3 Things I Wish I Knew about Editing - Abigail Flint
So, you’re interested in editing?
From a young age I would read novels and occasionally 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 prepared for the future – although I quickly learned that the path was not so straight and narrow.
1. 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, when in fact there are many stages a manuscript goes through before publication:
Structural editing (looks at structure and flow)
Substantive editing (works paragraph-by-paragraph and looks at voice and tone etc.)
Line editing (performs a line-by-line review of a manuscript – the most detailed edit)
Copyediting (finds errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation)
Proofreading (catching any mistakes made by previous editors to make sure a manuscript is up to standard)
Trying to find which style of editing I wanted to pursue proved to be a hassle as I found myself enjoying most, if not all types of editing.
2. To work for a company, or go freelance?
Technically, both work hand-in-hand. It’s a piece of 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 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 it was rewarding.
3. You most likely won’t start out editing what you want and where you want
My dream has always been to work on manuscripts as an editor, at a big publication company like Bloomsbury or Penguin Books. While I know logically that this will not happen overnight, I also know that I need to be willing to work my way from the bottom.
One of my tutors once told me that he started out as the coffee boy, but one day their in-house editor was sick and needed an article edited ASAP - he got 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 it is always 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, Queensland Writers Centre Creative Writing Intern