Posts tagged ‘editors’

by Joe Wallace

Here’s another round of hand-picked editor jobs. I don’t weed out the full time gigs from the part time or freelance editor writer jobs–I figure in this economy there are plenty of people on the fence about which way to go. As always, none of this is copy/pasted from Craigslist, scraped or otherwise auto-retrieved. I pick these out from my personal searches and post them. No software, no bots, no nothing–just me and the keyboard.

The American Association of University Women is still looking for a freelance editor/writer to work on several online and print projects. They prefer a degree, knowledge of AP style and the ability to juggle deadlines, yada yada yada. Send your cover letter, resume, clips to editor@aauw.org and be ready to complete a writing and editing test.

The Live Free Or Die Alliance needs someone to manage and edit its website or, um, die.  This is a nonprofit dot org but the ad states there’s a “competitive compensation package” available for the right editor. Not sure if that’s competitive for a non-profit or competitive rates for an editing job in general, but it could be worth checking out if you’re into the sentiment–and who isn’t, really? Live free indeed!

ScienceCareerSite.com advertises jobs in, surprise, science. There’s a temp position for a technical editor/writer listed there, but you may have to create an account to learn the full details. This opening is for Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory and while the requirements are fairly broad, you should have expertise in at least one “area of specialization” as the ad says.

Here’s a hot one if you’re all about the politics, but can manage to be non-partisan when the need arises. The Senate Select Committee on Ethics wants a non-partisan editor writer to revise the Senate ethics manual! You need a master’s in English for this one, but lawyers are also good candidates, according to the ad on LawJobs.com. Fax your resume to (202) 224-7416 or you can send everything via email to mailbox_office@ethics.senate.gov.

If you are a writer that doesn’t understand common proofreading symbols, it might be time to learn. Not all editors use them, but if you run into one that does, it can really help if you understand what they are trying to tell you. Check out this resource to learn some of the basics. Whether you are writing a novel or just doing some freelance writing, you never know when you might need to know what these symbols mean.

I’ve said it before…before you can realistically start editing other people’s work for pay, you need to be able to edit yourself. New writers and editors would do well to have a good long read of Claire Kehrwald Cook’s Line By Line. How do you self-edit your own work? Everybody has their own tricks, but this book is a way to give you a head start to developing those editing practices and take some cues from others.

The tough thing about self-editing when you are in the early days of your work as an editor writer is learning what to keep, what to lose, and what to leave well enough alone. Line By Line can help give you perspective on all that. Every good writer is also an editor. Anybody can bang out text on a page, but the real writing comes with plenty of editing.

Line By Line has gotten rave reviews from writers who literally believe this book has changed their lives. That’s a pretty bold claim. Will it do the same for you?