A gift covered in brown wrapping paper and red ribbon sits in the forefront while a blurred Christmas tree rests in the background.
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Give the Gift of Boundaries: Navigating Work in the Holiday Season

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Written by Liz Warwick; copy edited by Annette Gingrich

The holiday season has arrived, and if you believe the media, people now spend their days buying presents, baking up delicious goodies, and listening to carols on repeat.

Missing from that picture is any mention of work, especially any last-minute calls from a client or boss asking you to tackle (or finish up) a project that requires working right up to, or even through, the holidays.

Dealing with eleventh-hour requests, at the holidays or anytime, starts long before the call comes. We all need to know our boundaries. Some people are willing to work 14 hours at a stretch to complete a job. Others aren’t. Those boundaries may change depending on the season and an editor’s time of life. But everyone needs them.

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Distilling Words to Their Essence: Editing Poetry for Impact

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Written by Emily Salja; copy edited by Meagan Kus

When we think about editing poetry, we first have to think about what poetry is. This is something that poets and critics have debated for decades—what is poetry?

All writing, to an extent, comes from the heart—creative writing in particular—and poetry is one of those strange, elusive creatures that is stitched together mostly by heartstrings. Poetry is the least efficient way of conveying a message. It is the language of trauma and inarticulable feelings. In poetry, we write around things instead of at them. How do we edit something so personal?

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Meet the Instructor: Lana Okerlund

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Written by Carl Rosenberg; copy edited by Lydia du Bois

A smiling Lana Okerlund faces forward, wearing a grey cardigan, pink sweater, and silver hooped necklace.On Saturday, November 30, Editors BC presents Lana Okerlund’s professional development seminar, “Do the Work You Want (and Earn More Doing It): A Guided Strategic Retreat for Editors.”

This six-hour seminar is designed as a guided strategic retreat to help you envision your ideal editing career, understand your current situation, and develop a plan to close the gap. Through stimulating discussion and hands-on activities, you will:

  • Establish a strategic vision for your editing business or career
  • Set objectives for the clients you want to work with, the projects you want to do, the amount you want to earn, and the work practices and professional development you want to invest in
  • Figure out how to gauge your progress toward your objectives
  • Learn how to analyze information about your business or career so you can adjust or develop new strategies to meet your goals

Whether you’re an experienced editor or new to the editing world, you will come away from the seminar with a draft strategy for taking charge of your business or career so you can steer it in the direction that you want it to go. Freelance editors will find this seminar most useful, though in-house editors can also benefit from thinking about career goals in a more strategic way.

For this seminar, Lana draws on her experience as a freelance editor and as a former business consultant, when she spent nearly a decade working with clients on strategic visioning, business planning, performance measurement, and other business improvement projects. She has found tremendous value in applying these business concepts while building her own editing career. A partner with West Coast Editorial Associates, Lana edits, indexes, and writes non-fiction books and teaches editing and business writing courses.

Carl Rosenberg, a volunteer on Editors BC’s communications and social media committee, spoke to Lana about her forthcoming seminar.

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A lit jack-o'-lantern sits next to a wooden frame that encircles two wooden rectangular shapes that display the date October 31.
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Halloween—What’s in a Name?

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Written by Jen Groundwater; copy edited by Lydia du Bois

In his lengthy poem “Halloween,” the beloved Scottish poet Robert Burns popularized the titular holiday name, describing what eighteenth-century Scots got up to on October 31:

Some merry, friendly, countra folks,
Together did convene,
To burn their nits, an’ pou their stocks,*
An’ haud their Halloween**
Fu’ blythe that night.***

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November 20, 2019: Q&A Session with Eve Lazarus and Susan Safyan

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What: Editors BC monthly meeting
When: Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 7:00–9:00 pm
Where: New room | Room 916, 9th floor, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver | map
Cost: Free for Editors BC members, non-members, and students.

Join us at our upcoming monthly meeting for a special presentation followed by a Q&A session with accomplished reporter, author, and blogger Eve Lazarus and expert editor and author Susan Safyan.

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A black bottle with the illustrated label "Bat Wing Potion" sits to the right of a candle and a fake skull that are both on top of a book called "The Works of Poe."
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Gleaming Things

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Written by David Antrobus; copy edited by Lydia du Bois

When I was kindly asked to write a blog post about editing horror, I was happy to accept an invitation to discuss two of my favourite things: editing and horror fiction. But then, I stepped back and thought some more, and a question occurred to me: How is editing horror any different from editing fiction in general? At first blush, the answer to that is a simple one: it isn’t.

Except—and don’t you love the exceptions?—when the editor is involved early in the editing process. Both developmental editing and manuscript evaluations offer the greatest opportunity to help authors shape their manuscripts. Many of my clients across all genres are independent self-publishers and therefore don’t generally have the budget to saunter their leisurely way through the various levels of editing, but those who do ask for those early stages will likely benefit the most.

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