Category: news

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!

It might be Valentine’s Day, but here at Editing Globally there’s another milestone to celebrate! Today marks the first anniversary of Editing Globally. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since we launched, but in some respects, it feels like much longer too as we’ve all done so much, both separately and as part of a team, in that time. 

When we launched one year ago today, we did so with the mission statement of providing seamless and thorough editorial services by pooling our knowledge and resources. Our aim was to offer clients full support from manuscript evaluations right the way through to the finished product and to be able to take on large or very time-sensitive projects that just wouldn’t be possible for one editor to handle. 

Happily, we can report back that during the last year, we have done exactly that. We’ve worked on some great projects together, sometimes with just a couple of members taking part and other times with all five of us getting involved. The range of work we’ve taken on has been varied and interesting, too; we’ve been able to help clients with memoirs, novels, legal documents, marketing materials, blog posts, business reports, and plenty more. We’ve also learned a lot from each other. Being able to collaborate over pieces of work and see how each of us handles certain things has made all of us better editors.  

As we begin our second year of Editing Globally, we have lots of plans in the pipeline. Janet and Katherine can now provide training to other editors in a variety of subjects, including working with students, general copy-editing, fiction editing, working with independent authors, and working with publishers. There’s also a six-part blog series on working on dissertations and theses coming soon. At least three of us (Janet, Katherine, and Kelly) will be presenting at the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SFEP) conference in Lancaster in September too, after Janet and Katherine, along with friend and colleague Erin Brenner, led a very successful panel on rates at last year’s conference. And we recently started work for a large international firm, handling the proofreading of all external communications – a task that would be impossible for one editor to handle alone, not least because of the numerous time zones in which the client has offices. 

We are all looking forward to the opportunities and challenges ahead and to a year filled with interesting work, professional development, and most of all, friendship!  

 

At the Editors’ Association of Canada annual conference held last weekend, our own Janet MacMillan was awarded the President’s Award for Volunteer Service. The award recognizes outstanding service to the organization by member volunteers. Anyone who knows Janet knows that she is a born volunteer; she is selfless with her time and is involved with so many groups and initiatives, not just in Canada, but also across the water in the UK and in various online groups. We are all delighted for her here at Editing Globally (and we are some of the luckiest beneficiaries of Janet’s time and effort!). Janet had also been nominated for the Karen Virag Award, which was won by Virginia Durksen.

A full list of winners can be found here. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!