Last month a local grade 10 student asked me to take part in a careers project she was working on, and when I’d finished responding to her questions it occurred to me that some of it might be helpful to authors curious about what things look like on this side of the desk/screen.
What does a typical day look like for you from start to finish?
I’m a morning person, so I’m usually up about 6. I have coffee and read for about an hour, then go for a walk. After breakfast I get down to work, usually between 9 and 10, take lunch somewhere in there, and then work until about 4.
How much of your day is editing vs. meetings or other tasks?
Most of my workday is editing itself, with some time spent corresponding with authors and publishers, setting up new projects, updating my records, etc. I do some Zoom meetings, and the odd in-person meeting with authors who want to follow up once they’ve received and digested my notes for them, but I spend a lot less time in meetings than most other people I know, in all fields—and for this I am very grateful!
Do you ever have to do work outside of working hours?
If I do it’s usually a deal I’ve made with myself. If I’m going to be taking a long weekend, I’ll maybe plan to work the Saturday following, or if I’m having trouble getting down to work on a new project for whatever reason, I’ll give myself some time to play hooky, knowing I’ll make it up down the line with a few hours in the evening or on the weekend. The thing with editing (and why it’s a hard business to scale up) is that most editors find they can’t effectively edit for more than five or six hours a day. You start becoming less engaged with the text, too accepting of sloppy prose, and then you’re not really helping the author anymore.
Do you usually work on one project at a time or multiple at once?
I tend to have a main project on the go that takes up the bulk of a week to two weeks, while I’m tying up loose ends on another or giving next week’s project a first glance to acquaint myself with the text and the scope of the edit. I occasionally have three or four projects going, but I find splitting my attention like that starts to drive me a little crazy. And more practically, if I’m engaged in multiple copy edits at once and having to keep different style guides in mind (say, for one manuscript that prefers Canadian spelling and another American) I run the risk of losing track of what text I’m applying what style decisions to.
What kinds of content do you edit most often?
My specialties are fiction and narrative non-fiction, mostly memoirs.
What does your editing process usually look like?
It depends on the level of the edit. For a developmental edit, I’m looking at big-picture concerns: how well drawn the characters are, whether the central relationships feel plausible, how the dialogue is working in conjunction with the surrounding narrative, whether the plot has enough tension to keep the reader invested, whether the story is being told in the best order, and so on. I tend to do a first read making notes for myself and putting comments in the margins to provide the author examples of where I think there are issues, and even just to let them know when I was particularly taken by a turn of phrase or laughed at a humorous passage. Then I begin building my notes, usually dividing things up into broader general impressions, global issues, and chapter-specific suggestions.
For a copy edit, I am working mainly at the sentence level, and am marking the manuscript up using Track Changes in WordPerfect to demonstrate straightforward corrections (misspellings, misplaced commas, for example) and suggested revisions (removing unnecessary close repetition, reorganizing a sentence to flow more easily). As I work I’m building a style sheet and a list of the more frequently occurring copy edits, so the author can navigate through the markups without my having to explain each moved comma or uppercase letter.
How many drafts do you usually go through with a piece?
The work I do for publishers is usually for two to three rounds on a book-length manuscript at the developmental or copy edit stage, and usually one pass followed by a round of checking inputs when I’m proofreading. When working with authors (either those readying a manuscript to submit to publishers or those who plan to self-publish) I typically quote for one round of edits, with the option of doing further work together after that.
How often do you give feedback or meet with writers? And how formal and detailed are they?
Every round of editing involves feedback. For a developmental edit, that includes comments and queries in the margins and upwards of about ten pages of notes covering global and chapter-specific suggestions. For a copy edit that includes markup done using Track Changes, paired with a style sheet that covers issues of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc, and usually some notes up front that give the author a sense of what the most frequent line edits are, to guide them as they’re reviewing the manuscript pages.
Do you ever have to push back on writers or make tough decisions regarding the project?
If a publisher has asked me to steer an author in a particular direction on something (and usually the author will already have been made of aware of that before I’m hired) I will push them on that. Outside of that if it’s a change I feel strongly about, I will make my case for it, usually both in a comment on the page and in my notes. At the end of the day my name will not be on the book cover, and I try to remember that I am there to offer advice but that I am neither someone’s teacher nor their parent.
How tight are your deadlines on a normal day?
My deadlines tend to be one or two per week, and I try to meet them if only because I don’t really have the capacity to work on two weeks’ worth of projects in one. I like to allow two to four weeks per job and that gives me a little room to shuffle the deck if something arrives to me later than expected, or if I simply need a few days to let a manuscript percolate in my head before pulling my notes together for the author (this pertains more to developmental edits when I’m helping an author shape the work as a whole).
What’s the most stressful part of your daily work?
Possibly the most stressful for me is waiting to hear back from an author once they’ve received my notes, particularly if we haven’t worked together before. Despite having done this work for over twenty years I still worry that my ideas aren’t going to resonate with the author or aren’t going to give them feedback they can readily translate into revisions. This hasn’t really happened yet, but it’s a (probably healthy) fear of mine.
Are there busy seasons where your days change a lot?
Although I do tend to book more work with publishers at certain points of the year, when they’re mapping out their upcoming season, and have always noted a bit of a lull leading into Christmas followed by an upswing shortly into the new year, the work itself tends to be fairly steady, stretched out over the year. I have to make a point of planning time off and sticking to it, otherwise I get to September having not taken any dedicated time off and feeling quite burnt out. But as any freelancer will tell you, it’s hard to turn down work when it comes!
What kinds of decisions do you make every day?
Depending on the level of edit I’m working on, it ranges from deciding something like whether the dynamic between two central characters in a novel could be strengthened with an additional scene and when in the plot that should appear to whether the comma splices in a narrative, as strictly incorrect as they may be, are actually suited to the author’s voice and should remain. Sometimes I’ll mark something up for ten pages only to decide the author had a good reason for choosing an unconventional approach to something like dialogue punctuation and will go back and undo.
What skills do you use most on a daily basis?
It might seem sort of passive but the skill I’m using most constantly in my work is reading. I’m reviewing the text simultaneously as a reader encountering it in the wild, and as the person who’s been hired to improve it while recognizing and respecting voice and intention. The goal is never change for the sake of change or putting marks on the page just to show I was there, but finding the route between what this piece of writing could be and what it already is.
Do you mostly work independently or with a team?
I work independently, though on the publisher side by extension I’m part of a team that includes, namely, the publisher and the managing editor who will convey to me things they want addressed during the edit, or sometimes ask for help with titles and jacket copy.
Is your workday usually a routine or does it vary a lot?
It’s fairly routine, but with some give in it. If after a week of rain we get some sun, I feel okay about taking a long walk midday and catching up with work later on.
Do you work in-office, remotely or a mixture of both?
I work almost exclusively from home. I know editors who like to break up their day working in co-working spaces or coffee shops, but I really value the silence of my living room.
What part of your job do you love the most?
I got into editing as a reader and that continues to be the biggest joy—that I get to read for a living, and that I’ve been able to work on such a range of subjects. Even memoir projects that I wouldn’t necessarily have thought were a perfect fit have sometimes turned out to teach me a lot in the process, whether it’s the experience of the sent-down youth in Maoist China or how the United States Congress works.
What part gets repetitive or frustrating sometimes?
Just the silly things that editors gripe to each other about. How many times do I have to demonstrate the basics of punctuating dialogue? How can “show, don’t tell” be such common writing advice and yet here I am explaining to the millionth author why they can just show a character crying and not then tell the reader that it’s sad? It’s for this reason that I have always stuck with offering multiple stages of editing and not pursued a niche. When I come out of a developmental edit I crave a rigorous copy edit, focusing on what’s on the page, and then when I’m done that I’m already looking forward to the next developmental edit or assessment so I can work with someone earlier on, helping them figure out what could be on the page.
What surprised you the most about the job of an editor?
Possibly that it would continue to be so enjoyable for so long. I didn’t necessarily start out in my early twenties thinking I would keep doing this for decades.
And lastly, do you have any advice for people that are considering going into this career or field?
There are some well-established training programs in editing, through university publishing programs and through Editors Canada. But my main piece of advice would be to read. Widely. You’re not going to be able to edit well if you aren’t reading in the genres you want to work in, if you’re not being excited by stuff that breaks what you thought were the rules. Though my reading is truly for pleasure it informs my work every day.
