Sessions

Laura Burge

When fiction clients use varying story structures, go against sentence-structure conventions, and otherwise play with expectations, how do we know what’s an error and what’s an intentional choice? How do we help guide the author to improvements without unintentionally enforcing different standards? How do these answers change in different cases? 😉

We’ll have an interactive speaker-led discussion around different writing elements, exploring what we’ve worked with, how we’ve dealt with differences, and the options for clients and the wider publishing world.

In this session you will learn to:

• Recognize different writing traditions and styles

• Understand how and when to enforce standardization

• Identify clients’ goals, including those with different needs, experiences, and backgrounds

Aalap Trivedi, Alicia Chantal, Marieke Krijnen, and Janet MacMillan (Moderator)

As editors, we all hail from particular cultures and may or may not have moved across cultures over time, all with their own expectations, unwritten rules, and more.

In this panel, three experienced editors and a moderator who have each moved between different countries, regions, and cultures (Europe, the Middle East, North America, the West Indies, the UK, and India) share their experiences. We will speak about acknowledging differences between editor and client, code switching, different levels of formality in doing business, and managing expectations about how someone from a particular culture is expected to act, even if they live elsewhere.

We will encourage you to participate by sharing your own experiences with working across cultures and to ask questions. 

In this session, you will learn:

• How being at home in different cultures can be leveraged to connect more deeply with existing clients, attract more clients, and deliver better, higher-quality work

• How clients’ preconceptions about you may influence the relationship and how to protect yourself from that

• How to adapt your working and communication styles for clients and/or projects to get the best results for both parties

Adrienne Montgomerie, Andrew Hodges, and Nadia Geagea Pupa

Your editing business is ticking along nicely and now you’re wondering, what’s next? Is there anything more than this? In this panel discussion, we will discuss tips and tricks and branching out and diving into new or adjacent realms to fortify your editorial business.

We will share our strategies and approaches to growing income: what worked and what we might try again, with ample time for audience questions. We will draw from backgrounds editing in education, technical communication, humanities, page design, editorial consulting, and fiction.   

In this session, you will learn how:

• The “less fun” work can make it possible to take on more fun work that pays less

• Diversifying niches and types of editing can help smooth out schedule gaps across different parts of the industry/markets

Christina M. Frey

Act like a professional and give your best—it should be simple. But for decades editors have dealt with sticky situations with clients and colleagues, and now the prevalence of generative AI has added another layer. How do we navigate ethical conundrums involving clients, colleagues, and the use of artificial intelligence? 

This is an interactive discussion session, not a lecture. We’ll work through real ethical scenarios editors encounter—from dealing with suspicions of client AI use to accusations of AI use in editorial work—and collectively explore how to reason through them. 

We will discuss how to:

• Recognize and respond to differing attitudes toward the use of generative AI

• Think through the ethical questions raised by client and colleague use of AI

• Develop—and confidently communicate—your own personal policy on AI in your editorial work

Come ready to challenge your own assumptions and contribute to the conversation.

Andrew Hodges

Worldbuilding can make a novel richer, but without due care and caution, speculative fiction writers can quickly end up in a situation resembling a game of three-dimensional chess. This is where developmental editors can help—writers often need help with refining their worldbuilding so each element included is intentional and makes sense in the context of their story.

In this interactive workshop, I will outline six elements of effective worldbuilding and cover common problems developmental editors encounter linked to them. Then we’ll have a go at identifying worldbuilding problems ourselves, based on short story outlines and opening pages.

This workshop is aimed at fiction editors and writers but will also be of interest to non-fiction editors. 

In this session, you will:

• Gain a grounding in worldbuilding theory

• Apply that knowledge to identify and solve worldbuilding problems in stories

Sara Kitaoji

Texts about history and diverse cultures can reflect unconscious biases, silence marginalized voices, and reinforce harmful stereotypes. As critical readers, editors can ask: Whose voices are missing? Who is shaping the historical narrative? Are marginalized peoples being described through the lens of the majority or dominant culture? Are cultures being Othered, reduced to exotic caricatures, or evaluated according to Western standards of “civilization” and progress? 

In this workshop, we will critically read and edit a historical/cultural text with an inclusive lens, sharing insights and challenging their worldviews in a culturally safe space. Working in small groups, we will practice separating intent from impact and devising workable solutions.

Key highlights:

• Identify key issues at different levels of a historical/cultural text—from terminology to structure and content—examining not only what is written but also what is not. 

• Propose alternative wording/structure/content with an inclusive approach that aims to foster cultural competency and a multi-dimensional understanding of history.

• Discuss strategies for working with authors, communicating constructive feedback, and devising solutions with both objectivity and compassion.

Lourdes Venard and Marieke Krijnen

There are as many copyeditors as there are copyediting interventions. Do you ever wonder if you made the right decision? Do you wish you could see how other advanced copyeditors tackle complicated sentences? Join us for a live editing session of fiction and non-fiction texts to hear how your colleagues would deal with these issues!

During this live demo, you will be invited to look at a few examples of problematic sentences and share how you would edit these (if you feel comfortable doing so). Next, we will show how you would tackle these tricky issues.

Come learn from your colleagues and expand your copyediting toolbox!

There is rarely one “right” edit. You will learn how to:

• Compare edits to identify multiple valid approaches and strategies

• Develop an editing approach and make editorial decisions

• Be flexible and preserve authorial voice, especially in fiction editing

Erin Brenner

You’d never edit a manuscript without assessing it first. But how about your editing business? After several years, most of us can feel that something needs to change. We just can’t tell what.

This is a working session, not a lecture. At your table, you will choose one of three areas—client mix and growth, time and capacity, or systems and operations—and run a guided assessment on it, using questions drawn from the business reviews I do with editor coachees. We’ll finish by comparing what came up across the room, where the patterns are strikingly consistent.

Key highlights:

• A clear idea of which part of your business is actually holding you back—maybe not the part you assumed

• One specific action to take in the next 90 days, written down before you leave the room

• A repeatable way to comprehensively review your business, looking honestly at the things you tend to avoid