I know—it's typically the first piece of advice you come across when reading about how to start and grow a successful freelancing business. Know your niche. Niche down. Find a niche and grow into it.
About six or seven months into freelancing full time, I decided to try and position myself as a specialized memoir editor. I have a lot of experience substantively editing memoir, and it is my passion. I could go on for too long about how fascinating I find the subject of the self, how we narrativize our experiences and lives in particular ways and bring something real into being through the process. How do our own narrativizations shape how we engage, see, are in the world? How can we understand what has happened or is happening to us in generative, meaning-making ways? Can we write about it beautifully? Who am I when I wake up, shower, go to sleep? Who am I when I write about waking up, showering, sleeping? Who am I for having written these questions? This interest informs all my editorial interventions within the memoir and creative nonfiction genres, and I have had wonderful experience working with writers on their stories about themselves.
Within a couple months of positioning myself and my business in this way, however, I realized that I was muting other elements of my passion, knowledge, and talents as an editor. For example: I have spent an inordinate number of years as a student of the humanities. After a very long bachelor's degree (made so by doing a semester abroad, a field school, a co-operative certificate of education, and, at the last minute, a publishing minor), I completed a master's degree. Then, I pursued three years of doctoral research. Throughout this time in the academy, I was a committed student to the art of the essay—to the art of persuasion, of the way a successful argument is formed just as much through evidence as effective structure. I studied the form of academic articles, learned what works and what doesn't, what an engaging voice looks and feels like, taught writing workshops, accepted graderships to practice writing constructive yet kind feedback to students (which would become foundational to how I now write feedback to writers and in reader's reports), became a writing tutor. I have watched the faces of undergraduates, graduates, and post-docs in tutoring sessions light up when I move a few sentences around, delete a few words, replace another, and they see the effect on the clarity of their ideas. Studying the academic essay has allowed me to understand how to communicate clearly. (It's also provided me with the opportunity to understand how, when, and why to break the rules of traditional essay writing.) By “niching down” to memoir, I was foreclosing opportunities to continue working with humanities academics and students on their writing, which I had studied how to do, and so studiously, for so long.
In addition, in between my degrees, I held numerous positions in the publishing industry, from publisher's assistant to digital editorial assistant to managing editor and production coordinator. I learned many hard skills in these positions, but I also learned that I have a sharp eye when it comes to ensuring consistency. I have been known to catch an unruly bold period in catalogue copy. I like imposing the order of a house style on a manuscript. I know how to hyphenate. I like thinking about the communicative differences between the em dash and the en dash. By calling myself a developmental editor of memoir, I was also foreclosing the possibility of proofreading or copy editing—the process of ensuring error-free, consistent, accurate, and complete documents of any type. This didn't feel right either.
I felt that by electing to niche down, I was muting the diverse skillset my experience and passions have thus far afforded me. And so, in the latest re-design of my website, I have decided to honour this diversity. While the four categories on my home page—non-fiction editing, academic editing, proofreading and copy editing, and reader's reports—might feel like a chaotic blend of editorial types and writing genres, they do, in fact, directly reflect my expertise. Time will tell whether it was the right move for my business. For now, I am excited to see where it takes me—just as I am excited to work with you and the unique needs of your writing project.
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