Editor

As an Editor, you’ll be pointing out dangling modifiers, tightening sentences, and making decisions about what should and shouldn’t be published. In the digital age, you might not be literally wielding a red pencil—but making corrections and comments via online content management systems, PDFs, and Word documents can be just as satisfying.

Don’t get too carried away with your power as Editor, though: your job is to help the Authors ’ voices shine through, not hack their work into bits. As Editor, you have to master the art of giving constructive feedback to Writers without hurting their egos too much. After all, your magazine, newspaper, website, or publishing company depends on their hard work and creativity.

Editors play many different roles for many different types of publications. You might be vetting submissions to a magazine, helping Novelists turn their life stories into best-selling books, double-checking copy before a new web page goes live, pulling together an anthology of essays, or deciding which headlines belong on the front page.

As much as you may love action verbs and proper nouns, keep in mind that you’ll be working with people as much as you’re working with words. So be sure that you know how to have pleasant conversations with actual people, not just imaginary chats with the characters in your favorite books.