Tag Archives: freelance

Working together

One of the CIEP’s greatest strengths is its collegiality and mutual support. This extends to our members helping each other to find and succeed in work. Here are six ways we do this.

Advising and encouraging
Sharing information
Supporting each other’s work
Sharing opportunities
Employing each other
Working collectively

1. Advising and encouraging

The CIEP’s online member forums include a Newbie forum, where less experienced members can introduce themselves and ask questions about any aspect of being an editorial professional. These first questions often concern the best way to go about finding work. More experienced members respond with advice, encouragement and tips. These responses tend to reflect the same key themes:

Get trained, so you have the knowledge and confidence to offer your services.
Join a CIEP local group – in-person or online.
Check out CIEP resources, including our fact sheets and guides. These are free to members.
Think about how you will market yourself, including identifying the area of editing you will concentrate on. This might reflect your existing expertise (a field you’ve worked in, perhaps) or even your personal interests (for example a hobby like gardening or cookery).
Don’t limit yourself, either. If you have trained in proofreading, consider adding copyediting to your training plan. This is because sometimes a client will ask you to ‘proofread’ a document which also needs elements of copyediting to get it ready for publication.
Tell everyone you know that you are setting yourself up as an editorial professional. This may get you your first clients.
Use the ‘search’ function to find similar threads in our forums – there is already lots of advice there. There’s also a pinned post near the top of the Newbie forum, ‘Newbie FAQs and Collated Wisdom from CIEP Members’, that includes invaluable tips and suggests some great resources for when you’re starting out as an editor or proofreader.

2. Sharing information

Within the CIEP member forums, information is shared about all sorts of editing- and proofreading-related subjects, from tax rules and software glitches to the use of commas. But CIEP members who aren’t registered for our forums can also benefit from the wisdom and experience of other members. Most of our fact sheets and all of our guides are written by CIEP members. The information in these resources aims to equip our members for work, from setting up a freelance business and getting your first clients to editing in specialist areas like scientific articles, cookery books and legal publishing.

Many of the topics covered in our bank of resources are explored at a deeper level in our range of training courses which, again, are designed and delivered by CIEP members.

And there’s more information in our vast collection of blogs which are overwhelmingly written by CIEP members. Our blogs cover almost every editing-related subject, many of which are related to gaining work. Use the ‘search’ function to see what you can find. The Flying Solo series, written by Sue Littleford, author of the Going Solo guide, is particularly useful if you’re just starting out.

3. Supporting each other’s work

Suzanne Arnold and Nadine Catto met through the CIEP London group during lockdown and realised that they lived round the corner from each other. Nadine says: ‘We started meeting up with a few other editors and have all become great friends. As Suzanne and I live very near, we often go for walks together. We have collaborated on a few work projects as well.’ Friendship and work combine, as Suzanne describes: ‘It is a regular (and very valuable) sounding-board thing and sometimes even a bit of informal accountability. But it’s not structured or planned – it’s two friends bouncing ideas around and sharing links to online resources etc and the “agenda” is very driven by what’s going on in our lives on any particular day.’ The connections created by their local group help them both. Suzanne says: ‘There’s a lot of informal help behind the scenes – on a more mundane level, too, such as messaging saying “does this sentence look right to you?” And that often involves the wider group of CIEP friends who live locally.’ Sometimes this informal help extends to pet-sitting: Suzanne feeds Nadine’s cat when she’s on holiday.

In contrast to this more informal growth of connections within a larger formal group, some CIEP members decide to set up their own small accountability groups. In a CIEP blog, ‘Accountability groups: What? Where? Why?’, Eleanor Abraham says: ‘It’s good to have other perspectives, but sometimes you don’t want 150 slightly different opinions, but rather the chance to talk things through with people you trust and respect.’ Eleanor’s group has an hour-long meeting each month, which suits the busy lives of its members; Erin Brenner’s accountability group has a monthly goals check-in and in-person and online retreats. Erin writes: ‘We’ll refer each other for work and collaborate on projects. Some of us have even partnered for new business ventures, and we regularly discuss opportunities to do so.’

4. Sharing opportunities

From recommending other people for work to advertising jobs they can’t themselves take, CIEP members often share work opportunities with each other. This happens on our member forums: on the Marketplace forum and local group forums in particular.

As Erin’s accountability group does, many members also recommend colleagues who possess the skills a client will need. Most people who have been editing or proofreading for a while have had the experience of being asked to suggest someone else if they’re too busy to take a job. Directories can help here. The CIEP has a directory of Professional and Advanced Professional Members, but some of our local groups also have their own directories of CIEP members which list their experience and specialisms. It also helps to pre-empt clients’ requests for recommendations to develop our own list of editors we would happily recommend if we can’t do a job.

5. Employing each other

A step beyond recommending our colleagues is employing them to do something for us. In ‘Reflections on the self-publishing process’, Kia Thomas describes commissioning two other CIEP members to help her publish her own novel, and they in turn report on the experience. The project went so well that Kia is planning to use the same team for her second novel.

Kia went about finding Judith Leask, her editor, ‘not just a good editor, but the right one for me’, by ‘asking CIEP members who were looking for more experience in fiction to put themselves forward for the job’. It can be a great approach to work with other editors who are at this stage of their career – for you as a ‘client’ and for the person you’ve asked to do the job. Judith says: ‘Being chosen by Kia to edit her novel was very exciting, because I knew I’d learn a huge amount from her, and that turned out to be true.’

The CIEP has a system for encouraging its members to work with other members who are keen to gain more experience: IM Available. This is a list, refreshed every fortnight, that includes any Intermediate CIEP members who are available for work, with details of their training, skills and experience, so that other CIEP members can employ them – to edit or proofread their own writing or to help with a surplus of client work.

6. Working collectively

Another way to deal with work that is too much for one editor or proofreader is to work in a partnership or a larger collective.

One such collective is Editing Globally, which, through six editorial professionals, spans the globe’s time zones but also the full range of tasks related to getting a publication produced: manuscript evaluations, project management, translation, developmental editing, line editing, fact-checking, copyediting and proofreading, formatting and design. This 24/7, end-to-end service can make it easier for a client to hit a tight deadline. Janet MacMillan, one of the editors in Editing Globally, is a fan of team working:

Editorial teams come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from a team like Global Editing to informal, ad hoc, two-person teams who work together to complete a job over a timescale that would be impossible for one person. I value being able to work with trusted colleagues, whose expertise and knowledge I learn from, and I believe that learning makes me the editor that I am. No matter the size or shape of the team, being able to work with others expands an editor’s knowledge and skills.

Make the most of the editorial community

Freelance editing and proofreading can be lonely work. It pays off – sometimes literally – to reach out to your professional community. If you want some more ideas about how to do this, download our fact sheet ‘Making the most of the editorial community’, which is free for CIEP members.

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

Photo credits: hands together by Hannah Busing on Unsplash; two women working together by CoWomen on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Forum matters: Finding work

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This feature comes from the band of CIEP members who volunteer as forum moderators. You will only be able to access links to the posts if you’re a forum user and logged in. Find out how to register.

The topic of finding work is one that arises frequently wherever editorial professionals chat, and CIEP forums are no exception. Whether they are new to the field or are more experienced and seeking fresh opportunities, forum members often turn to other members for suggestions. And with most members needing to seek more work at some stage, everyone is usually willing to share advice and information.

Gaining experience

A recent discussion on how long it takes full-time freelance editors and proofreaders to get regular work covered lots of bases. The consensus seemed to be that building a freelance business takes time, and that it took several years for most to establish themselves in terms of a steady stream of work and adequate income.

Contributors to that discussion and others shared their experiences of how valuable word of mouth, cold calling, finding a niche, directory entries and having a website were. One mentioned the importance of local networking events, and there’s lots of information about networking within the CIEP on the CIEP website.

How someone goes about finding work may vary depending on their niche(s), but one discussion on finding academic editing work reinforced the importance of word of mouth and networking. The topic of packagers/agencies also came up in this discussion and in a more recent Newbie query, and while some editorial professionals find the rates low and turnaround times tight, they acknowledge that such work provides the opportunity to gain experience, which then attracts other clients. Several members suggested contacting faculty members and university departments who may have their own proofreading and editing needs and who may also be involved in publishing academic journals. University presses also got a mention.

Jobs in the marketplace

Members can find work in the Marketplace forum when other members post information about one-off jobs they have been offered but cannot take on. The time it takes ‘[CLOSED]’ to appear at the front of such posts is a measure of how quickly the work is taken up, so it’s a good place to check regularly in case something in your niche becomes available – before it becomes unavailable!

Members posting jobs usually take a few names of people who contact them directly and mark the post ‘[CLOSED]’ when they have enough responses. They will ask for some information – perhaps website/profile details and anything about your experience that may be relevant to the specific job. If you are the person posting the work, it’s helpful to read the pinned How to avoid post removal and Marketplace guidelines topics first.

Tests and testimonials

Sometimes members post about editing tests they have taken, or sample edits they have been asked to do. It’s worth noting that while a ‘poor’ performance in a test or sample edit may knock the confidence of a newbie, even experienced editors and proofreaders have ‘failed’ such editorial tests, and one discussion showed that while tests may match you with a potential client, one bad experience does not mean you’re a bad editor.

Keeping an up-to-date portfolio and collecting testimonials are other ways to set yourself up for finding work. In one discussion, the topic of better ways to organise a portfolio and the value of having a portfolio came up. In a discussion in the Fiction forum (which you will need to subscribe to), the value of testimonials and how they might be organised generated interesting responses.

CIEP guides and courses

Many forum members find CIEP resources helpful – directly or indirectly – in guiding them as they seek work, and some of these get a mention in the forums. One that newcomers to freelance life may find helpful is Sue Littleford’s Going Solo Toolkit and the CIEP guide Going Solo: Creating your freelance editorial business. Many other CIEP guides are useful in helping an editorial professional learn more about finding work, including Marketing Yourself: Strategies to promote your editorial business by Sara Hulse. You can find an overview of the CIEP guides here.

Finally, there’s training. Many new editors and proofreaders posting for the first time in the Newbies forum will be undertaking courses, but many experienced professionals also see courses as a vital part of their continuing professional development, making them more attractive to regular and new clients.

For up-to-date discussion about this and more, you won’t go far wrong when you network on the CIEP forums!

About the CIEP

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Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Editing fiction: Point of view

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In this post, Rachel Rowlands looks at how fiction editors can help authors to use point of view consistently and in a way that works well for the story.

Point of view is a crucial element of fiction editing – and it’s something newer writers often struggle to get to grips with. As editors, it’s part of our job to be able to point out to an author when they’ve broken out of their chosen perspective, and to advise them on what will work best for the type of story they’re telling.

Point of view is the lens through which we view the story – whose eyes we experience the story’s events through. This could be a single main character or multiple characters. It’s a huge topic (there have been entire books written on the subject!), so after a quick crash course in the different types, I’ll list some of the main sticking points I’ve come across as a fiction editor, and how you can help authors deal with them too.

Point of view: The different types

First-person: this one is pretty straightforward! A character narrates the story using ‘I’ (‘I headed into the woods to search for him’, ‘I laughed’). The benefit here is that this can make the narrative feel much closer to the main character. It’s common in certain genres and age categories, such as young adult books.
Second-person: second-person point of view involves the use of ‘you’ (‘you walked across the street’, ‘you said’). This is quite an uncommon choice, and is best used carefully – some readers hate it with a passion! However, it can be a good way of making the reader feel more involved in the story.
Third-person limited: in third-person limited, we use pronouns such as ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘they’ (for example ‘she grabbed his hand’ and ‘they weren’t listening to her’). The clue to this one is in the name: we’re limited to one character’s perspective and are zoomed in on them. We experience one point of view. This can be per chapter, per scene or for the whole book, depending on the author’s choice.
Third-person omniscient: in this point of view, we again use pronouns such as ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘they’. But in omniscient, we are more zoomed out. The narrator is godlike, and knows everything about the story and characters, meaning we can enter anyone’s mind we like. The narrator can also know things the characters can’t. This point of view is more common in classic literature, and so is often seen as slightly old-fashioned now, but for some stories, it can work.

The sticking points

There are common problems that come up when it comes to point of view, and some of them can be trickier than others to communicate to authors.

Some point-of-view problems may mean you have to advise an author to completely scrap a perspective, or even rewrite their book in another perspective entirely.

Here are some of the most common point-of-view problems, and how you can help authors overcome them.

The chosen point of view doesn’t work for the book

Sometimes, the point of view just doesn’t work for the type of book the author is writing. A good example of this would be a middle-grade author writing for children, using the omniscient viewpoint, and diving into the perspective of all the adult characters.

This likely doesn’t work for a few reasons: omniscient has become a bit old-fashioned and outdated, particularly for children’s books (it was used, for example, in JM Barrie’s Peter Pan way back in 1904). It can also muddle the target audience. In a middle-grade book, we want to be focusing on the children’s point of view, not the adults’. In children’s books, the general rule of thumb is that children read about people their own age or slightly older. Having the point of view of characters over the age of 18 muddies the waters and pushes the book out of its intended age category.

The author is head-hopping

Head-hopping tends to occur when an author is writing in third-person limited, and is zoomed in on one character. Sometimes, the author slips up, and gives us the thoughts and feelings of a non-viewpoint character.

For example, let’s say the author is writing a chapter in third-person limited, following a character called Tom. The chapter is clearly zoomed in on Tom, and we get insight into his thoughts and feelings throughout:

Tom heaved a sigh. How was he supposed to get on with his week now, with his sister being so difficult? ‘I don’t want to talk about it right now,’ he told her.

The chapter is written this way, close to Tom, consistently. Then, suddenly, we get a sentence where we know what his sister, Michelle, is thinking:

Michelle crossed her arms. She’d expected this reaction but it still made her cheeks feel hot with fury.

This would be considered head-hopping – we’ve dipped into Michelle’s head to learn about what she’s thinking and feeling, but we need to be following Tom. In this case, the sentence could be cut down so only the first half remains, or rewritten so the second half focuses on Tom.

Some forms of head-hopping can be more subtle than this, so make sure you’re on the lookout for this kind of switch!

Using too many points of view

Sometimes an author wants to write from the point of view of lots of different characters, and so we get lots of scenes or chapters from the perspective of different people. Even the most skilled authors can find this difficult!

For new writers in particular, using lots of perspectives can occasionally cause issues: there may be so many point-of-view chapters or scenes that readers will struggle trying to keep up with them. It might be harder to give each character a unique voice, because the author has spread themselves too thin. And it may be difficult to develop a protagonist with a clear goal and well-defined personality, because the author is juggling too many storylines and points of view.

As an editor, if you think a manuscript is struggling with any of these issues, odds are a reader will think the same. The author in many of these cases might be better off scaling back on some of the perspectives so they can focus on what matters most to the story.

The author’s own voice intrudes on the narrative

This is a common issue when the author has chosen to use third-person limited, but occasionally slips into omniscient by having their own ‘author voice’ intrude on the narrative. This is a difficult thing to spot, because it requires having a good knowledge of the differences between third-person limited and omniscient, and having a honed eye for each! Here’s an example of how the author’s voice can intrude.

If the entire book has been clearly written in the point of view of a character called Cassandra, in third-person limited (so kept very close to Cassandra throughout), keeping this consistent is important. The author voice suddenly intruding may look something like this:

Cassandra twisted her hands, her cheeks burning. She had to do something to stop this. Little did Cassandra know that things were about to get much worse …

Here, the author’s own ‘godlike’ voice has intruded to give the reader a glimpse of the future. We’ve slipped into omniscient, and the author has spoken directly to the reader. As the book was written in third-person limited elsewhere, we’ve broken out of our intended point of view. An intruding author voice can be more obvious (like the movie-trailer-style example above), or more subtle, so getting a good handle on both perspectives can help you identify this issue.

The easiest way to practise identifying this type of slip is to read novels that use both types of third-person point of view, so you become familiar with how each of them works. Some examples of books written in third-person limited are The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon and The Giver by Lois Lowry. Third-person omniscient books are less common these days, but some popular examples are Dune by Frank Herbert and Peter Pan by JM Barrie.

Those are some of the common issues with point of view that I’ve come across while editing fiction, but there are more that you’ll no doubt encounter! There are lots of great resources out there that you can check out to learn more. Here is some recommended reading to brush up:

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Dave King and Renni Browne (chapter 3: Point of View)
Point of View by Sandra Gerth

About Rachel Rowlands

Rachel Rowlands is a fiction editor, author and Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP. She has a degree in English and creative writing and has worked on around 200 books for publishing houses (including HarperCollins, Hachette, Canelo and Penguin Random House), as well as for independent authors.

About the CIEP

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Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Definite articles: AI

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Welcome to ‘Definite articles’, our pick of recent editing-related internet content, most of which are definitely articles. This time, our theme is the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on editing and proofreading. It’s a hot topic of conversation among editorial professionals, which is why some of the links in this article were sourced from a CIEP forum thread about ChatGPT. Thank you to the CIEP members who shared them.

Because nothing related to discussions about AI can be guaranteed a long shelf life, you should know that this edition of ‘Definite articles’ was put together at the beginning of June 2023. It covers:

What’s been happening?
What can AI actually do?
How can editorial professionals move forward with AI?

What’s been happening?

On 30 November 2022, the AI chatbot ChatGPT was released by OpenAI. Since then, people who work with words, who include editors, proofreaders and writers, have had the unnerving feeling that the fundamentals of what they do might change, at least in some areas. If you haven’t been keeping a close eye on events, Forbes has written a short history of ChatGPT and two professors have summarised some of the implications of ChatGPT in usefully easy-to-understand terms. You can get an overview of Microsoft’s Copilot, an AI assistance feature being launched this summer, from CNN and Microsoft itself.

As well as the obvious nervousness about whether AI would replace various categories of worker, concerns were quickly raised about the effects of AI on assessing student work and what AI might mean for copyright.

By late spring 2023, loud noises were being made about regulation of AI. As lawmakers in Europe worked on an AI Act, workers in the UK reported that they would like to see the regulation of generative AI technologies.

It’s a subject that’s currently being written and thought about on a daily, if not hourly, basis. But, in practice, and at this point in time, what can AI actually do?

What can AI actually do?

If you didn’t catch Harriet Power’s CIEP blog, ‘ChatGPT versus a human editor’, it’s an enlightening and entertaining read that went down well with our social media followers on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Harriet instructed ChatGPT to take a proofreading test, write a blog post, and edit some fiction and a set of references. In the proofreading and editing tasks, it did ‘pretty well’ and was impressive in simplifying a fiction passage while keeping its main points. It also wrote a serviceable blog draft.

The two main problems Harriet noticed in the technology were a distinct lack of sparkle in ChatGPT’s writing and editing, and its ‘tendency to “hallucinate”: it’s very good at making stuff up with complete confidence’. (This tendency was also written about by Susanne Dunlap for Jane Friedman’s website, in an article called ‘Using ChatGPT for book research? Take exceeding care’.) Weighing up her test run, Harriet concluded:

ChatGPT apparently struggles to remain coherent when responding to much longer pieces of text (like whole books). It isn’t always factually accurate: you can’t entirely trust anything it’s saying. I can’t imagine how it’d make a good development editor, or how it’d handle raising complex, sensitive author queries. It can’t track changes well. It can’t think like a human, even when it can convincingly sound like one.

However, Harriet added the caveat that in her view it may be ‘years or even months’ before ChatGPT might be able to start competing with human editors. So, how should we respond to that?

How can editorial professionals move forward with AI?

Perhaps there’s no choice but to look at the possible upsides of the AI debate. Anne McCarthy for the New York Book Forum starts us off in ‘The potential impact of AI on editing and proofreading’ by reminding us that lightbulbs and the ‘horseless carriage’ inspired dire predictions in their day. She concludes: ‘Books always have (and always will) require a human touch: it’s what draws us readers to them.’

Amanda Goldrick-Jones, in an article for the Editors Toronto blog called ‘ChatGPT and the role of editors’, offers some wise and hopeful advice: there’s a point at which we, as editorial professionals, have to trust ourselves.

If anyone is well-positioned to explore and critique the possibilities and challenges of AI-generated writing, it’s an editor … So, as with other communication technologies, editors must self-educate about its affordances, propose clear ethical boundaries, and critically engage with its limitations. It’s a tool, not our robot overlord.

Part of this consideration and engagement is understanding AI’s risks, and Michelle Garrett lays these out very effectively in a blog post from March, ‘The realities of using ChatGPT to write for you – what to consider when it comes to legalities, reputation, search and originality’.

Moving one step further, a Q&A with writer Elisa Lorello on Jane Friedman’s website talks about actively using ChatGPT to become ‘creatively fertile’. Lorello testifies that when she started using the technology in earnest, ‘It’s like I suddenly gained an edge in productivity, organization, and creativity’.

And finally, Alex Hern in The Guardian described what happened when he spent a week using ChatGPT to enhance his leisure activities. If you’re not ready to use AI at work, perhaps you could at least get a couple of recipes out of it.

With thanks to the users of the CIEP’s forums for the links they shared in recent discussions.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: robot hand by Tara Winstead on Pexels; OpenAI screen by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Curriculum focus: Educational publishing

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In this regular feature for The Edit, former training director Jane Moody highlights areas of the CIEP’s Curriculum for professional development related to educational publishing.

Editors who work in educational publishing use all the same tools as every other kind of editor, so it is difficult to pick out anything specific. Often, however, the areas of scheduling and process are important to editors working in this field. Clarity is also particularly important in writing for educational purposes, so let’s look at these few aspects of the curriculum.

Knowledge criteria	Editorial competency, professional skills and attitudes
2.1.2 Schedules and budgeting	• Understands the importance of scheduling and budgeting within any publishing process • Understands the influence of the schedule/budget on the scope of editing/proofreading
2.1.3 Editorial processes	• Understands the meaning and significance of common editorial terminology • Understands the roles and responsibilities of members of an editorial team • Understands the stages of the editorial process
2.1.4 Production processes	• Understands the roles and responsibilities of a production team • Understands the meaning and use of common production terminology • Understands the stages of the production process (eg prepress, print/electronic production)
2.3.3 Clarity in writing	• Understands the need to avoid ambiguity • Understands appropriate use of language and tone • Understands conciseness (elimination of redundancy/repetition) • If space is limited or layout is fixed, is aware of the need to fit any change into the available space without causing a new problem • Can reword appropriately to simplify, clarify or shorten text • Can identify whether material is well expressed and flows logically, with the ideas and wording easy to follow

Resources to support your learning and CPD

The CIEP course Editorial Project Management would be really useful to enhance your skills. You could also try the PTC course Introduction to Digital Project Management. For clarity in writing, try the CIEP courses Getting to Grips with Grammar and Punctuation and Plain English for Editors. The CIEP guide Editing Textbooks would also be worth a read.

This book chapter would also be worth reading: Miha Kovač, Mojca K. Šebart. ‘Educational publishing: how it works: primary and secondary education publishing’ in: The Oxford Handbook of Publishing, edited by Angus Phillips and Michael Bhaskar. OUP, 2019, pp274–288.

If you work with interactive exercises, the CIEP course Editing Digital Content could prove useful.

Read Anneke Schmidt’s blog post: ‘What makes a good elearning course? elearning best practices explained’ (Skill & Care, 13 March 2023). This post could also lead you down various other useful rabbit holes.

The Society of Young Publishers has published the video ‘Introduction to Education Publishing’, which you can find on YouTube. It’s a panel discussion and gives a good overview of the education sector of the publishing industry.

This is only a snapshot – almost every other topic in domains 1 and 2 of the Curriculum for professional development are relevant to editing for educational publishing!

About Jane Moody

Jane has worked with books for all her working life (which is rather more years than she cares to admit), having started life as a librarian. She started a freelance editing business while at home with her two children, which she maintained for 15 years before going back into full-time employment as head of publishing for a medical Royal College.

Now retired, she has resurrected her editorial business, but has less time for work these days as she spends much time with her four grandchildren and in her garden.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: header image by Pixabay on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

ChatGPT versus a human editor

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Can ChatGPT hold its own against a human editor? Can it tackle typical editorial tasks? Harriet Power puts it through its paces.

ChatGPT describes itself as an ‘AI language model’: it’s essentially a clever chatbot that you can have human-like conversations with. It’s been trained on enormous amounts of text data (such as websites and books) to learn how language works. ChatGPT tells me that when someone gives it a question or prompt, it ‘breaks down the text into individual words and analyses them to understand the user’s intent. It then generates a response by predicting the most likely next words based on its training data’.

It turns out that ChatGPT is quite good at a variety of things, from writing marketing copy to summarising policy documents to creating computer code, and there’s been a fair bit of noise online about how it’s going to take over all our office-based jobs. But could it take over editing and proofreading? Could it start writing posts for the CIEP blog? I decided to put ChatGPT-4 through its paces with some typical editorial tasks.

Take a proofreading test

How does ChatGPT fare with the CIEP’s proofreading test? This test is available here; it’s a 270-word piece of text with 20 ‘common’ errors. I pasted the text into ChatGPT with the prompt ‘Please point out the proofreading errors in this text’ (it’s hard to let go of ingrained politeness, even when talking to a machine).[1]

If we ignore the 3 formatting errors that didn’t copy across, ChatGPT caught 15 out of 17 errors. It did well at spotting spelling mistakes (such as ‘peaking’ rather than ‘peeking’) and repeated words (‘There had certainly had been one or two eccentric characters’). It spotted that Anne’s cup of tea had morphed into a cup of coffee three paragraphs later, which according to my programming boyfriend is an impressive catch to make.

It missed a hyphen that should have been an en dash, and didn’t change ‘Jones’ geraniums’ to ‘Jones’s geraniums’, although that’s arguably just a style choice (as the test itself acknowledges). Another thing it didn’t do was query how Ann spells her name: it assumed ‘Anne’ was right (probably because it was spelled this way where it first occurs in the text).

So perhaps ChatGPT’s main failing here was to not question the text in a way a human would: to ask about style or spelling preferences. Plus of course it can’t see formatting errors, or track changes in a useful way, but both of those issues might be solved once Microsoft’s Copilot is launched sometime ‘in the months ahead’. This will basically integrate ChatGPT into Microsoft programs. At that point it might be perfectly possible for Copilot to proofread text in Word and mark up corrections using Track Changes and use a style guide for reference. Scary, right?

Write a blog post

How about writing posts for the CIEP blog? ChatGPT is certainly much quicker at this than us slow and plodding humans, taking under a minute to write a post. The results are quite bland and generic, but are also pretty serviceable. For example, here’s the start of a blog post about how to start out as a freelance copyeditor:

Embarking on a freelance copyediting career can be both an exciting and daunting prospect. With the right preparation and know-how, however, you can set yourself up for success in this rewarding field. In this blog post, we’ll explore the essential training and resources you’ll need to get started, as well as tips for finding your first copyediting jobs.

Part A: Training for Success

Understand the basics

Before diving into the world of freelance copyediting, it’s essential to familiarize yourself with the basic principles of the English language. This includes understanding grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling rules. There are numerous online resources and books available to help you strengthen your foundation in these areas.

Formal training

While it’s not strictly necessary to have formal training to become a freelance copyeditor, it can help you refine your skills and lend credibility to your services. Many organizations offer courses and certifications to help aspiring copyeditors learn the ropes. Some recommended courses and programs include:

- The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP): CIEP offers a range of courses, from basic proofreading and copyediting to more advanced courses on specific topics. Their Introduction to Copyediting and Proofreading courses are great starting points.
- The Publishing Training Centre (PTC): The PTC provides a comprehensive copyediting course called ‘Basic Editing by Distance Learning’ that covers grammar, punctuation, and syntax, as well as editing techniques and best practices.
- The Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA): EFA’s ‘Copyediting: Beginning to Intermediate’ course is designed to help you build skills and knowledge in various areas of freelance editing, including copyediting, with a focus on practical applications and exercises.

With a little tweaking that could turn into a passable (if not sparkling) blog post. The main problem with it is that no courses exist with the exact titles ‘Basic Editing by Distance Learning’ or ‘Copyediting: Beginning to Intermediate’. This illustrates one of ChatGPT’s main limitations, which is its tendency to ‘hallucinate’: it’s very good at making stuff up with complete confidence, rather than simply admitting when it doesn’t know something.

Edit fiction

I amused myself with writing some terrible fiction, then asked ChatGPT to improve it. Here’s what we started with:

Outside, the trees swayed ominously in the howling wind while dark, menacing clouds raced overheard. Rachel was gazing wistfully out of the window longing to be out in the paddock with her horse Ophelia irregardless of the fetid weather, when there was a resoundingly loud crash and a blood curdling screaming from above and she jumped ten feet in the air. Panicked thoughts flew threw her mind as she wrenched open the kitchen door, which persistently stuck as it grazed the uneven flagstones, and pelted downstairs where she found her brother tangled on the floor of the hallway in the rich velveteen curtains with the bust of Artemis, the goddess of love, shattered and lying in forlorn pieces around his beautiful golden-flecked hair.

“Jasper!” whispered Rachael frantically. “What happened!”

She roughly shaked him until he groaned and groggily opened one eye, gazing not at her but staring inwards at the visage that had shaken him to his very core.

“Rachel”, he moaned. “I saw him.”

“Saw who? Who did you see?” she exclaimed fearfully.

Asking ChatGPT to ‘line edit’ this led to a simple copyedit, where it corrected things like ‘overheard’ to ‘overhead’, ‘fetid weather’ to ‘foul weather’, ‘Artemis’ to ‘Aphrodite’ and so on. I then asked ChatGPT to ‘simplify the text a little’, and questioned whether the fact that Rachel heard the crash from upstairs but then ran downstairs is inconsistent. Here’s ChatGPT’s reply:

Yes, it is inconsistent. The story indicates that the crash and screams come from above, suggesting that Rachel should run upstairs instead of downstairs. Here’s the revised text to fix the inconsistency:

Outside, the trees swayed in the strong wind as dark clouds raced overhead. Rachel gazed out of the window, wishing she could be in the paddock with her horse, Ophelia, despite the poor weather. Suddenly, a loud crash and a scream from above startled her. Panicked, she opened the kitchen door, which stuck as it scraped the uneven flagstones, and rushed upstairs. She found her brother on the floor, entangled in the curtains, with the broken bust of Aphrodite scattered around his golden-flecked hair.

“Jasper!” whispered Rachel anxiously. “What happened?”

She gently shook him until he groaned and opened one eye, not looking at her but appearing deeply shaken.

“Rachel,” he murmured. “I saw him.”

“Saw who? Who did you see?” she asked nervously.

This clearly isn’t prize-winning fiction, but I was impressed that ChatGPT could take my original text and rewrite it while still keeping the essential bits of the narrative, and present them in a coherent way. It’s an example of how powerful ChatGPT can potentially be when it comes to simplifying text.

Edit references

I took a list of references, introduced a bunch of mistakes, and then asked ChatGPT to edit them so they were consistent.

ChatGPT did pretty well. It made corrections like replacing ‘and’ with ‘&’, moving the year to the correct place, changing the volume and issue number from ‘18:2’ to ‘18(2)’, and deleting the word ‘pages’ before the page range. The thing that impressed me was when I gave it a reference where I’d deleted one of the author’s initials, and ChatGPT filled them in correctly. It managed to do that correctly a couple more times, so it didn’t feel like a fluke. (Though if ChatGPT is simply making educated guesses about how to fill in the blanks then this is far from infallible.)

If ChatGPT could track changes (and my guess is that it will be able to do this in Microsoft’s Copilot) then I’d happily use it to help me edit references.

Can ChatGPT replace me?

ChatGPT is remarkable, in that it can edit and write text and you can hold a semi-intelligent conversation with it when its basic function is simply to guess what the next word should be.

As things stand, there are some stumbling blocks when it comes to using it as an editor or proofreader: ChatGPT apparently struggles to remain coherent when responding to much longer pieces of text (like whole books). It isn’t always factually accurate: you can’t entirely trust anything it’s saying. I can’t imagine how it’d make a good development editor, or how it’d handle raising complex, sensitive author queries. It can’t track changes well. It can’t think like a human, even when it can convincingly sound like one.

So I don’t think that it currently competes with a human proofreader or editor (or blog writer), but I do wonder how many years or even months it might be before it can. Things are moving at speed: in the time it’s taken to write this blog post, ChatGPT has already announced two upgrades (one from ChatGPT-3.5 to ChatGPT-4, and one to launch plugins). And when Microsoft’s Copilot launches sometime in the coming months, that’ll be another giant leap forwards.

John Naughton, professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University, has described ChatGPT like this: just as Google became a prosthesis for memory, so will ChatGPT (or similar AI) become ‘a prosthesis for something that many people find very difficult to do: writing competent prose’. I’m certain that it’s going to have a seismic influence on an industry that helps people to write and publish competent prose; the question is just how quickly, and what editors and proofreaders can or should do about it.

[1] When I asked ChatGPT later on, ‘Do you appreciate it if I start my requests with the word “Please”?’ its answer was: ‘As an AI language model, I do not have the ability to feel emotions. However, using “please” in your requests is a courteous and polite way to ask for something, and it can help make the conversation more pleasant and respectful.’

About Harriet Power

Harriet Power develops and copyedits nonfiction books and educational materials. She is a commissioning editor for the CIEP information team, and a Professional Member of the CIEP.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: Motherboard by Pixabay on Pexels; Glasses and smartphone by Mateus Bertelli on Pexels; ChatGPT screen by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Music editing

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What makes working on music-based manuscripts different from other subject areas? Four music editors give a flavour of this editorial speciality.

The CIEP Music forum and, shortly afterwards, the Music special interest group (SIG), led by Dawn Wakefield, were set up following the 2021 CIEP conference when it became clear that there are a lot of musicians among our members. The members of the SIG are all musical in some way, with many of us playing more than one instrument (including an unusual number of oboists!). Between us, we have experience in a broad range of musical genres, from classical to rock and gospel to folk.

We hold monthly Zoom meetings, sometimes with guest speakers, when we discuss music editing, specific editorial problems and ideas we’ve come across. One common discussion topic has been how to find clients and, just as importantly, how potential clients can find us. Google searches for music editors resulted in many links for music audio editors but nothing for those of us who edit text or sheet music. As a result, we have set up a new website, Find a Music Editor (FaME), to give us a more visible online presence.

Fiona Little: Music proofreading

I began proofreading sheet music after I had gained some experience of copyediting music books. I play several musical instruments and had edited some unpublished 18th-century music for a dissertation, so I felt reasonably confident about the work, but there was a lot to learn. Although music resembles text in that it is written and read in a linear way, from beginning to end, it also portrays sounds graphically, which is why a choir singer unfamiliar with the notation can trace their line in a score, following the ups and downs of the melody. Music notation has multiple dimensions: each note shows both pitch and duration and, as well as clefs and other symbols, there are markings for tempo (speed), dynamics (loud/soft), phrasing and so on. Finally, music normally incorporates some text, for example in the form of headings and directions, and, in vocal music, words that are sung to the notes. Good layout can help to make all these features clear.

Even with music typesetting software, errors can creep in. Although basic musical ‘grammar’ can be checked, a problem may have several possible solutions. For example, if a bar (a ‘measure’ in US English) contains five beats when the time signature specifies four, are there too many notes, is one of them too long or is the time signature wrong? Even simple errors are best queried, and you need to understand the musical style in order to work confidently.

For the proofreader or editor, addressing all these aspects is time-consuming. Whether I’m comparing with a previous version or reading ‘cold’, I work methodically in a series of passes, considering one aspect at a time: pitches on one pass, note durations and rhythms on another, and so on, hearing the music in my inner ear as I go. It all adds up to an experience that is very different from working on text.

Dawn Wakefield: Proofreading educational materials

One of the things I most enjoy about music proofreading is that it is not all sitting in front of a computer screen reading text; it can actually involve playing and listening to music.

I often work on educational piano books. First proofs of the sheet music portion of the book are usually worked through on paper as this is the quickest and most accurate way of marking music scores. Like Fiona, I take several passes to check the various elements of the notation, and then, in addition, I check or create piano fingering, shown with numbers (1 for thumb, 2 for index finger, etc). For this, I have to play through the pieces carefully and, in the process, often spot errors of pitch or rhythm, which may become clearer once heard.

The text sections of the book, as well as headings to the pieces themselves, often require knowledge of other languages. Instructions in the music are most commonly in Italian, but are often in French or German, according to the composer’s nationality. Historical background text also often contains foreign names and place names, so linguistic knowledge may be involved, for instance understanding masculine and feminine endings of Eastern European surnames or checking spelling that has been transcribed from Cyrillic.

Plenty of listening was required for a recent job proofreading online resources for an educational music course for teenagers. As well as checking that the YouTube links actually worked, I had to listen and check that the tracks were accurately described. I had a very enjoyable and nostalgic time listening to well-known pop hits from across the decades from the 1950s to the present! In one amusing incident, the music to a computer game was described as being by Grieg, yet, when I listened, I found a strange electronic version of The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss! The fact that music editing uses so many varied skills is one of its most rewarding aspects.

Eleanor Bolton: Editing books

In many ways, books about music are similar to other books. The text has to be copyedited so that it conforms to the publisher’s style guide, often, of course, with variations depending on author preference and likely readership. However, some specialist knowledge is useful whatever genre of music you work on.

Maybe the text is discussing the finer points of Schubert’s cello quintet, but the extract shows two viola parts. If you know your clefs, and that a ‘cello quintet’ has two cellos, that’s an obvious inconsistency. But what else do we need to look for? Here are some other examples of something being awry:

The text contains a discussion of piano fingerings in a specific bar, but the excerpt in the music example doesn’t have any fingerings in that bar.
The caption specifies bars 80–92 but the excerpt is only eight bars long.
The caption says the piece is in ‘F# major’. Note the difference between the hash sign # and the musical sharp sign ♯.
The text refers to Bach’s opus 1001 but the caption says ‘BWV 1001’. (J. S. Bach’s music is, uniquely, catalogued by BWV number, not opus number.)

As with many things in life, you don’t know what you don’t know. A good editor knows when (and where!) to look things up.

Anna Williams: Music typesetting and the crossover with editing

The line between the roles of music editor and typesetter (or ‘engraver’, harking back to the etched metal plates used from the late 16th century to surprisingly recently) has blurred over recent years. While some publishers retain the distinction, I am receiving more requests for ‘full package’ or ‘on-screen editing’ jobs. Though sometimes driven by a client’s desire to save time and/or money, it also taps into the crossover of skills required for each task and is made easier by advances in music notation software.

As well as the musical ‘grammar’ that Fiona mentions, plus house style, consistency and clarity checks, part of a music editor’s job is to optimise the layout and presentation of information on the page. This includes practical considerations, such as instrumentalists needing time to turn pages, or a publisher needing to fit a collection into a certain page extent, but it’s also about spacing, information density and the need for music that can be read fluently at speed.

It often makes sense to consider these layout issues before detailed copyediting and to adjust (a copy of!) the computer file accordingly. Whether or not you will be typesetting, some initial layout work can result in a cleaner manuscript to work on, saving time. Trying out different notations in the file can sometimes also guide editorial decisions, so being familiar with the software can be very helpful. Similarly, editorial knowledge is useful when typesetting. Some music publishers place much of the house style responsibility on typesetters, and understanding editorial conventions means they can fix things an editor might have missed.

I hope and believe that there will continue to be dedicated editors and typesetters in the industry, but there is a place for a combined model of working, especially for the increasing number of self-publishing composers, who are often looking for someone with both the editorial knowledge and typesetting expertise to turn their work into a publication-standard product.

If you’re an editor of music-based material, please come and join us on the Music forum, where you will find details of our meetings and more. If you’d like to be added to the Directory on our website, the details can be found on the forum.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: sheet music close-up by César Vanc on Pexels; pianist playing sheet music by wal_172619 on Pixabay.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Editors don’t just spot typos: Breaking down the editing stereotypes

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Are editorial professionals just hard-hearted pedants? Of course not! Julia Sandford-Cooke looks into four common misconceptions about editors.

When a content creator asks ‘Why do I need an editor?’, it can be hard to know how to respond. We’re so good at quietly enhancing the clarity of texts that our role is often overlooked altogether. The CIEP, of course, is doing a fine job of raising our profile, but editors also have a responsibility to demolish the common stereotypes about our work that make many writers reluctant to hire editors.

Stereotype 1: Editors just spot typos

Even a little research reveals that this is not true. Scan the list of courses offered by the CIEP. Flick through the 12-page CIEP syllabus for the basic editorial test. The word ‘typo’ does not appear but the phrases ‘professional practice’ and ‘editorial knowledge and judgement’ do. The CIEP’s members are described on its homepage as ‘the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose’. That is a broad description. Clearly, there is far more to being an editorial professional than just ‘correcting mistakes’.

Stereotype 2: Editors are the grammar police

Editors and proofreaders may suggest many types of amendments, and some of these suggestions may involve correcting grammar. Good editors and proofreaders will do so respectfully and sensitively. We don’t make judgements about the writer’s education or background. We don’t set out to destroy the writer’s self-confidence or impose our own style of writing on theirs. We won’t force the writer to make the changes we’ve marked up. They are just suggestions that we believe, in our professional capacity, will make the text more effective in achieving its purpose. The writer isn’t obliged to accept them (unless they have been commissioned to write to a specific brief).

We appreciate that seeing a screen of red Track Changes can be intimidating. We know that it can be dispiriting to be told that that long-incubated text is not quite ready for publication. But we are on the writer’s side. It should be more a partnership than a hierarchical relationship, in which we respect the writer’s vision and the writer respects our expertise.

Stereotype 3: Editors are too expensive

‘Expensive’ is a relative term. A good edit or proofread is an investment but budgets are often tight. Several hundred (or thousand) pounds is a lot of money to find, even for established publishers – in some cases, the rates they offer editors and proofreaders have actually reduced over the years.

A self-published author once told me that they’d had the budget to commission either an editor or a cover designer and had opted for the cover designer, believing that marketing was more of a priority. After all, when a book catches your eye, you’re likely to buy it before you read it. But reviews on sites such as Goodreads and Amazon, and old-fashioned word-of-mouth recommendations, also generate sales. When a reading experience is spoilt by inconsistencies, errors and impenetrable prose, those positive reviews and therefore those additional sales will not materialise.

If a client baulks at my fees, that’s their prerogative, just as it’s my prerogative to turn down a job that doesn’t meet my minimum hourly rate. Editorial professionals are running a business and need to pay the bills. And my quote for ‘doing the work’ includes not only the time taken to do the work itself but also 25 years of editing experience, both in-house at publishers and as a freelancer. Factors other than long service may also be significant. For example, those who became editors after a successful career in another field may apply the knowledge from their previous roles and qualifications to provide a specialist service, such as for legal or medical texts. Clients are paying for that knowledge, just as they would for the services of a plumber or solicitor.

Stereotype 4: Editors have been replaced by AI anyway

Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere these days. Can computers do what editors do? Well, some editorial tasks can be performed by software. Microsoft Word has an ‘Editor’ function that suggests ‘refinements’ to aid such aspects as ‘clarity’, ‘conciseness’ and ‘inclusiveness’. The popular app Grammarly promises ‘bold, clear, mistake-free writing’. And editors themselves use a variety of tools to help them work efficiently and accurately. Few of us would contemplate copyediting without running the trusty PerfectIt or our favourite macros.

But extracting meaning from text requires not only an in-depth knowledge of the ‘rules’ of language and punctuation but also an ability to put ourselves in the heads of readers to identify what could be clearer, what could be missing, or what could be cut. We’re not merely correcting grammar and typos – we are interacting with the text, raising queries where we believe it could be made more effective. Our checks may involve formatting and presentation – for example, checking that a page layout is balanced – or they may be to do with the content and the way the argument is expressed. None of these aspects have yet, to my knowledge, been fully grasped by a computer.

Again, our personal experiences bring a very human dimension to the act of editing. Our thought processes have quirks and tangents that are difficult to program. We look at the big picture, as well as the details, and there are subtleties in language and meaning that cannot quite be quantified by a machine. We use editorial judgement to get that balance right.

In any case, as a writer, I’d much prefer to engage with a real person with real opinions. Real people will be the readers of my published work, after all.

But don’t just take my word for it. Download this focus paper, ‘Imagine … an editor’, by the CIEP’s honorary president, David Crystal, to read his inimitable take on the importance of editorial professionals. His argument is far more eloquent than mine. Perhaps I need an editor!

About Julia Sandford-Cooke

Advanced Professional Member and CIEP Information Team member Julia Sandford-Cooke of WordFire Communications has clocked up nearly 25 years in publishing. When not editing textbooks, she posts short, grumpy book reviews on her blog, Ju’s Reviews, and would like to get on with writing her novel if only work didn’t keep getting in the way.

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Photo credits: header image by Pixabay, typewriter by Suzy Hazelwood, both on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Round-up: CIEP conference 2022

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The CIEP’s 2022 hybrid conference, ‘Editing in a diverse world’, took place from 10 to 12 September at Kents Hill Park, Milton Keynes, and online. In this article we’ve gathered attendees’ reviews and reactions before, during and after the event, on social media and in individual blogs. Whether you made it to the conference in person or online, and even if you didn’t attend this time, we hope it gives you a sense of the news, learning, atmosphere and fun of #CIEP2022.

Before: Hashtag excitement

‘Less than two weeks until #CIEP2022! Who’s coming? Starting to feel very, very close indeed.’ On 29 August, CIEP chair Hugh Jackson (@JPS_Editing) informally kicked off conference proceedings with the first use of its Twitter hashtag. Others followed suit, posting before the event about matching fingernail varnish to business cards (@dinnydaethat), and how their knitting was looking (@AjEditorial) in preparation for a meeting of the CIEP’s Haber-dash-ers craft group.

The day before the conference, a fabulous time was wished to fellow editors (by @JillCucchi), and on Day 1 we got commentary on how journeys to Milton Keynes were going, whether that was on three trains (@GhughesEd) or a long, long car journey from Glasgow (@Jane_33South). On Day 2, one of the speakers, Professor Lynne Murphy (@lynneguist), announced she was on her way with: ‘Judging from the tweets, it looks like a very interesting conference so far!’ Conference director Beth Hamer (@BethHamer1) responded with ‘Looking forward to seeing you. We’re having a ball.’

During: ‘Viva hybrid conferences!’

There were two main strands of social media activity during the conference. One was by in-person delegates: LinkedIn commentary on proceedings and live tweeting. @ayesha_chari got a special mention by @The_CIEP social media central for her ‘exceptional live tweeting’, and she flawlessly relayed events until the very end of the conference and Ian McMillan’s plenary session, when she wrote: ‘Laughing too hard to live tweet or do anything else. (If this were in ink on paper, there’d be smudges from laughing tears.)’

The other strand was from our online delegates. As in-person delegates wiped away tears of laughter in Milton Keynes, virtual delegate @akbea tweeted: ‘Sitting in my car outside a school in Wakefield listening to the wonderful @IMcMillan delivering the final talk of #ciep2022. Viva hybrid conferences!’ This parallel in-person/online experience enriched the conference for all the delegates, as questions and comments in sessions arrived through Zoom from remote attendees, and those at home got a taste of the live action through the video link-up. Some even took part remotely in the famous CIEP conference quiz on the Saturday night.

Social media gave us some insights into where and how people were consuming the conference. One delegate wrote on LinkedIn: ‘I’m thrilled I got to attend online so I could monitor my son’s Covid symptoms in-between sessions. Phew!’ @SaraKitaoji, in Australia, posted a picture of the tea she was drinking in order to stay awake: ‘The key to late night Zoom meetings: Japanese green tea. A cute cat cup helps, too. Enjoying more 3am–5am #networking sessions at #ciep2022.’

During these three days, because delegates were joining from everywhere in the globe, from the USA to India, from Germany to Thailand, it felt like a small world. As Hugh Jackson gave his closing address, @TrivediAalap, based in Canada, posted: ‘@The_CIEP transforms the definition of home. It is my home. Wherever, whenever.’ And just afterwards, @FreshLookEdit wrote: ‘So grateful the Spatial Chat was left open after the conference officially closed so the online peeps could linger a little longer. What an amazing weekend of fun, friendship, and learning. Thank you to all the organizers, volunteers, speakers, and delegates!’

After: Catching up and rounding up

After conferences, many attendees need time to review their time away and catch up on family time, sleep or relaxation. This year’s post-conference social media was heavy on tea, candles and TV. Some delegates were battling an earworm placed by Ian McMillan with his song about conferences, ‘Here come the lanyard people’.

The talk was also of catching up on sessions missed. A couple of weeks after the conference, @HelenSaltedit reported: ‘Just watched my first #CIEP2022 video (catching up with sessions I missed during @the_ciep conference).’ The videoed sessions kept giving, as did the learning points in them. On 18 October @TheClarityEditr wrote: ‘Inspired by Hester Higton’s #CIEP2022 session, I’ve FINALLY made some templates, updated SOPs and added space in my mega-spreadsheet to more systematically calculate project quotes.’

Two delegates wrote round-up blogs soon after the conference that transported us back to the whole experience. Even though her team came fourth in the quiz (down from first last year), Sue Littleford, who attended online, concluded her blog with an uplifting image: ‘The CIEP is the rising tide that lifts all editors’ boats, and at every conference I’m reminded of how proud I am to belong to it.’ Annie Deakins described her sixth CIEP/SfEP conference as ‘great company with fellow editorial colleagues, learning in the form of continuous professional development (CPD), and laughing … so much laughing!’ Sue and Annie also gave interesting reviews of some of the sessions, so be sure to catch their blogs.

The most lasting legacy from #CIEP2022? Even all the happy memories and invaluable lessons had a rival for the prize of what would stay with delegates longest. On 3 October, @ayesha_chari wrote on Twitter: ‘Omg! It’s back in my head! @The_CIEP conference goers, HELP replace the earworm please.’ What, this earworm: ‘Here come the lanyard people …’? Oops! Sorry.

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How to take care of yourself when you’re your own boss

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Even when there isn’t a pandemic, if we run our own business we all need ways to take care of ourselves – mentally, physically and emotionally. In this post, Abi Saffrey brings together some suggestions that have been shared on the CIEP member forums.

CIEP members’ self-care ideas fall into these general categories:

time and taking breaks
meditation and expressing gratitude
food
hobbies
music
friends and partners
being outside
lockdown clichés

Time and taking breaks

My first thought when it comes to spending the right amount of time on the right things is ‘work–life balance’. I have several issues with that phrase: should there be the same amount of work as life? Surely work is part of life, not opposed to it? (I’m not a fan of the phrase ‘me time’ either.) Anyway, a key element in getting the day-to-day mix of activities ‘right’ is considering time. There is no magic formula, but we can learn by trial and error what works for us.

During the first pandemic lockdown, when my children weren’t able to go to school, I would get up earlier than my family and spend an hour in my office getting to grips with what I needed to do that day so that I could be more focused in the limited working time I would have later on in the day. It also gave me an hour on my own, which turned out to be incredibly important over those three or so months.

Taking regular breaks from work is good for our focus and our eyes, but it’s often easier said than done. One member has alarms set at particular points during the day to remind them to take a 20-minute break; others use the Pomodoro technique.

I force myself to walk away from my desk in the mid-afternoon and read a physical novel for 30 minutes or so for a bit of fun and to give my eyes a break from the screen.

Alarms can be used to force an end to the work day – it’s all too easy to think ‘oh just one more page/section/chapter’. Self-employed editors were well aware of the blurring of the work/home boundary before the pandemic changed office workers’ patterns.

Meditation and expressing gratitude

Several members have mentioned the benefits of meditation and mindfulness to replenish their stores of energy, focus and patience. Some use timers, some apps and others simple breathwork techniques.

One member mentioned spending 15 minutes at the end of the day talking about something positive from the day: it breaks the endless cycle of gloom that comes from the news and ends the day on a high note.

The thing I’ve been doing that has had a huge impact on my positivity is expressing gratitude … for everything, really: blue skies or rain (we need it!), delicious morning coffee, the roof over our heads, the internet, clean water piped into our homes, electricity, central heating … the list goes on and on. Even the worst of days has good things in it; you might have to look a little harder. I’ve got very good at finding the silver lining.

Food

Making a meal or baking something can provide focus and pride in the result, as well as the opportunity to share something with others.

Whenever I bake something (which isn’t often), I always give some of it to my elderly neighbour. Gives me an excuse to check in with her, and I always feel so happy that she enjoys my sweet treats!

Planning meals ahead can lessen the daily workload, but can also provide something to look forward to. My family created a four-week rolling menu, which took away the weekly stress of thinking of meals, but with a ‘wildcard’ entry each week there was potential for trying out new recipes (or getting a takeaway).

Under the first lockdown, my husband and I invented a lockdown cooking competition – every weekend we each challenge the other to cook something new and out of our comfort zone. It’s been a great way to actually use each of our collections of cookbooks instead of just admiring the lovely photos. We have a whole routine that has become incredibly important for my sanity because it is structured and focused, and gives me something to look forward to as well as be a challenge not just to cook but also source ingredients.

I batch-cook at the weekend so that, no matter how busy things get during the week, I have nice lunches to look forward to.

Hobbies

The pandemic lockdowns have enabled some people to start new hobbies, or spend more time on existing ones.

For the most part of our lockdown we weren’t permitted to travel more than 5 km from home. Some birders on Twitter had the idea of keeping a #Stage4LockdownList. I started noting every species I saw in my 5 km radius. It encouraged me to get exercise, to be in nature, to be mindful and to appreciate things in my local area that I had taken for granted. I hope this is a new habit that I’ll take with me. (I ended up with 27 birds on my list – not bad for a beginner.)

My regular activity is crochet. Almost daily! You could say I’m hooked … Fortunately, my yarn stash is well stocked. Sometimes my cat tries to ‘help’, but his company is a delight and a guarantee of daily smiles and chortles.

I have enjoyed patchworking for the past few years but thought I would attempt to learn to crochet … I managed one evening of tying my fingers in knots before returning to my craft comfort zone.

Music

Listening and dancing to music can be a great stress reliever and soul lifter. Several members talked about missing live gigs or singing with their choir. I’ve invested in a pair of noise-cancelling headphones so I can get completely absorbed in what I’m listening to.

Music is always part of my day. I actually feel a bit unwell any day I don’t make music – or listen to someone else making music. Covid-19 has put the kibosh on lots of my musical activities. (Who knew that chamber music would become more dangerous than adventure sports?!) So I make sure to listen to great music. Here’s Thelonious Monk playing ‘Tea for Two’. I’ve listened to this four times today. And every time I do, it feels like an act of self-care.

I also find dancing and seeing live music a great stress release, so have missed those a lot. During lockdown, I’ve been going to an online disco on Friday nights (via Zoom) and watching a live DJ on Twitch every lunchtime. (I’ve even put it in my work calendar – although with a cryptic title, just in case I accidentally share it with a client one day!) It has really helped to feel part of those communities, and the music has helped me to process and release lockdown emotions.

Friends and partners

Seeing our friends and family is so important, and that’s been taken away from many of us over the past year. We’ve found new ways of communicating, and made the most of the times when we have been able to go for walks or coffees together.

I’ve been doing a fortnightly quiz with a group of friends. I don’t think we’ve ever seen so much of each other, actually, as we’re so scattered across the country.

Directly messaging particular friends can bring about that personal connection, in a very different way to posting more widely (and more generically) on social media platforms.

I’ve rekindled a friendship with an old friend. We now send each other silly, or supportive, WhatsApp messages almost every day. If either of us has a low moment, or needs to vent, we can reach out and share. We now also occasionally send each other surprise gifts by post (‘I saw this and thought of you’).

Being outside

From birdwatching to long walks, to tending the garden, to looking at the sky – time spent outside is never wasted when it comes to self-care. Even a walk in the pouring rain can bring with it joy (and the delight of dry, warm clothes afterwards).

I love walking anyway but I’ve made a conscious effort when I’m out now to notice something new or curious on each walk. It could be some particularly splendid fungi, or the birds, or a gnarly tree, or going down a different path for a change and seeing where I end up. Some walks have taken rather longer than planned to get me back to my starting point …

Movement generally is good for our mental and physical health, so adding in the fresh air and maybe even some vitamin D from the sunshine makes getting outside a win–win when trying to look after ourselves. For several years, I have gone to outside bootcamps every week – when restrictions stopped these, the instructor moved online and I took my laptop into the garden (though the Wi-Fi issues and light glare made some sessions more tense than was ideal …)

I live at the bottom of a hill, and the newsagent is at the top. I force myself to walk up there every day to pick up the paper, then I spend half an hour reading it with a cup of coffee before I get back to work.

I check the forecast every morning to work out when the weather looks best, then intentionally structure my day around that. The rain radar is also useful – even on really bad days, there’s generally a break in the weather at some point. I always feel much brighter (and more productive) afterwards, even on the days when I really don’t want to go outside.

Lockdown clichés

I’ve turned into a complete lockdown cliché, having taken up sourdough and running!

It’s hardly a solution for everyone, but I can totally recommend getting a puppy.

We have two golden retrievers and we try to walk them every day. It’s great to get out into the fresh air and, c’mon, golden retrievers. They’re good for the soul. Doctors should write prescriptions for people to spend time with golden retrievers.

I’m also spending a lot of time growing my hair. I’m trying for an A C Grayling look, but most people think it’s more Doc Brown (from Back to the Future, not the rapper).

I’m also a bit of a lockdown cliché, as it’s walking and breadmaking for me.

Getting it right

There is no one right way of looking after ourselves that works for everyone. This post only covers the most popular themes that members have shared on the CIEP forums. How do you look after your wellbeing? Has it changed over the past year? Let us know in the comments below.

About Abi Saffrey

Abi Saffrey is an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP. A member of the CIEP’s information team, she coordinates this blog and edits Editorial Excellence, the Institute’s external newsletter.

Now she’s finished writing this blog post, she’s off for a walk.

About the CIEP

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Photo credits: crocuses by Aaron Burden; long-tailed tit by Andy Holmes, both on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.