Editegrity
  • Home
  • FAQ
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Resources
  • Contact
  • Blog

The Editor Who Reads Too Much
~a writing, editing, publishing & book blog~

I was wrong – or – What I learned from a year on the SYP London Committee

12/1/2021

 
Picture
The SYP London 2020 Committee – We had no idea what we were in for!
3 minute read
Getting an acceptance letter is always thrilling, and in December 2019, I was offered one of the Career Support Officer roles for the Society of Young Publishers* (SYP) London. Acceptance comes from having ‘the skills’, right? 
 
Wrong. My year with the SYP London Committee taught me just how much I had to learn. 
 
The committee met only once in person before London entered lockdown in March. We moved online and experienced the chaos that comes with joining an organization during a major upheaval. 
 
Let me say this upfront: I’m not comfortable meeting new people, in-person or online, but moving to an all-digital life was my worst nightmare. This is how I’m getting through it. 
 
Social media & online platforms 
I was tech literate when I joined SYP, but not tech savvy. 
 
Success on social media (SM) comes from having a message and an audience who wants to hear it. I realized that I didn’t have either of those  things, and that’s why I didn’t like being online or using SM. 
 
So I spent all of 2020 exploring and experimenting. The team made online events happen, fumbling our way through. Mistakes (and typos) were made. But the world didn’t fall apart. 
 
Now I can host interviews and workshops on Zoom without flinching. I actually talk and interact with people on Twitter (typos and all). Every day I improve my understanding of design by studying marketing materials. Now I can create more eye-catching event announcements on Canva that I’m not too afraid to post on Instagram.
 
It sounds easy. It’s not. It takes time, patience, and repeated efforts to get it right. But at least now I look forward to these tasks instead of dreading them. 
 
Networking
Everyone dreads networking. But when, like me, you’ve just arrived in the country, are new to an industry, are a freelancer working alone at home, and the whole world has moved online, you’ve got no choice. 
 
Fortunately, my imagination is overactive and talking to people is never as bad as I imagine it to be. To put on events for the SYP, I had to do what I most feared – email people I’d never met to ask them for their most valuable asset: their time. 
 
Who wants to do that while the world is falling apart? There was nothing to do but sit down and write emails. Lots of them. 
 
Luckily, people in publishing are happy to volunteer their time and knowledge. I’m grateful to everyone who was able to say yes. The nos were never personal. 
 
Now a lot more people know me – I’m not just a stranger on the internet. If I hadn’t joined the committee, I wouldn’t be (nearly) cured of my fears: speaking to strangers, cold emailing, interacting with people online.
 
Communication skills
With networking comes communicating. For most of my professional working life, I’ve been on my own. Being thrown in with a team of nineteen strangers and learning how to talk with them was a challenge, and I got it wrong. Frequently. 
 
I undercommunicated, not mentioning my plans or asking my questions. I thought what I had to say wasn’t important, and the end result was that I sabotaged my own success.

Eventually I started keeping notes about things I wanted to say in meetings, made sure I asked every single question, re-announced events frequently and booked the Zoom account early.
 
This year helped me become more flexible and I’ve become better at thinking on my feet. I still need to be more assertive in groups and meetings and learn not to care too much about what others think. Got any advice?
 
My advice
My parting advice to anyone joining a team in 2021 is to say everything, and say it loud. Proactively copy people into emails. 
Make sure your event information is shared early, widely and repeatedly. 
Ask questions. Lots of questions. 
Double check all dates. Triple check, actually.
 
Final thoughts
No one on the committee had the year they had hoped for, but as a group we were able to accomplish a lot more than we imagined!

I’m grateful for the team: I didn’t realize how influential a group could be. They have no idea how much they contributed to my growth, and I want to thank them all. 
 
Despite everything, 2020 was one of my best years in terms of gaining new skills and knowledge. When I joined SYP, I was looking to find my place within publishing. I haven’t found it yet, but I’ve been given a peek into a magnificent industry with so many unimaginable opportunities. I’m excited to spend 2021 exploring those options. 
------------------------------------------------
*The Society for Young Publishers is a not-for-profit organization for anyone in their first ten years of their publishing career, NOT people who are young.


    Author

    I read a lot and I hope to help authors with the craft of writing. I share good examples of difficult aspects of writing: point of view, narration, world building and more.

    Occasionally I give editing tips and share insights from the world of publishing. 

    The author of the blog stands infront of the purple Knight Bus from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
    Send me an email!

    Recent Posts

    England's Queens: The Biography
    Keeping Up With the Editors
    ​Happy Birthday, Poe!
    Appreciate a Dragon Day
    I Was Wrong – Or What I Learned from a Year on the SYP London Committee
    Shortlist of the Best Books I Read in 2020
    V for Vendetta
    Rebecca
    The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
    Elizabeth of York: The First Tudor Queen
    Wishful Drinking
    The Giver
    The Mandibles: A Family 2029–2047
    The Diary of a Bookseller
    The Dutch House
    The Uncrowned Queen: The Fateful Life of Margaret Beaufort
    Becoming a Writer
    Homegoing
    Things Fall Apart
    ​Blog FAQ
    Welcome to My Bookshelves!

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019


    Categories

    All
    2020
    Africa
    Anarchy
    Anchor Books
    Anglo Saxons
    Banking
    Biography
    Birthdays
    Bloomsbury
    Book Blogs
    Book Club
    BookMachine
    BookMarchine
    Books
    Bookseller
    Bookshelves
    Bookshops
    Box Hill
    Capitalism
    Carrie Fisher
    Chaos
    Christmas Books
    Classics
    Collapse
    Comics
    Communication
    Copyeditor's Handbook
    Copyeditor's Workbook
    Corona Virus
    Counting Books
    Debbie Reynolds
    Diary
    Diary Of A Bookseller
    Dictionary
    Doubleday
    Dragons
    Dr. Burney
    Drinking
    Dr. Samuel Johnson
    Dystopia
    Economics
    Economy
    Edgar Allan Poe
    Editing
    Editor
    Elizabeth Norton
    Emma Of Normandy
    Family
    Family History
    Fanny Burney
    Fantasy
    Farrar
    Fiction
    Finance
    Freelance
    Genre
    Graphic Novels
    Guildhall
    Harper
    Hiking
    History
    Hollywood
    Houses Of Parliament
    Jane Austen
    Japan
    Jonathan Cape
    J.P. Tarcher
    Knopf
    Knowledge
    Learning
    Letters
    Library
    Literary Fiction
    Lives Of Women
    Lockdown Christmas
    Londinium
    London
    London Bookshop Crawl
    London History
    London Open House
    Medieval History
    Memoir
    Michael O'Mara
    Motivation
    Murder Mystery
    Networking
    Nonfiction
    Palace Of Westminster
    Penguin Random House
    Pocket Books
    Political Science
    Progress Report
    Proofreading
    Publishing
    Queen Of England
    Queens
    Roman Ruins
    Roots
    Royal Courts Of Justice
    Royal Family
    Royal History
    Short Stories
    Simon & Schuster
    Skills
    Sourcebooks Landmark
    Starting A Business
    Star Wars
    St. Dunstan In The East
    St. Paul's Cathedral
    Straus And Giroux
    Study
    The Shard
    The Strand
    The Walkie-Talkie
    Thriller
    Tips
    True Love
    Tudor
    UK Travel
    V For Vendetta
    Vikings
    Volunteer
    War Of The Roses
    Westminster Abbey
    Wigtown
    Writer Tips
    Writing
    Writing Advice
    YA
    Zoom


    RSS Feed



​​Contact​
FAQ
​About

© Kelly Urgan 2016–2021

  • Home
  • FAQ
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Resources
  • Contact
  • Blog