by Abigail Flint
Reprinted with permission from the Queensland Writers Centre newsletter, Pen + Pixels.
So, you’re interested in editing?
From a young age I read novels and occasionally would notice mistakes or grammatical errors in the paragraphs. I would change it in my head before reading on, and ever since then I’ve been pursuing an editing career. Jumping into a Bachelor of Creative Writing at university, I was keen and preparing for the future — although I quickly learned that the path was not so straight and narrow.
- There isn’t just one editor for a manuscript
There isn’t simply one edit for an entire manuscript; I learned about the different types of editing way too late in my degree. As naïve as it sounds, I really believed that one person could edit an entire piece of writing alone; however, a manuscript goes through many stages before publication:
- structural editing (looks at structure and flow and suggests changes)
- substantive editing (works paragraph-by-paragraph, looks at voice and tone etc. and suggests changes)
- line editing (performs a line-by-line review of a manuscript and suggests changes — the most detailed edit)
- copyediting (finds and corrects errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation)
- proofreading (catching and correcting any mistakes made by previous editors to make sure a manuscript is up to publishable standard).
Trying to find which style of editing I wanted to pursue proved to be a hassle, as I found myself enjoying most types of editing, if not all.
- To work for a company, or go freelance?
Technically, both work hand-in-hand. It’s common knowledge that to become a successful freelancer you must first work for a company to gain credibility. But is that always the case? Not necessarily.
While it can be beneficial that you have experience as an in-house editor to go freelance, it doesn’t have to be experience at a company. If you can showcase work you’ve done for friends, family etc. then you’re already one step closer. A good way to source editing jobs is to offer your services for free to build a repertoire of work. In my case, I was part of the publication team of a student anthology for my university as one of the editors, in charge of four manuscripts in total. It was hard work, but rewarding.
- You most likely won’t start out editing what you want and where you want
My dream as an editor has always been to work on manuscripts, at a big publication company like Bloomsbury or Penguin Books. While I know logically that this will not happen overnight, I also know I need to be willing to work my way up from the bottom.
One of my tutors told me he started out as the coffee boy, but one day their in-house editor was sick and needed an article edited ASAP. He was given the article as a ‘why not?’ and ended up earning a position at the company! It’s a strange beginning to a career, yet a reminder for me that anything is possible. You just have to jump in.
Whether you’re studying like me, working towards being an editor, or you simply just enjoy correcting someone’s mistakes, a career in editing will be difficult at times — but undoubtedly worthwhile.
Abigail Flint is a Queensland Writers Centre Creative Writing Intern.