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!