ACES Accelerate: Reflections Post-Conference

This week, I attended the ACES Accelerate editing conference.

This was only the second editing conference I’ve had the privilege of attending. My first conference was the 2019 Editors Canada conference in Halifax, back when I was a baby editor and still dipping my toes in the waters of this industry.

And holy cow, did I get more out of this one.

This is not to say that there was anything wrong with the Editors Canada conference! The sessions there were fantastic, the community was wonderful, and I absolutely learned so much in the presentations I attended.

But I was too new to the industry. I didn’t really know what I was doing yet, and I didn’t have the connections that make a conference so worthwhile. (Yes, you can make connections at a conference, but handing a business card to thirty strangers and then moving on is not the ideal way to network.)

This time around, I went in with a few years’ experience as an editor. I know my niche market, I have a portfolio of books I’ve worked on, and I have editor friends whom I was excited to see and learn from.

(Editor friends! They’re the best! So many incredible folks with whom I’ve become friends through Twitter and other editing communities over the past few years! We have a monthly online tea party!)

The biggest shift for me in this conference was that I felt completely like I belonged, in sharp contrast to my first conference, where I felt more like everyone else belonged and I was just wandering around being impressed.

What I learned at ACES Accelerate:

Beyond the social aspect, this conference was fantastic—in the same way that most PD and continuing education is fantastic—at offering new techniques and methods to use in our editing practices. 

Colour-coding story maps? It seems so obvious, but it never occurred to me until I watched Christina M. Frey’s presentation about story maps. I’ve been making story maps for years, but Christina offered up so many great new approaches, like colour-coding different elements of a story (emotion, background, action, conflict, etc.), creating a tension graph to show how the stakes shift over the course of a story, mood-mapping the story, and more.

In “Editing Without Tears,” Merrill Perlman emphasized that editing should be gentle, and she gave wonderful advice on how to write queries in ways that help support writers through their revisions. Her central rules for editing were, as she told us, were: 1) do no harm; 2) if you can’t explain it, you can’t change it (and 2.5 – in a tie, the writer wins); and 3) no surprises for the writer in what comes back in the edit. Be clear, communicate, and be kind.

In Jenny Lawson’s fabulously silly and sweet keynote address, we were reminded of the importance of plain language when Jenny told a story about a query in which the references to “Chicago,” “M-W,” and “stet” confounded her to the point where she had no idea what the editor was trying to say. As editors, we often mention to writers that jargon or industry-specific terminology can be confusing to readers, but we sometimes forget that we do the same thing in our own work. (Jenny also told us that she wanted to start an editing cult with us, with flowing robes with pockets.)

In “Boost Your Editing Speed and Confidence with Macros”—which I recently conquered my fear of and for which I am now ready to be the poster girl—well over a hundred awe-struck editors watched Paul Beverley demonstrate his use of macros at wizard-like speed. (The chat room was exploding throughout the demonstration—for those of us watching, it had the same level of excitement that I assume sports fans feel when their team scores a goal. It was magnificent.)

In “We All Have Something to Teach: Expanding Your Business by Offering Courses,” Tanya Gold, Kristen Tate, and Kristen Tatroe offered their expertise on a subject I’m very intimidated by and very interested in. They reminded us that as editors, we’re already working in education, since one of the goals of working with an author is to impart our knowledge and help them grow their craft. By repackaging some of the feedback that we regularly give through margin comments and author letters into a course format, we can make this knowledge accessible to writers who might not be able to afford the higher cost of one-on-one editing.

We’re never done learning.

This only scratches the surface of what I learned over the two days of ACES Accelerate. I also attended sessions on best practices for working with indie authors, how to use text expanders in editing, levelling up your editing business once you’re done getting started, and more. 

I have a whole list of other sessions to watch once the recordings are available online, including “Editing for Bias,” “Grammar Obscura,” “Editing Gender,” “Business Data for Freelance Editors,” and “Ethical Editing: How to Follow, Break, and Change the Rules.”

Outside of the conference, I’m enrolled in Crystal Shelley’s EFA course on editing for conscious and inclusive language. I turn to my editing colleagues for guidance and support when I run into challenges that leave me unsure of how to proceed. I attend presentations and workshops through Editors Canada and ACES. I never stop reading—it’s my belief that if you’re going to be an expert on editing a genre, you have to know it from all sides.

Until next year!

At the end of the conference, I had the honour of winning a free conference pass to next year’s ACES conference. I don’t know if I’ll make it to Ohio—that’s not the easiest trip for me, off in Nova Scotia as I am, and, more importantly, I support everyone’s right to abortion and Ohio does not—but I will absolutely be back for next fall’s online conference, since ACES has made the wonderful decision to continue hosting a virtual conference each year in addition to the in-person one. I’m excited to see my edibuddies again and celebrate the changes in their lives (both personal and professional), learn new things from my brilliant colleagues, and, we can only hope, relive the magic of Paul Beverley demoing macros.