In the previous article, I wrote about how I started my first editing job. Here, I’ll write about how that job helped me become a professional editor.
I would say I experienced a lot of personal growth in that job. Initially, I spent all day reading about English grammar and punctuation. That was quite a refreshing experience!
I also read about academic English and its quirks, its compulsion to stick to a formal tone. As a professional editor now, I have opinions on the matter, but it was something I was very new to back then.
In short, the first few weeks were a mix of surprise and awe. It was a big unlearning experience too. I had to forget about all the archaic, rigid and zombie rules I’d been taught, rules that I’d been following all along.
But I took it all in my stride. I made it through all the reading, practical training and feedback sessions. I began editing live assignments. For real clients. And they had very real deadlines!
New editors in such an environment tend to struggle a lot in this stage. It’s understandable too. We have to make sense of whatever we have learned (and unlearned), remember to apply all that in a real editing assignment, work through it at a customised pace for every assignment. All this while the project management and client servicing teams are breathing down our necks.
But I powered through. I handled letters, reports, short essays - mostly proofreading assignments at first. Then as I got more comfortable in the role, I started working on scholarly papers. Day in and day out, I copyedited a few scholarly papers every day. Slowly but surely, I became adept at formatting these papers (including references) for journal publication as well.
Over time, I had a fairly good grip on handling different editing and formatting assignments. That was rewarded. I started reviewing new editors’ assignments. I got to share my experience and understanding with other newbies. I embraced that opportunity. As someone who prefers working alone, I have a knack of observing my own work habits and patterns and developing my own working systems to make myself more efficient. I used that experience to help others help themselves. I truly enjoyed helping out fellow editors.
Once again, with time, that was rewarded as well. I was made a ‘team coach’. The title just formalised what I’d already been doing. Mentoring other editors was now a formal part of my job. That’s when I really got into training and mentoring. I cultivated a relationship with every member of my team. Knowing them as individuals made it easier for me to understand how they think and work.
I eventually became the managing editor of the social sciences and humanities team. That was a defining stage of my career. It was a reflection of my acquired understanding of not only that company and its business but also of my editing experience within that context, of managing projects of different sizes (scholarly papers, collections of essays, multi-author books) and, most importantly, of managing expectations of other teams in the company (and of some clients!).
Editors often got the short end of the stick when it came to project decisions (as often happens in many places), and as the managing editor, I worked to ensure that everyone understood each other’s contribution to a project. For example, I initiated a knowledge-sharing activity where each department introduced its roles and responsibilities to the other departments. That’s how we all understood how every department worked and what challenges we faced in a typical project. It significantly improved interdepartmental relations.
This was the job in which I picked up crucial people skills. I worked with editors who were significantly more experienced than me, and with those who were complete newbies. I got the opportunity to try training and mentoring. I got to work with people from other teams (and hence other occupations and professions). I learned how others think and what’s important to them from the perspective of their roles.
Most importantly, I learned how people other than editors perceive authoring and editing in the scholarly publishing context. I learned about the challenges of academic writing in general, but also about the whole ‘publish or perish’ challenge.
Amidst all this, I was enjoying being an editor. I knew I wanted to learn more of it and do more of it. And I began thinking of how I can grow as an editor.
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