Janet MacMillan – Editing Globally Blog

La Rentrée: Refreshed and Recharged

The French language has a wonderful word for the time of year when school starts, extracurricular activities ramp up, and many of us find excuses to visit our favourite stationery shop: la rentrée.

Re-entering, not returning, not back to. The potential of the future. The potential to change and to have changed. The potential to develop and to learn new things. To approach things, both professional and personal, in a different way. To see the future in a different way.

For many of us, September and October feel more like the start of a new year than does January. Some of us even prefer to start our planners in the fall, to review our professional lives (personal, too, but let’s just stick with the professional here), and plan for going forward. It’s not just returning to our work and businesses, but re-entering our professional lives, hopefully rejuvenated from some time off and with plans for and ideas about our work, our tools of our trade, our learning (our continuing professional development), and our communities. In effect, expanding our professional horizons. Not just looking at the same old horizons.

Some folks like to do a business micro retreat at this time of year and assess their way forward. Maybe some people will decide to add editing fiction to their services and will want to read lots of craft books and take at least one course. Others may decide to drop developmental editing from their services. Some of us will be looking at ramping up our hours, now that we’re free from some other commitments (e.g., caring commitments), others will be looking at cutting down on their hours, either with retirement on the horizon or moving into teaching or training, or even just because. Others may be making the jump from freelance editing to in-house editing.

Some people may even plan to get a four-footed editorial assistant to keep them company and, if that assistant is a puppy, to get them out of the house, and in that case, take it from me, uninterrupted work for a few months is unlikely.

The re-entering mentality enables us to think big, to think laterally, not just think of going back to the same old work and same old routines and same old ways of thinking.

How’s your version of la rentrée going a few weeks in, when the temperatures are dropping and the leaves are turning lovely colours in the northern hemisphere, and the temperatures are rising and the outdoors are starting to turn green in the southern hemisphere?

My Editing Globally colleagues and I expanded and relaunched our international editorial collective, thereby increasing our reach, our expertise, our experience, and the knowledge that comes from being a team. And increasing the fun while we are at it.

This blog post is based on a post previously published on the Editors Canada website on September 18, 2025.

What is a collective?

It’s a good question, and there’s no really short answer.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a cooperative enterprise.”

It’s a group of entities, in this case professional editors, who share a common interest—providing professional editorial services—and who work together to achieve a common objective—providing inclusive, seamless, and thorough editorial services to clients around the world.

In the case of the Editing Globally collective, we also assist and support each other in our own businesses, offering advice and skills when asked, and when confidentiality permits.

We are all independent editors with our own businesses who join forces, pooling our expertise and scheduling ability, including across time zones, to provide the services clients need and expect, be the project large or small, very urgent or ongoing.

Clients can hire us as a group for large projects. They can also hire one or two of us for smaller projects. Either way, clients receive the benefit of all of us being able to consult the others if needed.

Because of the various time zones we are in, and because of our individual working patterns, we can collectively provide a 24/7 service.

Because of our different lived experiences, the different countries we live in and/or have lived in, we are committed to inclusivity and compassionate and sensitive relationships with our clients, wherever they are and whoever they are.

All of us, together as a group, and individually, polish your words, elevate your ideas, and respect your voice. No matter the project, no matter the subject matter, the words and the message are yours.

Another way of defining the Editing Globally collective is that we’re a group of professional editing friends, who like and respect each other and each other’s work and skills, and who combined forces to provide the best for clients. We also have some fun while doing it!

Editing Globally: Welcoming a new member

We have a new member! Well … ‘new’ might not be quite true as Martin has been working behind the scenes of Editing Globally from the outset: he developed our website and assisted us with many of the technical aspects of getting our collective up and running.

In the last few years he’s been gradually switching his focus from his IT job out in the world of full-time employment to becoming a self-employed editor and proofreader … and very successfully too as in the last nine months he has had a continuous flow of work to keep him busy.

As Etty’s husband, Martin is very familiar with the demands and delights of this profession and has worked on many projects with Etty in recent years. But his previous employment also prepared him well, with many years as a teacher, IT trainer, consultant, and project manager – all roles where he was responsible for producing clear and accurate documents. Martin’s experiences at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and running projects worldwide for an international financial systems organization make him a natural fit for the global nature of Editing Globally.

Martin also brings skills to complement the existing Editing Globally offering. He is particularly adept at anything to do with formatting, and he can design polished and professional publications from the ground up. Martin has worked across a broad range of subjects, but his specialisms in mathematics, physics, chemistry, information technology, and cybersecurity, among others, complement the already extensive range of subjects that Editing Globally can offer. His recent projects include formatting an international development report on climate risk; creating the references for a self-published book on the dangers of Brexit; proofreading, copy-editing and fact-checking many textbooks on subjects ranging from information and communications technologies for primary school to A level chemistry; fact-checking and proofreading UK football annuals; and designing from scratch a training manual on Botox and dermal fillers!

Martin is a Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), and he is also part of the team that manages the SfEP website. You can find out a bit more about him on the Editing Globally ‘Who we are’ page and read what some of his clients have said on the ‘Testimonials’ page. For more information about Martin and his skills, his website is the place to look.

We’re all very pleased to have Martin emerge from behind the scenes to join in our collective editorial adventures.

Editing Globally: A-conferencing we go

This time last week, three of the Editing Globally team had just left the annual conference of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), this time in St Neots, England. Katherine Trail, Kelly Lamb and I (Janet MacMillan) wended our way there – some of us travelling a very long way and one of us spending as long on three trains as the other two did on planes – to learn (and teach) why context is key.

Our editing careers differ in length and subject fields and genres. It was Katherine’s third SfEP conference, and Kelly and Janet’s first (although Kelly and Janet have both been to other editing conferences). But we were all unanimous in our verdict: it was superb!

Everyone was so friendly and open, it was so inclusive, everyone was clearly there to share their skills and learn new ones, or even just confirm they were on the right track, and, oh my, was the food ever good.

We three arrived early evening before the conference officially started the next afternoon. What a great decision! We enjoyed a casual evening in the venue pub with a dozen or so other attendees, which we all found a delightful way to settle in and talk to people.

The next morning, the three of us headed off for some pampering in the venue complex’s spa, which, given the intensity of the following 48+ hours, was a wise move.

After the annual general meeting, which was so non-contentious that it was over in no time, there was an impromptu and very noisy tea party, though perhaps the noise level was related to the number of folks who packed into one rather small room. Even with the door and windows open one could tell it was a happy gathering. Kelly immortalized it for posterity.

The dinner and pub-type quiz that evening were great fun. I’ll spare the blushes of the team I was on and not identify them. One might say that we weren’t exactly stars! Mind you, we did a bit better on the acronym and abbreviations round than the other rounds. I think that the preponderance of academic editors at the table is the explanation. Even though I don’t think any of the Editing Globally team closed the bar that night, we certainly enjoyed some great conviviality before retiring to our respective beds.

Watch this space over the next week or so for blogs about the actual conference sessions, sessions that we all found so valuable.