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Gael Spivak

Gael Spivak: An Editor’s Top 3

May 5, 2020 by Gael Spivak | Leave a Comment

In this series, experienced editors reflect on their Top 3 tools, rules and suggestions for clients and colleagues. Gael Spivak works in communications for the Government of Canada, where she specializes in plain language writing and editing. An editor for 13 years, Gael has worked on topics that include food safety and food labelling, biotechnology, […]

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Brendan O’Brien

Editors’ Association of Earth has 10,000 members!

October 29, 2019 by Brendan O'Brien | 1 Comment on Editors’ Association of Earth has 10,000 members!

Editors’ Association of Earth (EAE) is a Facebook group set up in February 2013 by Greg Ioannou and others, with the aim of fostering links between editors internationally. On Oct. 17, its membership reached 10,000. It’s a testament to editors around the world that EAE has become so successful. EAE has evolved in an organic […]

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Aaron Dalton

Empirical Editors: Acronyms

July 16, 2019 by Aaron Dalton | 13 Comments on Empirical Editors: Acronyms

Background I’m an in-house editor for the Alberta Energy Regulator. Authors are required to work with our group as they move towards publishing their documents. It’s essential that we cultivate and nurture relationships of respect and trust. One element of that is always being able to rationalize and justify our recommendations. There’s no room for […]

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Brendan O’Brien

Is It All About the Author?

August 21, 2018 by Brendan O'Brien | 23 Comments on Is It All About the Author?

The prevailing orthodoxy in online editors’ groups, I have noticed, is one of huge respect for, and empathy with, the author. The author is king/queen. We, as editors, primarily serve the author’s vision, the author’s voice. However, in my own work (both in-house and freelance, primarily as a copyeditor of non-fiction), the emphasis has generally […]

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Rosemary Shipton

There’s No Clarity With Editors or Authors

September 5, 2017 by Rosemary Shipton | 6 Comments on There’s No Clarity With Editors or Authors

Editors say they love words, with finding just the right phrase for the context, but, ironically, they can only fail with two terms critical to the world of publishing: “editor” and “author.” When someone says she’s an editor, you have no idea what she does. Is she the editor of a newspaper or a magazine, […]

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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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Rosemary Shipton

Should Editors Be Able to Write?

April 28, 2015 by Rosemary Shipton | 15 Comments on Should Editors Be Able to Write?

We editors talk at length about different kinds of editing and who does what, and we generally assume that we’re working on a text written by someone else. Together with the author, we massage the content, the structure and the presentation into the best possible shape for its intended readers. But should we also be […]

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Melva McLean

An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Part 3

September 16, 2014 by Melva McLean | 2 Comments on An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Part 3

Later that afternoon, I arrived home and plunked myself down in front of a blank screen. It felt like I’d joined the ranks of such writers as Hemingway and Faulkner, Ludlum and Michener, and many others who’d lost manuscripts and had to start over from scratch. Of course, in this day and age, you don’t […]

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Abby Egerter

Keenness of Eye and Humble Pie, Along That Path Awards Will Lie

September 2, 2014 by Abby Egerter | Leave a Comment

In this instalment of our “Editors in the Spotlight” series, Abby Egerter interviews editor Jennifer Foster, who worked on the award-winning Dirty Science: 25 Experiments with Soil, by Shar Levine and Leslie Johnstone. Jennifer Foster has been editing for 17 years and freelancing for 10. However, book publishing is something of a new venture for […]

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Melva McLean

An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Day 2

August 12, 2014 by Melva McLean | Leave a Comment

In every good boot camp movie there’s a scene where a tough army trainer leaves the rebellious recruit out in the cold and rain all night or makes them do 1,000 pushups. This is one way to make the recruit begin to sacrifice ego. The other short story boot camp recruits and I didn’t have […]

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Kimmy Beach

An Intricate Relief Carving on an Eggshell: Working With Peter Midgley on The Last Temptation of Bond

July 22, 2014 by Kimmy Beach | 2 Comments on An Intricate Relief Carving on an Eggshell: Working With Peter Midgley on The Last Temptation of Bond

This is the first in our new “Editors in the Spotlight” series, spotlighting editors who have won awards or participated in award-winning projects. In this post, Kimmy Beach interviews Peter Midgley, who won the Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence for editing her book, The Last Temptation of Bond. ~~~ Peter and I meet at […]

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Melva McLean

An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Day 1

July 15, 2014 by Melva McLean | 1 Comment on An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Day 1

Novelist’s Boot Camp Travel Writing Boot Camp Dissertation Writing Boot Camp Resume Writing Boot Camp Children’s Picture Book Boot Camp Okay, STOP. Right there! Seriously? What could be less suited to boot camp than a kid’s picture book? What’s next? And when did the words “boot camp,” i.e., “a military training camp for new recruits, […]

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David Ritchie

Invisible Writing

May 6, 2014 by David Ritchie | 1 Comment on Invisible Writing

Thirty years ago, in his film Zelig, Woody Allen portrayed a “human chameleon” — a man who took on the personalities of people around him. A ghostwriter must be something like that: a “chameleon” who can write in the voice of any client. As a ghostwriter, you must convey your client’s message to the public. […]

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David Antrobus

The Editor’s Fedora Part 3

March 10, 2014 by David Antrobus | 12 Comments on The Editor’s Fedora Part 3

Now we arrive at the crucial topic of cost, and the seemingly arbitrary variations in same. Some editors are so brilliant that they really can and do charge top dollar. I know someone who can quote $5,000 for editing an 80,000-word manuscript. Before you gag on that, bear in mind that editing at that rarefied […]

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David Antrobus

The Editor’s Fedora Part 2

February 27, 2014 by David Antrobus | 2 Comments on The Editor’s Fedora Part 2

Okay, after Part 1, you should now have the MS nice and clean. What’s the next step? How do you find an editor? This part isn’t hard, but it’s crucial you find someone who’s right for your book. And there’s no substitute for research. Ask around. Google. If you haven’t already done so, join writers’ […]

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David Antrobus

The Editor’s Fedora Part 1

February 25, 2014 by David Antrobus | 2 Comments on The Editor’s Fedora Part 1

As an independent writer myself and a passionate believer in the indie ethic, I have to acknowledge one of its major downsides: a real or perceived shoddiness in the final product of self-published authors. Which is where I now switch hats and replace the bohemian beret of the writer with a more conservative form of […]

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