I’ve always wanted to become a professional editor and I’ve been told to go get a BA in English to do it but what if you don’t? How do you build the skills on your own? Freelance? What is the job actually like?
I’m looking to be in the niche for editing plots, characters, and the structure of the story and not so much in the grammar and technical bits. Just seeing if there’s anyone with this job who likes to talk about it.
Hello! I’m a professional editor. I don’t have a BA in English but do have one in Creative Writing. You do need the knowledge so the background helps. The building skills part? It’s mostly just practice and exposure. I do freelancing. I don’t get many clients tbh but still get a decent number. As for the job itself, sometimes you read really good stuff, other times you read really bad stuff and there’s no avoiding it 
Damn, I bet some of my posts make you cringe bad…
Those where I have outlined my Histories of peoples and events that is… I don’t know if I should insert a LOL! or a Hahaha! or even a “He he he!” here at this point…
It’s all good though… I think?. I mean for the most part you have liked those posts so I guess that I’m doing okay…
SD
I make a point to keep all judgements to myself so you have nothing to worry about
Hahaha! Well said!
SD
I’ve seen some pretty nasty writing but the people here are quite good tbh. You guys actually know what you’re doing even if you’re making it up as you go
Hahaha! That’s totally me… Pantser for the win! Hahaha!
SD
I’ve wanted to get into it for a long time but the thought of going to school in person is driving me batty. Especially since I have a learning disability with math and I doubt I would make it through even the lowest-level math courses to graduate.
But I have a massive love for literature, reading, writing, and language itself. I grew up on wattpad giving out critiques and minor edits. I’m 25 now and I’ve grown past looking at unfinished wattpad level books and want to expand into books that are aiming to be published (physically and as ebooks). I’m just not sure that its the career for me and putting that amount of effort, money, time, and mental health on the line for something I might not even like doing is horrific.
What parts of the job are the worst? Is it hard to keep yourself on track? What does the job typically look like on a day to day basis?
Honestly the worst part of the job is you end up having to see some awful writing. Like properly awful. We’re talking no structure, no grammar, the spelling is all wrong, there’s no plot and nothing make sense. There’s also people who think they’re right and you’re wrong despite the fact they’re paying you to be right. And some days you will just end up banging your head on your desk going “why am I doing this to myself?”
I don’t find it hard to keep on track. I intentionally give a longer time frame than I need just in case that happens or if something happens or I end up in hospital again.
I’m a freelancer so there isn’t a “day to day basis” per say. It can be hard to get clients because there are so many editors out there. I get a client maybe once or twice every year if I’m lucky (there’s a reason I don’t rely on editing as my main source of income). When I do have clients, half of it is actually editing and the other half is trying to get the client to answer emails