12 Reasons You Might Need an Editor in the New Year
As you look toward 2023, set some goals, then put into place a support network! AND: support for academics on strike, graduate students, and contingent faculty.
Note: Our academic colleagues on both coasts are still on strike - read the bottom of this newsletter for how we can support them.
This is part one of a two-part series: how you can achieve better living through outsourcing parts of the writing process to editors. Next week we’ll discuss all of the different ways that coaching/consulting can help solve what feel like intractable problems. This week, I want to chat about editing.
I get hired to edit lots of things–books, book proposals, articles, reviewer letters, grant proposals, tenure and promotion documents, job materials. A lot of people I work with know they’re stuck, but aren’t sure how to ask for help, or if what they need help with is even a thing. Here is a list of things editors can help with – and the type of editing that might help.
I always tell people to save the part of the writing process that they enjoy and are good at for themselves, and then hire someone else to do the rest. If you have a great eye for stray commas but have trouble figuring out how to structure an argument, hire a developmental editor! If you love the argument you’re making but you don’t like the way it sounds on paper, stylistic editing can really help with the voice and tone of the piece.
12 ways an editor might be able to make your life better
12. You have a book! Sort of! But it needs a lot of work, and you want to get it into shape before you start submitting it. Here, two rounds of editing – a developmental edit followed by a line or stylistic edit – can help (you want to do it in two rounds so you’re not editing sentences that might change during the development process).
11. You produce a lot of content pretty fast for a blog, newsletter, website, etc and need an extra set of eyes before a billion people email you because you used “there” instead of “their” – you need a proofreader/copyeditor!
10. You suspect that your conference paper is actually three different papers and need a developmental editor to help you figure out what your argument actually is and what can be cut and put into a different paper.
9. You’re on the job market for the first (or fifth) time and need help conveying to hiring committees why your nontraditional path actually makes you an awesome person to hire. A developmental/stylistic combo can help you get the arguments right and nail the language for the documents. Often times, people also want another set of eyes on their job market paper as well.
8. You have a great idea for a book, but want to write it for a popular/crossover audience instead of a scholarly one—how do you get people excited about this topic?? A developmental editor can help you craft an idea for a book and work on the book proposal to get it right.
7. You have a zombie paper that has been sitting on your hard drive since before the pandemic that you need someone to take a look at so it can be sent out into the world. Sometimes two rounds of edits can get a paper where you want it to be: a developmental edit followed by a stylistic edit can get the paper ready for submissions.
6. You’re a wiz at data analysis but writing up results is hard! How do you narrativize data so that people care? This is where developmental editing can come into play.
5. You’ve spent so many hours staring at the screen your eyes are about to bleed but people are still telling you that there are commas in the wrong place and to write in active instead of passive voice -- and you’re just done with it. Hire a copyeditor and go back to working on what you enjoy!
4. You have a dissertation that needs to become a book or a few articles that you want to turn into a book. How do you reorganize your ideas so that they read like a book? These kind of structural challenges are perfect for developmental editors.
3. You got an exciting R and R, or particularly tough comments from reviewer 2, or comments from reviewers 1, 2, and 3 that seem to be off the wall – you need someone to help craft the reviewer letter and make sure the paper actually addresses the substance of reviewer critiques. That’s developmental editing.
2. Tenure and promotion are looming but everything feels like bragging and you need to figure out how all of the documents the committee wants can work together. A developmental and stylistic edit can really help these documents get you tenure and promoted.
1. You’re writing a grant with particular requirements, and you need an extra set of eyes to make sure you meet the requirements – that’s copyediting.
If any of these sound like you, give yourself the gift of not trying to do it all in the new year—let an editor help! I’d love to talk about how.
Academics on Strike
As you probably know, 48,000 graduate students in the University of California system have been on strike for nearly a month in what’s being called the most important education labor action in US history. On the opposite coast, part time faculty at the New School are striking as well, with the administration threatening to cut paychecks, health insurance, and benefit contributions right before the holidays (fun fact: 9/10 classes at the New School are taught be PTF, so they’re going to need a lot of scabs for spring classes…)
(All of this while I sacrifice my Wordle streak to support NYT employees who are on strike today after working without a contract for two years—contentious labor politics are everywhere!)
How can We Help?
Other than not crossing picket lines, here are a few ways:
For the next week, anyone on strike right now can use the code FIGHTANDWRITE to sign up for Tier One of my January revision workshop Revise and (re) Submit for free.
And if you can’t participate in the workshop but want to sponsor an academic on strike, that would be AMAZING! I’ll give you credit in the next newsletter, or keep it anonymous and secretly know you’re really awesome.
You can donate directly to the UC strike fund here. I donated money last week thanks to the generosity of people enrolling in the workshop.
You can support the New School strikers here. You can also donate money directly to the union by mailing a check, they tell me, but I don’t have checks so I went with the Go Fund Me =) UAW Local 7902 Hardship Fund 111 Founders Plaza, Suite 1703 East Hartford, CT 06108 Attn: Lynne Weir with New School in the memo line.
One More Thing
If you’re a graduate student or contingent faculty who could use a little revision help, I have a code for you too! Use the code WRITEAWAY for 40% off of Tier One of the workshop.
That’s it for now! Next week look out for the last newsletter of the year, take good care, and good luck with the last bits of finals! Please share this with your friends!
xoxo
Kelly