Spring Meeting 2019
The Heartland Chapter met on Saturday, May 18 at the Old Richmond Inn in Richmond, Indiana; in attendance were six regular members and four new indexers. Attendees enjoyed catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. Our featured speaker was author and indexer Larry Sweazy, who shared his approach to time management. His system obviously works well for him, as he averages two novels and forty to fifty indexes per year!
Larry stressed the importance of knowing how many pages we can index in an hour. Once we have this information, it is easier to negotiate a fee by asking ourselves, “What is MY time worth?” As freelancers, we should also be disciplined about our income, accounting for taxes, healthcare, expenses, and insurance. And, of course, we need to manage chaos, since nobody likes surprises! Heartlanders also had a lively question-and-answer session and some good discussions over a delicious lunch. Larry talked about his Marjorie Trumaine books, “cozy” mysteries featuring an indexer sleuth. (The first one is See Also Murder…if you haven’t read it yet, you need to get started!) One of our newbie indexers got interested in indexing by reading Larry’s books! Our thanks to Larry for a great meeting, and for putting indexing and indexers on the popular culture map. |
