Collaboration and Relaxation at the Oregon and SW Washington Editors Retreat
In early 2018, fellow Portland editor and Guild member Julie Swearingen and I took over planning of the happy hours for the Portland contingent of the Northwest Editors Guild, hoping to bring our local editors together and continue to provide them with a space for communication and collaboration. We’ve enjoyed the relationships and connections this experience has forged for us. When a conversation with former Guild president Pm Weizenbaum sparked the idea for an editors retreat, we were eager to help create a learning-based experience that would build upon the happy hours we’d started hosting.
So, during the last weekend of September 2018, twelve editors gathered in small Rockaway Beach, Oregon, for the first ever Oregon and SW Washington Editors Retreat.
2018 State of the Guild
By joining the board, I got to step behind the curtain and learn about all the backstage activity that goes on in support of our members. One of the very first things I learned about the board was that each one of these people takes our mission to heart, weighing decisions against these words:
“The Northwest Editors Guild connects writers with professional editors of the written word in the Pacific Northwest. We also foster community among our members and provide resources for their career development.”
Unique Holiday Gifts for Editors
What kind of holiday gifts would a discerning editor enjoy? How about the editor who seems rigid but has a secret sense of humor? The basic go-to coffee shop gift cards and sets of red pens are appreciated, but you can do better than that for your closest edibuddies and word nerds.
Below is a list of unique and memorable gifts—arranged alphabetically by store name—suitable for just about every age, size, flavor, and type of editor, plus the tiniest editors-to-be. You might even find something you’ll want to treat yourself to after making that big deadline!
A Dev Editing Handbook with Novelistic Empathy
Imagine for a moment you’re an editor in a publishing house, perhaps one of the local presses like Wave Books in Seattle. As you sip your morning coffee, two of your colleagues (frazzled editors in their own right) collide in the hall and mix up their manuscripts.
One of these manuscripts is a sly and meticulous instruction manual on the craft of developmental editing. The other is a novel about books, a story driven by conflict and (sometimes) resolution between editors, writers, and publishers. To aid your colleagues, you accidentally shuffle several chapters of each book into the other like a poker dealer with a stack of cards. One would expect the new hybrid manuscript to bewilder the narrative, but the shuffled whole catalyzes so harmoniously that the publisher rejoices in the happy accident.
Say Hello to Your 2018 Northwest Editors Guild Board
Here’s a friendly introduction to the twelve-person all-volunteer board of directors who serve two-year terms and work on committees that support the Guild’s mission: connecting clients with professional editors, fostering community among our members, and providing resources for their career development.
What’s the Big Idea? Four Words that Can Define a Work in Progress
A couple of years ago, I got the urge to write a book. I’d recently returned from a sabbatical in Europe, where my husband, Eric, and I walked a thousand miles on the Camino de Santiago, a network of pilgrimage trails that date back to the Roman Empire. I hadn’t intended to write about the trip when I left, but when I got back I couldn’t shake the suspicion that there was something book-worthy in the experience.
I’d worked in book publishing for almost two decades by that point, including the past seven years as a developmental editor and collaborative writer. I’d seen hundreds of manuscripts, both fiction and nonfiction. And while there was a lot about becoming an author I didn’t know yet, I did know that the first step wasn’t just to start typing away at Chapter 1.
Q&A with Guild Mascot Giant Pencil
The Northwest Editors Guild’s oversized writing implement mascot, Giant Pencil, has been making appearances at events and on social media during the last year. In fact, starting July 23, Giant Pencil will be hosting the Editors of Earth Twitter account—a rotating curator account with a different editor hosting each week. It’s the first pencil to be asked to host.
As Giant Pencil’s following increases, we’ve received many questions about this well-dressed No. 2 of large proportions. We sat down with Giant Pencil to get to the point (pencil puns included).
What We Learned at ACES 2018
Approximately a dozen Editors Guild members convened in Chicago with more than 700 other editors during the ACES 2018 conference April 26–28. ACES: The Society for Editing (formerly known as the American Copy Editors Society), a national organization for professional editors, hosts its annual three-day conference in a different U.S. city each spring.
The ACES conference is often the venue where the major style guides and dictionaries announce upcoming changes in spelling, style, and usage. It is especially well known as the conference where each year the Associated Press announces updates to its Stylebook in a room full of gasping and cheering editors. (The 2016 lowercasing of the word “internet” brought a mix of applause and disgusted harrumphs, while this year’s comparatively tame removal of the hyphen in “3D” didn’t cause nearly as many emotional reactions.)
Programming Committee Roundtable
The powerhouse behind member meetings, workshops, coffee hours, and other special events, the board’s programming committee, consisting this year of Kelley Frodel, Kristin Carlsen, and Pm Weizenbaum, is vital to the smooth operation of the EdsGuild. Earlier this year, we got these busy ladies to sit down for a little while and talk to us about their responsibilities and what it’s like working for the board.