How does versatility help us be better editors?

When I’m asked to sum up what I do, I sputter a bit. What specifically does the person want to hear about? My editing clients? Subject-matter-expert experience? Formats, genres or topics I’ve worked on? Without a niche to focus on, my breadth of experience can be hard for me to summarize.

I think the versatility aspect kicked in at my first editing job. I started as an editorial assistant at a national dog magazine, despite owning no pets and being allergic to them, and left as managing editor.

This small trade magazine gave me experience in every editorial step, from brainstorming monthly themes and story ideas, contacting potential writers, substantive and copy editing submissions and trimming text onscreen for layout, to ensuring the art department’s images meshed with the content, helping all departments stay on track to meet our publishing deadlines, and checking final page proofs.

That was my base: a solid foundation to apply what I learned as a wear-all-the-hats editor to my freelance career as founder of Think Communications. Whether I worked on books or newsletters or reports or theses, most of what I learned could be equally applied to the overall editorial process. 

A large portion of work in my early freelance days came from fiction and memoir writers. I took on many genres, from humour and romance to speculative and fantasy fiction to personal journeys in adoption, history and self-development, learning along the way. 

What helped me further develop my editorial skills was reviewing non-fiction material from subject-matter experts as an outsider – a know-nothing, or a layperson in some cases – just as I’d started at the magazine. The benefit to my clients was in someone seeing their work as a first-time reader would. As a somewhat intelligent reader, it seemed logical that if I couldn’t understand something in their document, many other readers might not either.

I was glad to have helped clients strengthen their work when my reviews caught inconsistencies, logic gaps and ambiguity and even factual errors (I love double-checking and researching), even though I wasn’t an expert in the subject. I’ve worked on “I-know-nothing” topics that include law, medicine, earth science, international social and financial policy, government resources, social welfare material and website optimization.

The benefit of editing these wide-ranging subjects to me? Learning new things while helping others convey important ideas or information. Learning is one of the biggest pluses of editing for me, and I love knowing I helped make a message more understandable and relatable. 

Back to the summing up: Sometimes I just say I’m a generalist. “I work on everything, within reason” – that means barring topics I find offensive or troubling or in which I don’t have the required level of knowledge (subject-matter expertise geared to a subject-matter-expert audience, for example) to achieve an optimal edit. 

So, self-reflecting, I wonder: Is my strength versatility, aka being a generalist, or is it in being an outsider? Some other undefined ability?

Does this question strike a chord with you? If you have a career like mine, how do you sum it up?