Spiraling Upward: My Q3 Goals as a Freelance Editor

Rethinking progress and honoring the process; setting intentions for what comes next! 💙✨⚡🌿

Today, I had the chance to join Tara Whitaker and other editors from the Freelance Editors Club for a quarterly planning session. We spent an hour reflecting on Q2 business goals and mapping out our intentions for Q3 2025. These gatherings always leave me feeling more grounded and inspired, and today was no exception.

Big Picture Takeaways

Here are a few of the reflections I left today’s session with:

• It’s okay to shift goals forward. Not everything gets done in one quarter (or whatever time frame I might originally plan for) – and that’s fine. The important thing for me is to keep important goals top of mind and to continue plugging away at them while also course-correcting as needed, so that they continue to align with my bigger-picture priorities.

• Setting goals isn’t the hard part. The hard part is setting realistic, aligned goals that I can truly stick to. What tends to be even harder is committing to them when it feels like I’m doing everything alone, without support. (See the next point!)

• Supportive community makes a world of difference. Even if no one is actively holding my hand in helping me reach my goals, simply knowing that I’m not in it alone – that others share my passion for words and drive to support writers – that’s a huge motivator. This is why the amazing editor communities I’m in – Northwest Editors Guild, Freelance Editors Club, Editors Tea Club, Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA), and ACES: the Society for Editing - are so important for me to stay connected with!

Q3 2025 Goals: Learning and Building

As we head into Q3, I’m focusing on three main areas (thank you, Tara, for encouraging me to narrow my focus here!! ❤️):

1. Learn more about the indie and self-publishing author process:

   1. Finish Tanya Gold’s course, Working with Indie Authors. I learned about Tanya and the courses she offers to editors when she participated in a Self-Publishing webinar panel for the Editorial Freelancers Association Michigan Chapter.

   2. Read Do Not Write A Book… Until You Read This One by A.Y Berhaume + Bridgett McGowen-Hakins. I picked up this book after Bridgett (founder of hybrid publisher Press 49) gave an inspiring, engaging presentation about how to avoid some of the biggest publishing mistakes at the 2025 Women in Publishing virtual summit. Her book addresses how to write and publish a nonfiction book, with a focus on hybrid, independent, and self-publishing options.

2. Organize and refine my business operations framework:

   1. Complete the Freelance Editors Club’s Business Builder exercises.

   2. Finish Katie Chambers’ course, “Running Your Editorial Business Like a Pro”.

   3. Update my own website to include (or somehow link to my Substack) blog content.

3. Read books for a book judging event I’m participating in (I can say more about this after the event in 2026!).

Still in Progress: Wrapping Up Q2 2025

While I shifted a few goals from Q2 into Q3, here’s what I’m committing to do before the end of this month:

1. Review business priorities and establish realistic SMART goals through the end of 2025, following Erin Brenner’s guidelines in her book, The Chicago Guide for Freelance Editors (Erin includes an amazing overview of important goal-setting areas to consider, along with practical steps to design realistic, meaningful goals — see pages 223-234).

2. Get more comfortable talking about my business and my identity as an editor.

   1. Create blog content and brainstorm topics for future posts (what I’ve started doing here on Substack).

   2. Decide on a regular writing cadence and schedule writing sessions out!

Even though I shifted a few incomplete Q2 goals into future quarters, I try to remind myself that goal-setting (and achieving) isn’t linear. It’s more of an upward spiral than a random scribble with no direction. It’s a matter of perspective, which can make all the difference (Here’s a scribble from my Passion Planner diary, inspired by similar images I’ve come across online…):

While my interests and priorities may change, at my core I’m still driven to realize my potential and to connect with the community I’m meant to be a part of – and serve with purpose.