A key skill that I acquired during my doctoral studies—and perhaps the most important one, as far as my current approach to writing, editing, and teaching is concerned—was the ability and willingness to revise. Having always been a strong student, I was accustomed, up until my PhD, to getting assignments back with a few short words scrawled across the bottom: “Great! Clear and well-written essay”; “Intelligent, sophisticated work, nicely done!” But my doctoral supervisor, who is a formidable reader, taught me that sometimes even “intelligent, sophisticated work” needs a total overhaul before it reaches its full potential.

Finally got it right! All dissertations should be both edited and edible.

Revising your writing is like dismantling a beautiful and precariously built castle made of blocks. You gingerly remove a few pieces from the top, hoping to keep the rest of your creation intact, but these small adjustments generally reveal that the whole foundation needs to change. And so, grimacing, you slide out one of the lower pieces and hold your breath as (probably) the whole thing comes tumbling down. You then grit your teeth and set about building your castle again—hopefully without having to fish too many new blocks out of the bucket—and inevitably end up with a new structure far better than anything you could have envisioned when you starting building the first time.

Now, I seek opportunities to collaborate with others—clients, students, peers—as they, too, undertake the difficult and rewarding process of textual creation and renovation.

I developed my editorial skills through a number of other endeavours which complemented my graduate studies. Between 2009 and 2016, I worked as a Research Assistant on a diverse array of academic projects. Most notably, I worked in the Burney Centre at McGill University, an internationally renowned research centre specializing in eighteenth-century studies. In the Centre, I collaborated with a team of other Research Assistants on a number of large-scale endeavours. For instance, I copyedited several academic essay collections, prepared and proofread transcriptions of eighteenth-century correspondence, and prepared an index for a three-volume selection of The Complete Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (published by Cambridge University Press). I appreciated this meticulous labour so much—fine-tuning, polishing, buffing; like sprinkling parsley on an elaborate meal—that I decided to pursue it on a freelance basis.

My freelance clients have ranged from non-native English speakers to professors of English, and the projects I have worked on include Cambridge Companions on literary and historical topics; academic monographs, essay collections, and articles on subjects ranging from ophthalmology to seventeenth-century Neapolitan art; and memoirs, fiction, educational materials, job letters, grant applications, and other miscellaneous documents. I am delighted to be a part of the Montreal-based bilingual editing collective red line-ligne rouge. You can read more about my editorial experience and services here.