No Child Grows Up Wanting to Be an Editor?

Back in June, Guild board member and volunteer coordinator Ivonne B. Ward emailed our member discussion list with a link that resonated with her: a blog post by John McIntyre titled “The accidental editor.” The main point of the post was summed up with the sentence "No child grows up wanting to be an editor.” Ivonne agreed, as far as her own unpredictable career path went, and asked the discussion list, “Did you always know you wanted to edit/be an editor?” 

Since this conversation was extremely popular, and a number of the responses compelling, we thought we would reprint a few highlights here on the blog (with the permissions of their authors, of course) and share a couple of additional thoughts on the subject. 

Laura Whittemore said in part:

 "I just knew I couldn’t last in the job I was in and started looking for new skills to learn. I happened upon a basic editing course online and recalled that I’d met actual copyeditors a few times and thought they were super interesting people. I enjoyed the course and got good feedback from the instructor. Hungry for more I enrolled in UC San Diego’s copyediting certificate program, completed it, got some practice, quit my job, attended my first ACES conference, found a job there randomly, and here we are a decade later.

My bachelor’s is in biology, and I’m a longtime birder, so I annoy authors by pointing out their bird errors, heh heh. They usually appreciate it … I think."

Jill Walters (right) and friend Lisa, ca. 1999, posing in front of the "Photographers and Editors ONLY” darkroom in their high school journalism building. Jill ended up working as an editor later in life and Lisa has worked as a professional photographer, making this old yearbook photo prophetic. Photo courtesy of the Sentinel High School Bitterroot Yearbook, 2000.

Erin Cusick said in part: 

"When it came to picking a major in college, I still saw creative writing and literature as impractical career paths, so I picked environmental studies, thinking I might teach environmental education. After college, I worked in public education for a number of years. Somewhere in there, I very nearly enrolled in a creative nonfiction grad program, I had a creative nonfiction essay published in a magazine, and I did a short stint as an editorial assistant at a magazine. I loved that job, but for some reason, I kept going back to public education. I ultimately enrolled in a teaching certificate program, but just weeks before classes were set to start, a personal loss led me to reevaluate my course, and I pursued an entirely new path: I got a second bachelor's degree in photography. I loved that work too, and though I displayed my work in a couple of galleries and sold some prints, I couldn't see myself making a living at it (and being a wedding or portrait photographer was out of the question), so I changed course again after a few years and went to work in public libraries. At least I was finally working with books! Ha ha. After a number of years there, I realized, like Laura, I needed to move on; I needed to pursue something more mentally stimulating. On a whim, I enrolled in an editing course through UC Berkeley in 2011, and that was it. I finally found myself on the path I'd tentatively approached so many times before."

Jesi Vega said in part:

"I always knew I wanted to be part of a creative team and the pinnacle to me would have been to be part of a producer, director, and screenwriting team who made amazing, inspiring movies. I ended up doing all three roles at different times on different projects but never enjoyed what it took to actually get films made. What I did enjoy was helping my friends out with their screenplays and I facilitated my first writing retreat in 2002.

Fast forward 15 years and a friend who remembered me working with screenwriters asked if I'd consider working with a friend of hers who had an unfinished manuscript about brain science and addiction. I loved doing what was essentially my first developmental edit and from there kept attracting more clients. 

Since 2017 I've done developmental and copy editing and book proposal coaching and my love for working with writers has not diminished. I love the collaborative nature of book production and I think my understanding of filmmaking taught me that, as much as our culture venerates the myth of the singular genius, creative works are never the product of just one person, but the result of a lot of collaboration and support at different stages of their production."

Mi Ae Lipe said in part:

"My own path to editing was both linear and nonlinear. When I was in my teens, I wanted most in the world to be an automotive designer for General Motors. However, there were only a few schools in the entire country that offered that highly specialized education and they're very, very expensive. Lacking the financial prospects to even apply, I settled for a state university in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where my grandmother urged me to get a degree in English because she wanted me to follow in her footsteps and teach English like her.

I really didn't want to teach, but I did enjoy writing and was very good at it. Somehow I blossomed and ended up getting a 4.0 in my English major. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that such a major there meant studying almost exclusively literature, which set one up only for a graduate degree to later become a professor, with zero practical skills taught for making money in editing or writing whatsoever. However, that was okay with me, since I was still really set on doing visual arts in some form, so I embarked on a double major in mass communications because I wanted to do storyboarding and concept work in advertising. Unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards either.

In my junior year, I was offered a paid internship in technical editing scientific reports published by a nearby U.S. government office that did ecological research on the Upper Mississippi River. I had the incredible good fortune to have a wonderful boss and mentor, and she taught me the fundamentals of technical editing. One of our first projects together, in fact, was to write a sizable style guide intended for our scientists to follow when writing the reports we'd edit, lay out, and publish. I learned so much just from that project alone. I ended up interning there for nearly three years total, adding illustration, photography, and newsletter writing to my repertoire, and later I landed my first real job after college with them.

And that was how it all began—just by pure chance. Since then, over the course of working for many different publishing environments and freelancing over the past 30 years, I've gotten to wear all the hats—writer, editor (of all types), graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, art director, book producer, and project manager.

I never did get to be that automotive designer, but now with my traffic safety writing and consulting that's fast becoming its own viable paid second career, I'm back into the realm of cars that I've always adored. And working with traffic safety organizations also means I can potentially write and edit for them too!"

And a few more from our blog team:

Kristin Stein says: 

"I always wanted to work in the book industry in some way, whether it was in writing, editing, or design. After high school, I tried to work for the local newspaper and received a very nice call from one of the editors saying that I needed a degree before I could apply. That was when newspapers were starting to disappear and I was persuaded to find a more practical job, so I went into accounting. 

I kept finding myself drawn back into the world of editing and writing so I went back to school for creative writing. While I was there, I worked on several literary journals and helped to edit friends’ papers. They said I had a good eye and helped to foster my love for editing. I continued to edit for free but went back to accounting after I graduated. When I was laid off from my practical accounting job at the start of the pandemic, I took a leap of faith and started freelance editing. 

I spent a long time doing what other people thought was practical and I’m glad I finally found the path that was right for me, I feel like I’m finally in the right career."

Jill Walters says: 

“Considering my earliest childhood career goal was to be like the reporter version of Kermit the Frog (a la Sesame Street or The Great Muppet Caper), I didn’t end up too far away from that as an editor as an adult.

I’d always been a good writer and saw my mom write and publish embroidery books, so I was naturally drawn to some sort of writing and editing. By high school, I realized nonfiction and journalism were more interesting than fiction for me and I became known as “the newspaper girl.” But I had a unique opportunity the summer I was 16, when I was hired as a reporter for a small daily newspaper for our regional fair in Western Montana, written and edited by teens and printed by the local newspaper. We covered all the exciting activities of fair week such as pig races, funnel cakes, blue-ribbon floral arrangements, and the new rides that summer. That began my professional, paid editing career.

In the following years, while I was still in high school, I was editor of my school newspaper, but I was also part of a team of high school journalists who produced a biweekly teen section for our small local newspaper. There I got amazing mentoring from one of the staff editors (who had also supervised the fair paper) and realized writing and editing was the job for me, although even in the late ’90s and early ’00s it was clear print journalism was in decline and may not be a steady path.

I continued editing some newspaper articles and an academic literary journal in my early 20s. Then life, health, and circumstances decided it wasn’t time for me to be an editor and I moved away from it for many years, but always had an inkling I should go back. In 2012, while working for a Seattle nonprofit, a coworker suggested one of the University of Washington’s certificate programs for nonprofit management. While looking at the course offerings, I saw the editing certificate and knew that was what I really wanted to do. Ten years later and I’m still working as a copyeditor and proofreader, mostly of nonfiction and magazines. Not quite on the level of Reporter Kermit, but close enough!”