I am about to finish Advanced Copyediting, a course I am taking through one of the other professional organizations of which I am a member (Editorial Freelancers Association). “Why are you taking this four-week-long, asynchronous online class?” you might be thinking. “You are already a copyeditor!”
There are a number of reasons why.
First and foremost, I want to improve myself and my skills. My skills are already excellent (if I do say so myself), but one should never be complacent and stop improving them. In this class, I have learned quite a bit. I learned about voice in writing, for example. I also learned about what do when an author plagiarizes and about copyright infringement, and I learned about contracts for clients and (through the discussion forums) what do about setting and raising my rates. There was a lot more that I learned in Advanced Copyediting, but I don’t have time to go through it all in this post. When the class is offered again, you can go to “Active Courses” at www.the-efa.org to see everything that it will teach you.
Second, the class has discussion forums, and I love interacting with other students from literally all over the world (freelancing, though I love it, can be isolating). We discuss all things literally, with our teacher initiating the conversations with prompts. Our teacher also regularly interacts with us in the forums.
Third, the assignments, though challenging, are fun. We edited four chapters of a memoir. Since I love editing, I liked doing it, even though it took a considerable amount of time and hard work.
I finished the last assignment yesterday and the class officially ends on Tuesday. I’m looking forward to getting my certificate of completion so I can display it proudly on my bulletin board.
Dear reader, have you ever taken such a class? What was your experience like?