“What’s in Your Editing Workspace” peeks past editors’ bookshelves and into their workspaces. In this second instalment, we explore everything from our day-to-day stationery to furniture, hardware to sources of inspiration, and more. If you have something you’d like to share, let us know. We want to see what’s in your editing workspace.
Erin Della Mattia is a freelance editor whose workspace is in Brampton, Ontario.
My workspace isn’t fancy; it also isn’t technically a workspace. I primarily work at my family’s dining room table, sitting on a wooden chair with a single cushion on the seat. Often, one (or more) of my seven pets joins me. Sometimes I even pull up an extra chair for them. I work in the dining room so that I can keep an eye on the pets and so they can keep an eye on me. To set the mood (work for me, rest for the pets), I put CBC Music on the radio – they play classical music for most of the day, and there are fewer ads than Classical FM. In the winter months, I light candles to chase away the darkness.
Featured in my workspace are a cup of tea, a bottle of water, my agenda, a pen, and a piece of scrap paper folded in half. I track my hours, start/end dates, and invoice due dates in my agenda (as well as in multiple Excel spreadsheets). The scrap paper is for handwritten notes; I fold it in half to make scanning the whole page at a glance easier. (I literally hoard scrap paper, everything from old grad school handouts to packing slips from online orders.)
The tech set-up is also not fancy: just a laptop and a Bluetooth mouse. Nothing is ergonomic or adjusted to my height. The whole thing is a bit of a cautionary tale, a “what not to do” if you want an uber-comfortable space to work. Maybe one day I’ll invest in something at least slightly better for my back, but for now, the wooden chair at the dining table is where you’ll find me.
Katharine O’Moore-Klopf (she/her/hers) is a consulting medical editor whose workspace is in Long Island, New York.
My favourite thing about my workspace is that my husband and our two sons – all three of them cabinetmakers – built a custom office building, 12×12 feet, in our backyard for me. It is covered by cedar siding and has a sliding glass front door, four wall windows, two skylight windows, a ceiling fan, room for my standing desk (which has its own shelves for reference works), on-the-wall shelves, a mini freezer–refrigerator, room to store my beloved collection of tea leaves, and a single-burner hotplate where I can heat water for brewing tea. I’ve been using the office for three years now, after having spent the first twenty-five of my twenty-eight years as a freelancer working at a computer cart in our home’s kitchen. (Here you can see progress photos from when my guys were building the office and a video tour of the interior of my office.)
Some of my other favourite office features are:
- A gamer’s chair, which keeps my back very happy; my 22-year-old son, formerly a heavy-duty gamer, strongly recommended that I order such a chair.
- The three large monitors attached to my computer.
- The two skylight windows.
- My standing desk, which my husband built for me a few years ago so that I could use it when I was still editing in our kitchen.
Shelby Haber is an editor, teacher, and administrator whose workspace is in Montréal, Québec.
I love editing because, since all the work I do is online, I can focus on making the physical workspace comfortable. I have two strategies to make my workspace feel homey:
My first strategy is to buy as many office supplies as I can from the dollar store! My weekly planner, notebooks, and notebook filing system each cost something like $3. There’s a sense of coziness that comes with knowing that I’m able to plan my whole work week and fit in all my projects because of such simple and affordable items.
My second strategy is to surround myself with objects that remind me why I work. I’ve covered the walls around my desk with pictures and notes from my friends and family, and part of my desk is dedicated to beautiful items. I have vases full of fresh and dried flowers from my partner, a spoon that my best friend got engraved with a Virginia Woolf quotation, and a statue of Mary Undoer of Knots. My workspace is also a great place for my currently-reading book pile, which reminds me why I’m in love with reading others’ work.
This article was copy edited by Piu Chowdhury, a Toronto-based writer.
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