Sometimes, taking on a boring writing project is what you need to pay the bills. But boring projects are difficult to stay engaged with, making it harder to get through them. For myself and many other writers, the best way to power through these sorts of projects is a little background music.

If you’re nodding in agreement, you know that a good writing playlist can be one of the most important items in a writer’s toolkit. So what makes a good writing playlist? The answer is subjective, of course, but in this post, I’ll talk about what’s worked for me, and lay out a few broadly applicable guidelines. 

Set the Mood

Setting the right mood for a project helps you find your creative rhythm, and when there’s rhythm, there’s music. 

If you write genre works or about genre, try a genre-based approach to your mood music. For example, if you’re writing sci-fi or about sci-fi, then music from sci-fi media or music that has a sci-fi feel to it can set the mood well. 

In my experience, though, a better approach comes from a more abstract perspective.

Let’s say you’re writing something contemplative or slower paced. Music that is slower and more melodic might be what you need. Maybe your writing will be direct and fast-paced. Something energetic and punchier might work better. If you’re looking to boost your energy so that you can work more quickly, music with lots of aggressive percussion works wonders.

Lyrics or No Lyrics?

If you’re like me, the main thing that differentiates a writing playlist from, say, a workout playlist, is lyrics. For whatever reason, music with lyrics that I can understand throws me off when I’m trying to write or edit. In fact, lyrics in a language I don’t speak have the same effect. If you work the same way, it’s important to curate your playlist to avoid tracks that will pull you out of your writing. 

The Genius of Soundtracks

Whether or not you’re sensitive to lyrics, soundtracks are good places to look for writing music. Soundtrack music is intended to work in the background of a film, TV show, or video game, shaping the mood without overpowering the story. That’s exactly how a good writing playlist works. 

Soundtrack pieces are generally written to emphasize specific moods and feelings. Your work, then, is to collect pieces from various soundtracks that share the mood you’re looking for. Personally, I’m partial to the soundtrack from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, which has a lot of that aggressive percussion I mentioned earlier.

Video game soundtracks are also a good source of writing music. Since video games are a changeable experience that requires input from the audience, music made for them is often designed to keep the listener engaged and moving forward. The music is also often played on a loop, designed to still be enjoyable after it’s been repeated many times. All these factors make for great writing music. Of course, not every video game soundtrack will have what you need, but there’s plenty of options to choose from. The soundtrack from Half-Life 2 is one of my go-tos.

Make Your Music Playlist Personal

Music tastes are subjective, so the kind of writing music you prefer will be unique to you. (Curious readers can check out a short sample of my writing playlist.) Start by considering the mood you need to set, whether lyrics will work for you, and your favorite soundtracks. Then, create that playlist on your preferred music streaming service and refine it as you go. You may find that what you need changes from project to project, but your building a toolkit that you can revisit whenever you need it. And before you know it, that boring writing project will be done and off your desk.

Sean Brenner is a freelance writer specializing in scripts for video essays and similar forms of content. He writes scripts for YouTube videos covering Star Wars lore for Frontier Media and Star Trek for Trek Central. You can learn more about his work at Imagined Worlds Writing Services and find him on Bluesky.

The post Music to Write To first appeared on Right Touch Editing.

There’s a growing sense, especially among experienced editors, that AI is the beginning of the end for writing and editing as professions. You don’t have to look far to find someone arguing that the work is being automated out from under us.

That reaction makes sense. The tools are fast, increasingly capable, and in some cases, good enough to pass a quick read. When something can generate a clean draft in seconds, it forces a hard question: where does that leave the people who used to do that work?

But “this changes the job” is not the same as “this eliminates the job.” We’ve seen this movie before: The Internet didn’t erase editors. It changed how content was created, distributed, and monetized, and it forced people to adapt. 

Three decades later, most of us are still here.

I’ve Had the Same Doubts

I’m not immune to this. Using AI forces you to confront some uncomfortable questions:

If it can draft faster than I can, where do I add value? Am I helping build something that eventually sidelines me? What happens when organizations decide “good enough” is good enough?

Those thoughts show up quickly once you start using these tools in a real workflow, and they don’t go away just because you understand how the technology works. What changes is how you see the gap between what AI produces and what actually holds up.

The Gap Still Matters

AI can generate structure, summarize inputs, and get you to a usable starting point quickly. That’s real value. It removes friction from parts of the job that were already somewhat repeatable.

But it doesn’t know your audience. It doesn’t make judgment calls about tone, timing, or what should be emphasized or left out. It doesn’t push back when something feels off. It doesn’t connect ideas across context the way an experienced editor does.

That gap—between output and judgment—is still there. If anything, it becomes more important when there’s more content being produced, faster.

The Real Risk Is Opting Out

The bigger issue isn’t that AI exists, but how people respond to it.

If you decide not to use it at all, you’re not holding the line on quality. You’re stepping away from the process that’s actively reshaping your field.

These tools are going to be used. By your colleagues, competitors, the people publishing more content, more quickly, whether it’s good or not.

The editors who stay relevant will be the ones who understand how the tools work, where they fall short, and how to push them toward something better. The ones who don’t will have less influence over the outcome.

What Changes in Practice

In practical terms, AI shifts where your time goes.

You spend less time getting to a first draft and more time refining it into something worth reading. Less time organizing raw material and more time deciding what actually matters. Less time staring at a blank page, more time shaping the final product.

And in some cases, it opens up things that were previously constrained by time or resources.

One example: I use AI heavily for image creation. Instead of digging through stock libraries and settling for something loosely related to the topic, I can generate visuals that directly reflect the point of the article. It tightens the connection between the content and how it’s presented, and it does it without adding another layer of production overhead.

What I’ve Learned So Far

A few things have become clear through actual use:

• AI is good at accelerating processes. It is not good at replacing judgment.
• The value of editing shifts upward. The mechanical parts get faster; the thinking becomes the differentiator.
• There’s going to be a lot more mediocre content in circulation. That raises the importance of people like you.
• Using AI doesn’t make you less of an editor. It forces you to be more intentional about what editing actually is.

You Don’t Get to Pause This

It’s tempting to treat AI as something you can wait out. See how it develops. Let other people figure it out first. That ignores an important truth: To change the world for the better, you have to show up.

The technology is already embedded in workflows, whether formally or informally. Decisions are being made about how it’s used, what’s acceptable, and what “good” looks like in this new environment.

Editors should be part of that. Not as passive observers, but as the people who understand quality, clarity, and audience better than anyone else in the process.

AI changes the job. It doesn’t remove the need for it. But choosing not to engage with it does create risk for your relevance, your influence, and your ability to shape what comes next.

You can keep doing things the way you always have and hope that holds. Or you can use the tools, understand them, and apply the same standards you always have, just in a different environment.

One of those paths keeps you in the work. The other doesn’t.

Bill Brenner is a cybersecurity content strategist, journalist, and editor with more than two decades of experience helping security leaders navigate a rapidly evolving threat landscape. As Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at CYBR.SEC.Media, he operates at the intersection of cybersecurity, storytelling, and community, translating complex technical issues into clear, human-centered insights.

Previously, he held senior leadership roles at CyberRisk Alliance, leading audience content strategy and contributing to industry research and thought leadership. He is known for his data-driven perspective, deep roots in cybersecurity journalism, and focus on the human side of security — from practitioner challenges to workforce development and mental health.

The post AI Isn’t Killing Editors. Sitting It Out Might. first appeared on Right Touch Editing.

In today’s rapidly changing professional landscape, one question that gets asked ad nauseum is “How are you integrating AI into your workflow?” Everyone has a different answer to that question, and mine is blessedly simple: 

I generally don’t.

There is an exception to that statement: I use an AI-based video transcriber for one client. My role is to create and refine transcripts of multi-hour livestreams, and I use a tool to generate a rough transcript that I can then clean up and make usable. 

But when it comes to the tools most people think of as AI—the chatbots, the image generators, the search tools, the agents—I don’t use any of them. With the exception of that one client’s projects, my process is entirely AI free, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. 

A lot of the time, when people who don’t use AI talk about why, they focus on moral or personal reasons. Although those are entirely valid justifications for not using AI, I’m not going to be talking about that here. While I definitely have my issues with AI, a large part of why I use it isn’t personal, but practical. There are many practical reasons for not using AI, and in this post, I’ll discuss some of the most important.

AI Can’t Do Everything

As most people who use AI know already, not even the most sophisticated AI tools can do everything. This is particularly impactful in fields like editing and writing. While outsiders might think AI could automate the whole field, AI’s actual capabilities often prove lacking. 

An AI tool can generate topics, draft an outline, or speed up research (so long as you research responsibly and fact-check everything it says). But when it comes to writing or editing, there are many parts of the process where a human is still necessary if you want quality. 

For example, as I’ve written about before, genuine writing isn’t something AI is capable of. While it can generate a suitable-enough imitation for something like a quick email to your boss, AI-generated text is substandard for anything beyond that level.

This is a crucial point to keep in mind when considering whether to integrate AI into your workflow: You have to be aware of what these tools can actually do. AI works best as a helper, not a replacement. Even then, sometimes it just isn’t very helpful.

AI Doesn’t Fit My Workflow

Narrowing down what an AI tool can do shouldn’t be the only thing that goes into whether you decide to use it. You also want to consider how well those capabilities pair with how you do your work.

In my case, the way I write makes it very difficult, and often downright counterproductive, to integrate AI into my workflow. A large part of my writing process happens while doing the very tasks that AI is best suited to automate: topic creation, research, and outlining. For me, shaping and refining the concept I have for the manuscript–the main part of the writing process AI can’t do–happens as a byproduct of doing those basic, mechanical tasks. 

Far from making my workflow more efficient, cutting out that part of the process hampers my ability to actually write. For me, the many steps of the writing process blend together in ways that just make it impractical to automate with AI. 

Everyone’s workflow is different, and some people simply work better without AI.

Free Models Are Ineffective at Best

Affordability can be another major concern. The most effective AI models are all paid products. The freely available AI models often don’t cut it for professional use, with low-quality output and a strong tendency to hallucinate. Also, there are often strings attached to the free versions, such as not being able to opt out of letting the company use your data for training purposes.

If you’re going to use AI for anything professional, you need a paid model, and for many people, that expense just isn’t worthwhile. Maybe you wouldn’t use it enough to justify the cost, or maybe your bottom line is just too tight at the moment. Whatever the reason, if you can’t afford a paid model, you’re usually better off not using AI at all.  

AI Sycophancy Is Dangerous

Even the most advanced AI models can be dangerously sycophantic, which has led some people to rely on them too much. Overreliance on a yes-bot can affect your decision-making for the worse, potentially damaging both the quality of your work and, for freelancers, your business. Being able to consult an AI model that will always tell you what you want to hear discourages critical thinking, and outsourcing decision-making to a machine that cannot actually think can be disastrous, as some CEOs have recently learned to their misfortune.

There’s also the increasingly widespread phenomena of AI-driven psychosis and even AI-driven suicide to consider. For people with mental health struggles or difficulty picking up on AI sycophancy, it might be in their best interests to limit or avoid certain uses of AI, especially those that involve direct interaction with a chatbot or chatbot-like interface. Even if you don’t have preexisting mental health struggles, you still run the risk of AI psychosis if you start outsourcing all your critical thinking to AI.

External Factors May Forbid It

In many fields, there are also external pressures to not use AI that you can’t ignore. For example, in the US, AI-generated text is completely ineligible for copyright. This also applies to text that’s mostly but not exclusively AI generated, so just making a few edits won’t cut it. If a manuscript you’re working on needs to be protected by copyright when it’s published, this heavily restricts your use of AI.

In other fields, there’s extensive social pressure against AI use. For example, I primarily write scripts for YouTube videos, and in many corners of YouTube, the slightest whiff of AI use will have people drawing their torches and pitchforks. They’ll leave angry comments, they’ll stop watching your content, and your reputation will be tarnished in a way that’s very hard to repair. In those sorts of fields, avoiding AI use—or at least keeping it as inconspicuous as possible—is a more important consideration than how AI might speed up your workflow.

Everyone’s conditions are different, and there are many conditions that necessarily exclude or limit AI use. Maybe it’s an external factor beyond your control, or maybe AI just doesn’t work well for you. Whatever your reasons, not using AI isn’t the impractical, career-ending choice it’s sometimes made out to be. The way you work best is the way you should be working.

Sean Brenner is a freelance writer specializing in scripts for video essays and similar forms of content. He writes scripts for YouTube videos covering Star Wars lore for Frontier Media and Star Trek for Trek Central. You can learn more about his work at Imagined Worlds Writing Services and find him on Bluesky.

The post AI Isn’t for Everyone—And That’s Okay first appeared on Right Touch Editing.

And while these sentiments are not uncommon, I am concerned that editors are resisting the inevitable. Instead, facing the issue with an open mind might allow us to see this technology as an opportunity to expand our offerings and connect with new clients who value the quality that a human editor brings. It’s not an easy conversion, but a necessary one. Let’s talk about it. 

The Conversation We’re Not Having

The problem is that these strongly expressed opinions have become a one-sided conversation. That binary framing leaves little room for the middle ground, where most of us actually operate.

Yes, AI is a threat to our livelihoods and that’s scary. So is a constantly shifting economy. A war that is destabilizing decades of (uneasy) peace. An unstable government. All of these are affecting our ability to make a living.

But this isn’t necessarily new. Our relationship with technology has drastically changed over the last two decades (who remembers booting up their computers in the early 2000s?) and political unease—though more alarming in recent years—is familiar. This isn’t intended to diminish the importance of these threats, but rather, to expand on the conversation. You can feel uneasy about AI and continue adapting to the world around you. It’s how we remain in business.  

Get the Evidence, Then Use It

I’ve lost three major clients in the last two years. None of them were because of AI. One was due to internal politics. One client canceled their text-based content marketing after nearly all of their staff was laid off. One was canceled because, frankly, the project wasn’t working. 

That doesn’t mean you’re not losing clients because of AI. Editor Katharine O’Moore-Klopf shared these articles in a recent conversation, and, as expected, they show a growing reliance on AI for publishing content, specifically science:

• “AI Gives Scientists a Boost, but at the Cost of Too Many Mediocre Papers” 
• “Researchers Who Use Generative AI to Write Papers Are Publishing More” 
• “Far More Authors Use AI to Write Science Papers Than Admit It, Publisher Reports” 

But we shouldn’t be satisfied with guessing that AI is why the work has dried up. All that does is let the fear inside our heads grow bigger. We need to try to talk to those clients who aren’t coming back: Why are they choosing something other than professional editing? What qualities or services might renew their interest in working with a human editor? We need to dig out research for our clients’ industries, like O’Moore-Klopf did. 

Then, that research can be used to counsel those clients who care about quality. We can show them the difference between human editing and AI editing, like the tests Adrienne Montgomerie did. We can show them the evidence that even a whisper of AI will harm their chances of their book being published (hello, Shy Girl) or their journal article not being accepted or their content marketing not finding an audience.

The Clients We Can’t Save

We also need to let go of those clients for whom price is the deciding factor and mediocrity acceptable. Because that’s their choice. If they value price and accept mediocrity as the cost of price, we’re not changing their minds. And, unfortunately, losing clients is a part of the business journey. Yes, a loss to AI has a particular sting, but it is possible to bounce back. 

An editor’s values generally focus on quality. We work to make things better and help the writing achieve its goal. But as Tamsen Webster writes about, if you don’t share values at a deep level with someone, then you’re not going to change their mind about buying your service. They don’t value it and your business is better served focusing on the clients that do.

Where AI Actually Helps

There are positive uses of AI, but that’s not the headline-grabbing part of the conversation. Next month, I’m presenting a webinar for Editors Canada on how you can use AI to help you with business tasks. It’s helped me improve my business, and I’ve heard from neurodivergent editors who have used AI in the same way and how much it’s helped them.

Erin Servais runs a popular course on how to use AI in your editing. It’s not about making it do all the editing for you; you remain in control of the edit. Instead, the course teaches you to use AI as a tool to increase consistency and productivity, the way we use spell-check and macros and programs like PerfectIt and Edifix.

Let’s Talk About AI and Editors

Maybe you don’t want to use AI, and you have your reasons and they’re not changing. That’s your choice, and it’s a perfectly acceptable one.

Maybe you don’t want to use it because you’re scared out of your mind. That’s completely normal. And you’re not alone. Many of us feel threatened and concerned about our livelihoods. 

But let’s have a two-sided conversation. Let’s experiment with these tools, consider how they can support our work (instead of replacing it), and look at the evidence. It’s not as easy as saying a few magic words. Prompting well is work. (For an idea of how much work, check out “I Wrote a Novel Using AI” by Stephen Marche.)

And let’s not let fear overrun us. We know that both emotions and evidence win the day, and with the current state of the world, we’ve got emotions to spare. Let’s focus on the evidence side of things and dig further into why you may not have any work. Look directly at the problem and decide how you will address it. 

All Is Not Rosy, But It’s Not the End Either

The ugly truth is that AI isn’t going away. There are billions, trillions even, of dollars at stake and capitalism won’t let that opportunity go by. Look how embedded it already is in so much of our everyday software. It’s like Wi-Fi and so-called “smart” products, like washing machines, garage door openers, and even toothbrushes. You may not use those smart features, but they’re there. 

And, yes, sadly, I think there will be fewer editing opportunities. More people and companies who were never very enthusiastic about spending money on editing are going to choose AI instead. I wish that were different, but instead I’d like to focus on making the best of it and helping other editors do the same.

Get Personalized Guidance

Navigating the changing editorial landscape can be overwhelming on your own. Book a one-on-one business coaching session to develop a customized strategy for your editing business. Together, we’ll assess your skills, identify promising opportunities, and create an action plan tailored to your specific situation.

I believe in good writing and what it can do. I believe in what quality editing can do for writing to make it better. Yet I can’t change the value someone holds for price into a value for quality. I can only find clients who share my value for quality.  

Life is hard in so many ways. It’s also short, and I’m not going to waste my time trying to convert someone who values good enough or a low price into someone who values excellence over price. What do I know about their struggles? What do I know about how much their project really needs to be excellent? Who am I to tell them “This is the way”? 

I can try to educate the people I connect with and share why I think professional editing will help their project. However, if they don’t want to be persuaded or if they don’t share my values, then I’d rather let them go and move on to the next thing.

Because there’s always a next thing.

The post AI Isn’t All or Nothing—Let’s Talk About It first appeared on Right Touch Editing.

Professionals can make a living through many different kinds of writing, and one niche that’s grown considerably in recent years is scriptwriting for video essays, typically tailored for YouTube. This is the niche I work in, and when I’m reviewing openings posted by potential clients, many of them list the ability to imitate someone else’s writing voice as an essential skill for the position. This kind of nontraditional ghostwriting is increasingly common online, and if you’re interested in pursuing that type of work, knowing how to imitate a writing voice is crucial. Of course, it’s easier said than done.

The process of writing in someone else’s voice will be different each time, and a lot of that process is intuitive—something you learn best by doing and experiencing firsthand. How successful you are is subjective, as the only measurement of success that matters is whether or not your finished product sounds right. But there’s a few key steps that this process always involves, so let’s dive in.

Know Thyself

Everyone’s writing voice is unique, much like our actual voices. When you write, everyone has their own inclinations about tone, structure, and approach to topics, as well as words you use commonly, figures of speech that you like, how long your sentences are, and other identifying idiosyncrasies. Some elements of a writer’s voice are easy to spot (such as em dash overuse, which many people fixate on in this age of AI slop), while other elements are much more abstract and only become apparent upon close examination. 

In order to replicate someone else’s voice, you have to understand what makes their voice distinct. More importantly, though, you first have to understand your own writing voice. Examine your own writing closely and make a mental note of what elements jump out at you. Important questions to ask include:

• Are there any specific words and phrases you use a lot? Look especially for words and phrases that are long or uncommon.
• What kinds of punctuation do you use, and how frequently? Pay special attention to em dashes and semicolons, and count how many commas you use in an average sentence.
• What types of sentence structures do you use the most?
• Are there any figures of speech that you use frequently?
• How long are your sentences and paragraphs? 
• How do you prefer to structure manuscripts? 
• How do you approach telling stories?

Analyze, Compare, Replicate

Once you understand what makes your voice distinct, it’s time to analyze your client’s writing. Ask the same questions you did when looking at your own writing, and think about how those elements come together to create your client’s voice. As you do, compare your voice to theirs. Pay close attention to the differences between the two, and decide which differences are the most notable. This will tell you what you need to focus on when you start writing.

Once you understand what makes your client’s voice different from yours, imitating it is easy. Be sure to pay close attention to how you’re writing, and use the idiosyncrasies of your client’s style when applicable. Don’t go out of your way to include as many identifying features as possible; if you overdo it, it’ll be noticeable and won’t sound right. You want the final product to sound natural, not forced. Audiences are smarter than writers often give them credit for, and they’ll pick up on more than you think.

The first few times you imitate a voice, you’ll want to review your work in the same way you examined the samples of your voice and the client’s voice earlier. If there are still distinctive elements of your voice coming through, eliminate them, and make a mental note to be mindful of them next time. Don’t be too strict about it, though. You need to get rid of what will stand out, not every single element of your voice. As long as you’re the writer, elements of your own voice and style will occasionally peek through, and that’s OK. If you match your client’s voice enough, they usually go unnoticed.

If you aren’t sure whether or not you’re getting it right, don’t be afraid to ask your client for input. Ask them to read over your work to make sure it sounds right, or offer a quick sample for them to review in advance. For gigs where mimicking a certain voice is a requirement, the client may do this anyway, requiring samples to ensure you can match their voice to their satisfaction. If they don’t, it helps to be sure you’re doing their voice justice.

At the beginning, imitating a client’s voice will take a lot of effort and practice. But the more you do it, the easier it will become. Once you get the hang of a client’s voice, it becomes almost effortless to switch between writing in their voice and writing in yours. 

Sean Brenner is a freelance writer specializing in scripts for video essays and similar forms of content. He writes scripts for YouTube videos covering Star Wars lore for Frontier Media and Star Trek for Trek Central. You can learn more about his work at Imagined Worlds Writing Services and find him on Bluesky.

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Matching Someone Else’s Writing Voice first appeared on Right Touch Editing.

Those changes matter. For teams doing detail-oriented, precision work, a foundation of physical and mental well-being directly affects the quality of what goes out the door.

But physical and mental well-being are only part of the picture. Research on well-being consistently identifies three additional dimensions that leaders often overlook: career, social, and community well-being. These are the areas where editorial and communications leaders have some of the most direct influence—and where the investment pays off in engagement, retention, and the quiet pride that comes from a job well done.

Invest in Your Team’s Professional Growth

Career well-being is about whether people find meaning and satisfaction in their work.

As your team’s leader, you can have a direct influence. Don’t wait for annual reviews to find out whether someone is struggling. Watch for the quieter signals, such as a disinterest in projects they used to engage with, pessimism creeping into how they talk about the work, or productivity that’s dropped without an obvious reason. These often surface before someone says anything directly.

Have both planned and casual conversations about what your direct reports want from their career and consider how you can help them get there. Are your editors working in their area of specialty or being stretched into genres or subjects they’re not confident in? Do your writers have opportunities to pitch topics, or only execute assignments? Within your department, you might create a mentoring program and seek out or create a training program that will strengthen the team’s skills.

Work satisfaction also comes from knowing you are doing a good job and are appreciated. Praise your team and individual members publicly for their good work. Be specific when you can. Single out the report that went out clean on a tight deadline. Applaud the article where the writer’s voice elevated the topic.

Reward your team, as well. Raises and bonuses are always valued, but even with a tight budget you can find a way to reward excellent work. Maybe it’s lunch on you or negotiating a half-day off for the team after a grueling project. Could you offer a professional development stipend, conference attendance, or access to a tool they’ve wanted? Ask your team what they’d appreciate; you might be surprised by the answers.

Nurture Strong Work Relationships

Social well-being is about the quality of a person’s relationships. As a leader, you can help your team build strong relationships with each other and you in many ways:

• Turn-taking in meetings. Ensure everyone who wants to has a chance to talk by making someone in each meeting responsible for keeping track of who’s spoken. This is especially important for video calls during which people are reviewing the same document simultaneously and visual cues about who’s ready to speak get lost.
• Corrections in private. It’s rarely, if ever, necessary to call out inappropriate behavior or poor work performance in public. That might sound basic, but public humiliation happens more often than we might want to acknowledge. Always make corrections in private.
• Flexibility with struggling employees. We all have personal challenges. When a valued employee is going through a tough time, could you occasionally be a listening ear? Ask them what would help them in this moment and do your best to help provide it.
• Social opportunities for your team. Try to find an activity everyone would enjoy or a few activities focused on different interests. Ask your team what they’d be interested in doing, offering a few ideas to get them thinking. Just don’t make any event mandatory. No one likes forced fun.

When issues go beyond what you can address, don’t try to handle them alone. HR can help mediate conflicts or connect employees with appropriate support.

Engage with Your Local Community

Community well-being is about feeling connected to something larger than the immediate work, knowing that where you work and what you do has meaning beyond the next deadline.

For editorial and communications teams, consider organizing volunteer opportunities that draw on what your team does well, such as a reading mentorship program that pairs team members with students who are learning to read, partnerships with local literacy organizations, or a book drive for a school library or community center that’s struggling to keep its shelves stocked. Teams that work in journalism or nonprofit communications may find natural connections to local news initiatives or community advocacy groups whose work aligns with their organization’s mission.

For remote team members, look for virtual equivalents, such as online tutoring programs, virtual reading buddy initiatives, or organizational support for employees who want to volunteer in their own communities. A small scheduling accommodation, such as a flexible hour once a month, can make it easy for someone to participate without it competing with work obligations.

As with any team activity, avoid making participation mandatory and steer clear of anything connected to politics or religion unless that’s squarely within your organization’s mission. The goal is to give people a genuine opportunity to connect, not to create another obligation.

A Commitment Worth Making

Building a well-being culture in your editorial or communications team isn’t a one-time initiative. It’s an ongoing commitment to your people and to the quality of the work they produce together.

If you’re managing a team and finding that burnout, high turnover, or inconsistent output is affecting your content quality, I’d be glad to talk. Right Touch Editing works with organizations to support editorial teams with skilled, professional editing—so your team isn’t stretched thin by covering the gaps and your content reflects the care your organization puts into it.

Get in touch to start the conversation.

This article is adapted from a piece originally published on the Lenovo Pro Community.

The post Avoiding Editorial Team Burnout: The Deeper Dimensions first appeared on Right Touch Editing.

Every writer needs a good editor. 

But even for writers who understand that, having your work edited can be an unpleasant experience. Sometimes it’s demoralizing to open a document to see what remains of your writing buried in a wall of markups and suggestions. Some writers find it difficult to deal with. Others even get indignant or confrontational about it, as if being edited is an attack on their skill or criticism of their work.

It’s not.

No matter how being edited might make you feel, it’s important to approach the process properly rather than letting those feelings warp your perspective. Editing isn’t about tearing your work down. It’s about refining and improving it. And it does that less effectively if you’re always fighting your editor. 

If you want the best results from editing, then you need to learn how to better deal with being edited. In this post, I’ll walk you through how to do that.

Swallow Your Pride

The first and most important step is to silence the part of your mind that gets indignant about being edited. Remember that neither the amount nor the extent of edits necessarily speaks to the quality of your writing; editing isn’t just for improving bad writing, but refining all writing, no matter how good it is. Any piece of writing, no matter the quality, will come away from a thorough edit with a pile of suggested changes. 

If you open your document and feel overwhelmed by all the suggestions, it might help to step away for a bit, calm yourself down, and come back to review the edit later. Whatever being edited makes you feel, it will get in the way of the reviewing process if you let it. Approach the edit as objectively as you can – be honest with yourself as you consider whether or not an edit improves your work, and don’t shoot down good ideas just because they aren’t your ideas. 

Reject Edits That Don’t Work*

Most of the time, edits are only suggestions. You can say no if you honestly believe the original wording is better. Just like writers, editors don’t always get things right, and when it comes to writing, there often is no right or wrong answer, only preference. It’s ultimately your piece, and if you and your editor disagree over a point of style or something similarly subjective, it’s fine to overrule them.

*Of course, this isn’t always an option. If you’re writing for your employer or a client, they often have the last word. Publishers may make accepting some or all of the edits part of the conditions for being published. In cases like that, you may have to just suck it up and accept your editor’s changes. If that’s the case, it’s usually best to simply let go of any bad feelings about it.

Editing is Necessary

It’s perfectly fine to not like having your work edited. Most writers don’t to some extent, and what you feel is what you feel. It’s what you do about it that matters. When it comes to editing, the best thing to do is swallow your pride, become objective, and remember that editing is a necessary process. It shapes your work into a better final product – and isn’t that what we want?

Sean Brenner is a freelance writer specializing in scripts for video essays and similar forms of content. He writes scripts for YouTube videos covering Star Wars lore for Frontier Media and Star Trek for Trek Central. You can learn more about his work at Imagined Worlds Writing Services and find him on Bluesky.

The post How to Deal With Being Edited first appeared on Right Touch Editing.

It’s exactly the kind of work that suffers first and most visibly when a team is burned out: Missed errors that should have been caught. Revision cycles that keep spiraling. Deadlines that slip not because of scope but because the people doing the work are running on empty.

If you lead an editorial or communications team, you may recognize some of these signs in your direct reports:

• Decreased motivation or productivity
• Increased procrastination
• Increased number of careless mistakes
• Withdrawal from responsibilities and team activities
• Complaints of exhaustion and difficulty concentrating
• Rampant cynicism and pessimism

If several of those sound familiar, your team may be dealing with workplace burnout. 

Good managers care about the individuals on their team because people matter. But burnout in an editorial environment creates a specific, compounding problem: One person’s bad week doesn’t stay contained. It shows up downstream, in the work, in the reviews, in the relationships with freelancers and vendors who depend on clear direction and timely feedback. 

Burnout is also becoming more common. According to a recent Gallup study, 28% of employees reported feeling burned out “very often or always,” up from 23% in 2018. Another 48% said they “sometimes” felt burned out, up from 44%. Employees in these two groups are 35% more likely to be looking for a new job than those who rarely or never feel burned out.

The aggregate cost of employee burnout in the United States has risen to $350 billion annually, mostly from employee turnover and lost productivity. Companies now lose an estimated $24 million per 10,000 workers in lost opportunities and disengagement. And 80% of medical costs billed to employer-sponsored insurance plans now stem from preventable, stress-related conditions.

The good news is that you don’t need a massive budget or a formal wellness program to make a difference. You just need to know where to start.

Model the Behavior You Want to See

Of all the factors that shape a team’s culture, leadership behavior carries the most weight. Your team is watching how you handle pressure, whether you actually take time off, and whether you treat your own well-being as a priority or an afterthought. When they see you modeling healthy habits, it gives them permission to do the same.

Start with your own behavior:

• Take vacations and leave your computer at your desk.
• Take sick time rather than coming into the office sick.
• Share some of your healthy habits with your team, such as exercise, nutrition, and meditation.
• Acknowledge when you’re struggling rather than pretending everything is okay.

Next, create an environment that is supportive of people prioritizing their well-being. A few foundational changes can make a big difference.

Give your team permission to step away. Editorial and writing work is cognitively taxing in ways that aren’t always visible. The person who looks like they’re just reading is making hundreds of small decisions. Encourage breaks throughout the day, especially a real lunch break away from the screen. Recognize when someone has had their head down for hours and nudge them to get up and stretch. Let them see you doing it, too.

Protect focus time. Meetings and constant notifications create obstacles to the sustained concentration that deep editorial work demands. Consider designating meeting-free blocks or days to give your team uninterrupted heads-down time. When you schedule meetings, ask whether you really need 60 minutes; could you cover everything in 30? As well, build in 10–15 minutes between meetings. Finally, avoid scheduling meetings late on Fridays; giving your team time to wrap up before the weekend signals that you respect the boundary between work and rest.

On the logistics side, offer flexibility for health appointments and actively discourage skipping them for work deadlines. If your team is in-house, offer hybrid work options when possible. And build project schedules that account for time off and the inevitable delays that come with deadline-driven work.

Set a clear standard around after-hours communications. Don’t send messages outside of working hours. If you must, schedule them to arrive during the workday. 

If your organization has a quiet room or can create one, make it accessible to your team. Skip the conference room setup; bright lights and meeting tables send the wrong signal. Aim for something that actually invites someone to decompress: dim lighting, a comfortable chair, maybe some guidance on breathing or short meditations.

Most of these tactics will help with your team’s physical and mental well-being, which is where many well-being efforts stop. But there’s more opportunity for you to support your team and encourage a culture of well-being, particularly through career, social, and community well-being. For teams doing detailed, creative work—the kind where a single bad week can ripple into multiple rounds of revisions—this foundation matters a lot. We’ll explore those dimensions in part 2, “Avoiding Editorial Team Burnout: The Deeper Dimensions.”

This article is adapted from a piece originally published on the Lenovo Pro Community.

The post Avoiding Editorial Team Burnout: The Foundation first appeared on Right Touch Editing.

Writing can be fun, especially when it’s about a topic you’re passionate about. But no matter how much you enjoy it, there will be times when you just don’t have it in you to write. Maybe you’re tired. Maybe you just can’t muster up the motivation to be productive. Whatever the case, the result is the same: You don’t feel like writing, and trying to force yourself to do it anyway feels like pulling teeth.

Sometimes, this resistance is your body trying to tell you something. Maybe you need a mental health day, or you need to shift your schedule to do something that will give you energy and do the writing later. If one of these options is available to you, it’s worth considering. But when these options aren’t available, you just have to roll the hard six and get the work done. 

In this post, I’ll talk about my methods for writing when I don’t have the motivation.

Take the First Step

As I’ve written before, the blank page is intimidating, and defeating it is key to starting any manuscript. When you don’t have the motivation to write, the blank page is especially imposing, which is why it’s crucial to get at least something written down as soon as possible.

When you don’t have the motivation to write, writing even a paragraph can seem like an impossible task. Start smaller. How about a sentence? It doesn’t matter where in the manuscript that sentence eventually ends up; just string together some words into a usable combination, and start there. 

Once you have something down, you may find you’ve built up a little momentum, and you just need to keep building your manuscript from there. 

After setting down a sentence or two, I often need to pick one of two different approaches to keep moving. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, so it’s up to you to decide which seems best for you in the moment.

Break It Up

The first option is to continue tackling the project in small pieces. With that first sentence, focus on what comes next and build a paragraph out of it and then keep going. If you’re not sure where to go from that paragraph, write another single sentence that might appear anywhere in the manuscript and try to build a paragraph with it.

Take regular—but short—breaks between the pieces of your project. Once you’ve finished a paragraph, take a few minutes to do something else, and then move on to the next paragraph or sentence. Don’t take a break after each sentence, though. Too many breaks will prevent you from building momentum, and that will make the process harder.

This approach can make the task of writing seem more manageable, but it comes with the risk of distracting you and losing momentum. If that seems likely for you, then you might want to give the next method a try.

Maintain Momentum

The approach I use more often (and the one I used to complete this blog post) is the opposite approach. Sometimes, once I have a sentence or two written, it becomes much easier for me to keep writing. If you struggle to write intros, you might find that starting with a random sentence gives you this sort of boost; maybe you start in the middle of the manuscript, write to the end, and then come back to write the beginning. 

If that happens to you, harness that momentum. Avoid distractions as much as possible, and try to keep at it until you lose steam. The more progress you make, the less intimidating the work will seem when you come back to it later.

As the old saying goes, the only way out is through. Make what progress you can. Even if it doesn’t feel like it, you’re moving forward, putting one sentence after another. Sometimes that’s all we can do.

Sean Brenner is a freelance writer specializing in scripts for video essays and similar forms of content. He writes scripts for YouTube videos covering Star Wars lore for Frontier Media and Star Trek for Trek Central. You can learn more about his work at Imagined Worlds Writing Services and find him on Bluesky.

The post How to Write When You Just Don’t Have the Motivation first appeared on Right Touch Editing.

A business owner decides what the work is and how it should be done.

It’s a fair question. When clients come to us with projects, how can we be the ones deciding what the work is? Let me break this down into two parts.

Advising the Client on What the Work Should Be

Let’s say a client contacts you asking for proofreading. You ask some follow-up questions and learn that they just finished the manuscript, and no one else has seen it yet. You review a sample and, as you suspected, it’s nowhere near ready for a proofread. Maybe it needs line editing, copyediting, or even developmental editing.

As a business owner, you have a choice. You can tell the client what you think the manuscript actually needs and why. You can offer those services yourself or recommend someone who offers them if you don’t. Or you could perform the service the client asked for—preferably after explaining why a proofread alone is unlikely to get them where they want to go.

Either way, you are making the choice about what work you’re willing to do. The client chooses what they’re willing to purchase. That’s a business relationship between equals, rather than an employee following directions.

This can feel uncomfortable, especially when you’re newer to freelancing. But advising clients honestly—even when it means telling them something they don’t want to hear—builds trust and positions you as a professional, not just a pair of hands.

Controlling How the Work Gets Done

The second part of “deciding the work” is about process. By definition, freelancers and contractors supply their own equipment, set their own hours, and determine the steps required to fulfill a service.

A client can’t tell you which software to use, though it makes sense to work in the same format they give you the manuscript in. They can’t dictate how you approach the edit. If your process is to run PerfectIt; then edit the headings, figures and tables, the body, and citations; and then run spell check and PerfectIt again, that’s your call. A client can’t demand you do it in a different order.

Clients can certainly request that you follow a specific set of steps. But it’s up to you whether to follow them. And if a client makes a task that you don’t want to do a condition of hiring you, you can turn down the work.

That’s a freedom employees don’t have. It’s also a responsibility. Owning your process means developing one that works—and being able to explain why it does.

The Mindset Shift

Both of these points come down to the same shift in mindset: You’re not waiting for someone to hand you tasks and tell you how to complete them. You’re running a business. You assess the situation, make recommendations, and deliver results using your expertise and your methods.

It doesn’t mean ignoring what clients want. It means using your professional judgment and making intentional decisions about what you’re willing to do and how.

Struggling to make this shift? I offer business coaching for freelance editors who want to build confidence in running their businesses. Let’s talk.

The post What Does “Deciding the Work” Really Mean for Freelance Editors? first appeared on Right Touch Editing.