I teamed up with Nadine Davidoff and Renee Otmar to deliver professional development workshops for professional editors. Nadine looked at narrative non-fiction, Renee spoke about academic editing and I took on general non-fiction. Each of the topics was run in 2 x 3-hour sessions; some participants signed up for the full course and others choose a single topic.

I was a bit nervous to start with, but 35 people signed up very quickly and I had a great time with the 18 editors in my sessions, including a group from a large Melbourne publishing house. The sessions covered ‘big picture’ topics such as prior knowledge, working with subject experts and working with multiple authors. We then focused on details such as style sheets, shortened forms, figures, tables, units and indexing and finished by looking at tips and hacks to make our work more accurate and efficient.

We surveyed all the participants after the course and were delighted that 90% of respondents strongly agreed that the trainers were knowledgeable and professional, 83% strongly agreed that the sessions were focused and engaging and 83% rated the courses as excellent.

We’ll do it again in 2022. Stay tuned!

“Lorna was great at sharing her knowledge of editing non-fiction and I learned a lot from participating in the sessions. The thing I appreciated the most about the session was being exposed to new ways of working and tackling projects. Lorna’s insights into her process as well as chatting to other editors were great in helping me rethink/reassess how I work.”

“There was a great balance of ‘lecture’ and group discussion. I would highly recommend these courses to all editors who are looking to move into non-fiction and memoir editing, or who just want a brush-up on their skills.”