Tag: author-editor relationship

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Brenna Bailey-Davies Genevieve Clovis

On Editing an Editor: Brenna Bailey-Davies and Genevieve Clovis in Conversation

September 21, 2023 by Brenna Bailey-Davies | 1 Comment on On Editing an Editor: Brenna Bailey-Davies and Genevieve Clovis in Conversation

Editing an author calls for a blend of sharp-eyed clarity, cheerleading and hand-holding. What if the author is also an editor? As part of a series of blog posts featuring conversations between author-editors and their editors, The Editors’ Weekly asked two editors to reflect on their experience of working together. Genevieve Clovis (Toronto, Ont.) is […]

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Laura Bontje

Preparing for Traditional Publishing: Tips from Agents and Editors

June 29, 2023 by Laura Bontje | Leave a Comment

When a client comes to me for editing, one of my first questions is how they hope to publish. Why? Because an author who is self-publishing will use freelancers for each stage of the editing process, whereas an author who secures a traditional publishing contract will receive additional editing through their publisher.   The journey to […]

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Suzanne Methot

Editing Indigenous Writing: A Nuanced Partnership

March 16, 2023 by Suzanne Methot | 11 Comments on Editing Indigenous Writing: A Nuanced Partnership

A lot of Indigenous writing is under-edited, because many non-Indigenous editors don’t feel like they have a way in to the text and are scared of making a mistake. Other times, it can be over-edited, because the editor has shoehorned the story into a format that reflects European values and beliefs. Some Indigenous writers are […]

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Audrey Jamieson

Encouraging Coworkers to See the Benefits of Editing

March 9, 2023 by Audrey Jamieson | 10 Comments on Encouraging Coworkers to See the Benefits of Editing

Working as an in-house editor often means you will be editing the work of untrained writers. You may come across colleagues who don’t want to be writing in the first place, so how do you convince them that your editing services are valuable? Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes people reject edits and say, “Scrap the whole […]

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Letitia Henville

Reflections on Kindness from Early-Career Editors

June 28, 2022 by Letitia Henville | 3 Comments on Reflections on Kindness from Early-Career Editors

For this year’s Claudette Upton Scholarship, my fellow judges — Lenore Hietkamp and David Johansen — and I selected as our question for nominees’ reflection, “How might kindness be part of the editor’s career?” We chose this question for a number of reasons: our own current thinking about our business practices, the difficulty in coming […]

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Laura Bontje

On Editing an Editor: Margaret Kingsbury and Laura Bontje in Conversation

June 14, 2022 by Laura Bontje | 2 Comments on On Editing an Editor: Margaret Kingsbury and Laura Bontje in Conversation

Editing a first-time author calls for a blend of sharp-eyed clarity, cheerleading and hand-holding. What if the author is also an editor? As part of a series of blog posts featuring conversations between author-editors and their editors, The Editors’ Weekly asked two editors to reflect on their experience of working together as critique partners. Laura […]

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Frances Peck

On Editing an Editor: Leslie Vermeer and Frances Peck in Conversation

March 8, 2022 by Frances Peck | 6 Comments on On Editing an Editor: Leslie Vermeer and Frances Peck in Conversation

Editing a first-time novelist calls for a blend of sharp-eyed clarity, cheerleading and hand-holding. What if the novelist is also an editor? As part of a series of blog posts featuring conversations between author-editors and their editors, The Editors’ Weekly asked two editors to reflect on their experience of working together. Frances Peck is a […]

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Tanya Mykhaylychenko

How to Offer Your Authors Positive Feedback

October 5, 2021 by Tanya Mykhaylychenko | 1 Comment on How to Offer Your Authors Positive Feedback

Recognizing and affirming your clients’ strengths is one of the best ways to create a collaborative partnership, encourage their learning and boost their confidence. This comes in especially handy if you work with ESL authors, job seekers, new authors or anyone who is entering a new genre or role. Trusting their text or important document […]

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Aaron Dalton

Editing Face to Face

February 23, 2021 by Aaron Dalton | 3 Comments on Editing Face to Face

Writing in a large organization is usually done “by committee.” That’s a challenging process at the best of times. After doing a first pass, which almost invariably contains more edits than the writers expected, I’m often asked to sit down (these days, virtually) and work though my comments with them. The first few times were […]

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Marianne Grier

Editing and the Art of Ikea Furniture Building

October 15, 2019 by Marianne Grier | 4 Comments on Editing and the Art of Ikea Furniture Building

A recent move left my husband and me needing new furniture. Armed with an Ikea gift card, we chose some pieces online. Six flat-packs of furniture arrived a few weeks later, and we got cracking on assembly. As we pieced the furniture together slat by slat, dowel by dowel, I simultaneously felt we were making […]

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Jessica Coles

Alone at the Intersection of Editing and Engineering

August 11, 2019 by Jessica Coles | 6 Comments on Alone at the Intersection of Editing and Engineering

This post is part of a new series of case studies by and for in-house editors. The focus of this series is on the personal experiences and various roles of in-house editors. A post will appear on the Editors’ Weekly every other month. If you’re interested in writing a post for this series, please email the Member Services Committee.  […]

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Virginia Durksen

Interview With Dr. Suzanne M. Steele

September 4, 2018 by Virginia Durksen | 9 Comments on Interview With Dr. Suzanne M. Steele

Part 1: Dr. Suzanne M. Steele, scholar and editor Dr. Suzanne Steele has built her career on words as a librarian, a war poet, a librettist, a teacher and an academic editor working with ESL writers who are often translating their ideas across cultures as well as languages. Virginia Durksen is the editor for Suzanne’s […]

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Tracey Anderson

Editing Technical Instructional Material: Do You Need to Be an Expert?

January 23, 2018 by Tracey Anderson | 21 Comments on Editing Technical Instructional Material: Do You Need to Be an Expert?

“How can you edit that? You don’t know anything about being an electrician.” I often heard that question and variations of it — carpenter, instrument technician, welder — in my years editing technical instructional materials for apprenticeship trades in Alberta. This is how I answered the question. I am the target audience The goal of […]

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Sara Goodchild

A Puzzling Process

October 10, 2017 by Sara Goodchild | 10 Comments on A Puzzling Process

Like editing, solving puzzles is often a solitary endeavour. But not always! On the second Tuesday of every month, people get together in pubs across North America, Europe and beyond to solve puzzles at an event called Puzzled Pint. When I started going a few years ago, I never guessed that these entertaining nights out […]

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Melva McLean

Lost and Found

October 3, 2017 by Melva McLean | 2 Comments on Lost and Found

Over the years I’ve done a lot of freelance fiction editing, mostly developmental. I send off the manuscripts with a critical analysis, a lot of developmental markup and some copy editing. Some of the authors go on to be published; their autographed works are on my bookshelves. Of the ones not published, about half come […]

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Anne Louise Mahoney

Listening With the Heart: Editing Indigenous Manuscripts

September 12, 2017 by Anne Louise Mahoney | 6 Comments on Listening With the Heart: Editing Indigenous Manuscripts

A Quill and Quire article popped up in my Twitter feed in late June: “Humber becomes new home for Indigenous Editors Circle.” I was thrilled that the Circle had found a home at Humber College’s Lakeshore campus in Toronto’s west end. Even better: a workshop on editing Indigenous manuscripts was being held in mid-August. I […]

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Paul Buckingham

Non-fiction Developmental Editing

August 15, 2017 by Paul Buckingham | 10 Comments on Non-fiction Developmental Editing

I’ve always loved trying to understand things — investigating ideas and concepts to make sense of them, seeking clearer ways to view them. I was delighted, therefore, when I discovered that there’s a kind of editing rooted in exactly that pursuit: developmental editing. The name describes it well: you’re helping the author develop a manuscript […]

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Frances Peck

Editing and Empathy

June 6, 2017 by Frances Peck | 7 Comments on Editing and Empathy

I’m thinking more about empathy these days. So are other editors — witness last week’s post on the editor-author relationship. So are Canadians in general, judging by Google searches over the past decade.                     Source: Google Trends. Y-axis shows interest over time, defined as follows: “Numbers […]

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Paul Buckingham

Stepping Into the Arena

May 30, 2017 by Paul Buckingham | 13 Comments on Stepping Into the Arena

We’ve all as editors had the odd grumble over something an author has written. Maybe a string of noun clusters has pushed us to the limit of our patience, or we’ve broken down over a text awash with comma splices. It’s easy to criticize when we’re on the sidelines, though. Our problems are not the […]

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Tracey Anderson

Editing the Work of Writers Whose First Language Isn’t English

March 7, 2017 by Tracey Anderson | 20 Comments on Editing the Work of Writers Whose First Language Isn’t English

Canada is a kaleidoscope of cultures and languages from around the world. As the number of residents whose native language isn’t English increases, the need for editors who can edit their writing effectively and sensitively grows, too. Before my editing career began, I taught English as a second language for over 15 years in China, […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Those Unpublishable Manuscripts

October 11, 2016 by Rosemary Shipton | 25 Comments on Those Unpublishable Manuscripts

We’ve all had them – those manuscripts that arrive on our desks that should not be published. They have little merit in either content or expression, and our initial impulse is to return them immediately. How do we deal with them? If the project comes from a trade publisher, the contract with the author was probably […]

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Paul Buckingham

Ours Is Not to Reason Why — Or Is It?

October 4, 2016 by Paul Buckingham | 7 Comments on Ours Is Not to Reason Why — Or Is It?

You’re editing a biography of Lester Pearson, and you see a line that says, “It is a fitting coincidence that Pearson was born the same year another great Liberal leader, Wilfrid Laurier, took the Canadian helm.” You’re drawn to the interesting coincidence of dates and decide to look up the facts. You discover that Pearson […]

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