The Art and Craft of Editing 

26th Feb 2019 10:00am-4:30pm 

Venue: Royal Holloway, 11 Bedford Square, WC1B 3RF

Booking: to book please email techne@rhul.ac.uk 

Editing your thesis is often the stage generating the most fear. What might I discover? What if the whole thing falls apart? I don’t really know what editing is! I do know what editing is, but I just can’t face it! These are questions and feelings very familiar to professional writers. This one-day workshop opens a space to explore these questions and feelings, and offers practical strategies and tools to turn editing into a do-able, and even a pleasurable, stage of the writing process. The workshop will clarify the difference between writing and editing; examine the different types of editing; acknowledge the emotional impact of self-editing and being edited by others; and look at the benefits and pitfalls of collaborative editing. Participants will be encouraged to bring some of their own work on which to practise all the day’s activities.

The workshop will be taught by Katie Grant.

Katie Grant co-created the Advancing Academic Writing skills website for the University of Glasgow, where she was the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow for three years, helping undergraduates, Masters and PhD students with their writing. A columnist, occasional broadcaster, author of ten novels (Sedition, her latest, is published by Virago), on the panel of judges for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, an occasional book reviewer for, amongst other publications, the New York Times and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she runs writing workshops on improving the quality, reach and impact of academic writing for all levels of HE. Long experience of the practical, emotional and organisational challenges of writing for deadlines and for different audiences informs all her workshops. She understands from first-hand the value of getting writing done and getting it done well.