazine together on the lounge floor with a box of wine and a spread of food. Once the paste-up was done, we had to walk to the printer, as we didn’t have a car, to hand him the paste-up of the magazine for printing.
Some years later, we moved to Cape Town. One day, we were in the library in Gordons Bay and were chatting with someone who asked us if we knew of a proofreader he could employ to proofread a manuscript he had written, and we offered to help him with that. That was the start of our proofreading venture; which later developed into Busy Bee Editing.
One of the things we did to survive was to deliver food and parcels to customers for a well-known company in the Strand. In 2017, we were weary of the food and parcel delivery job wearing out our car. However, our proofreading work was thriving, and this success gave us the confidence to make a significant change: we left the Strand in 2017 and established our new home in Struisbaai in the Overberg, where we were forced to make a go of Busy Bee Editing, and eight years later, we are still going – “By Hook or by Crook”.
Once you go over Sir Lowry’s Pass and then drive down into the Overberg (meaning “Over the Mountain”), you enter a different world with endless vistas, acres of green farmland, and canola fields. We loved the peace of living amongst nature except for holidays when, like all holiday resorts, especially by the sea, it becomes bedlam, with hectic traffic, impatient tourists and rocketing holiday prices.
Make no mistake! It’s no picnic doing freelance proofreading and editing as a full-time occupation. It’s highly seasonal as most of your customers are authors, students and graduates – so your business goes deadly quiet at those times, and you have to put money away to weather the high-season periods. Everyone else in your area is having holiday fun, and you are chewing your nails for fear of not having enough money to weather the next holiday period.
My advice to anyone considering proofreading and editing or copy-editing as a profession is to have another source of income, commonly referred to as a “Side Hustle”, as a backup for quiet periods.
Although COVID-19 had a devastating effect on many South Africans, causing loss of jobs and businesses, poverty, severe illness and death. Our business thrived during COVID-19 in our rural location. The fresh air and sparse population helped us weather the worst of the pandemic. This, in turn, led to rapid growth in our business, as people, confined to their homes, turned to writing. However, since COVID-19, things seem to have become crazier all over the globe, including South Africa, perhaps because the disease and/or vaccinations (a hot topic!) might have affected people’s brains! And health.
I, for one, suffered hearing impairment and a concerning reduction of my sense of smell, even though, as far as I know, I never had Covid.
This fascinating saga about Busy Bee Editing will continue in future posts – so Watch this Space!
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