I plan to close up shop tomorrow until 2021. After this particularly exhausting year in a global pandemic, I’ve vowed to rest and recharge in the final days of December 2020 to head into the new year with as much vigor as possible. I hope you are also able to do the same.

Despite massive shifts in how we live in 2020, I am thrilled that my freelance publishing business could keep chugging along this year. I began Silver Scribe Editorial Services in May 2013 after leaving my job as managing editor at a book publishing company to find a better work-life balance with my young children (who are now well into elementary school and learning virtually next to me as I write this post). Thanks to loyal clients and new opportunities, I’ve been able to “have it all” in my eyes — keeping a career going while also balancing the demands of parenthood.

Thank you to everyone who has sought out my services over the last seven-plus years. It’s my hope that I’ll be able to continue working in this capacity for many years to come.

I always like to review my work by the numbers, so here’s the brief summary of 2020:

• 40-plus articles for Healthline (writing, including articles on some pretty gnarly animal bites, including the blue-ringed octopus, the venomous box jellyfish, ball pythons, chiggers, and carpenter ants, oh my!)
• 10 academic journal issues (copyediting)
• 6 books for self-publishing authors through Reedsy or this website (copyediting and proofreading)
• 5-plus permissions projects for a large textbook publisher

These numbers remind me again how lucky I am to work on a variety of projects. I am truly never bored in this line of work!

A final remark I wanted to make is about changes in editing and publishing in 2020. Changes to grammar, usage, and style evolve over time, and this year had a few seismic shifts, in my opinion. Mainstream style guides embraced the move to a singular “they” and shifted the treatment of racial terms in the wake of our national conversation on race. Where I was once a stickler on using “him or her” or something of that effect when a singular pronoun was ambiguous, I now openly embrace the singular “they” and believe it is a great compromise to our language’s lack of a gender-neutral singular pronoun. Also, I am now in regular conversation with editors and authors about whether to capitalize racial terms. I think this is a positive move forward, as it opens up a dialogue about how to address these issues in our culture and offers an opportunity for authors, editors, and publishers to be more intentional in the conversation surrounding race.

Again, thank you to everyone who supported my work in 2020, and I look forward to a productive and successful 2021!