We recently connected with Ritchelle Buensuceso and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Ritchelle thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you share a story with us from back when you were an intern or apprentice? Maybe it’s a story that illustrates an important lesson you learned or maybe it’s a just a story that makes you laugh (or cry)?

I started my editing career as a young, bushy-tailed copyediting apprentice in a large multinational company. Overall I had a great experience there and look back on it with fondness. However, I had a team leader who was a bit aloof and the office culture treated apprentices more like pledges at a fraternity or sorority rather than colleagues. This made the learning process more difficult and more stressful than it needed to be. Copyediting could be stressful, especially for a newbie, because it’s careful and meticulous work (it’s basically taking a grammar test every day, day after day), so a supportive, even forgiving environment is key, instead of a punitive or a critical one. Toward the end of my apprenticeship, I had taken up smoking because of the stress. And although they trained me really well and paid handsomely, I only stayed there for one year and took my skills elsewhere at the first opportunity. 

That experience helped teach me early on the importance of having a good work environment and not settling for something that just wasn’t working out. 

Years later, I ended up working in another company that fostered a collegial environment within its copyediting pool and encouraged everyone to be free with their questions, share their knowledge, and lift everyone up. And although editing is more of a solo job, especially when it’s a remote position, they managed to make us feel part of a team. More than ten years later, I’m still working with this company as a freelancer. 

And that’s something I endeavor to be for my clients or teammates — I hope they find me as someone who’s approachable and encouraging, someone who respects them and their work, someone they can learn from. 

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Ritchelle. I’m a freelance editor with well over a decade of professional experience. Like I said earlier, I started out as a copyeditor working on academic and technical publications such as peer-reviewed journals and institutional reports, which I still do. I currently copyedit journal articles of the American Society of Civil Engineers and proofread reports and guides of the Transportation Research Board. My previous works include publications of UNDP, The Asia Foundation, and Elsevier. 

In 2018 I started offering my services to fiction and nonfiction clients, and I’ve since worked with independent authors and publishers of various sizes. Over the past five years I’ve handled essays, memoirs, children’s books, coffee table books, books on health and wellness, sales and marketing, relationships, lifestyle, pop culture, aviation—a wide range of topics and genres. For fiction, I’ve edited and proofread romance, mystery, sci-fi, and fantasy. I’ve been proofreading for various imprints of Hachette Book Group for a couple of years now, and that has been absolutely delightful. 

I offer developmental editing, copyediting, and proofreading. I specialize in romance and women’s fiction, though I accept other genres depending on certain factors. While I find pleasure in each of the different levels of editing, I’d say helping clients develop and prepare their manuscripts in the earlier stages is my favorite, because there’s more opportunity for creative gears to turn in those stages. But in whatever capacity, I’m happy to help my clients turn their manuscripts into the very best version they could be.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I’ll share three stories with you, if I may. My journey as a freelancer started by accident. Back in 2010, before a global pandemic forced most people to work from home, I was hired as a remote copyediting associate. A couple of years later, that company changed its model and turned all remote associates into freelance workers. That’s how I became an “accidental freelancer,” and for a while nothing really changed for me until more and more companies started hiring freelancers. That’s when I realized, wow, I can work with more than one company. I can work on a different project if I need some variety. I eventually realized that I am not anybody’s employee, that I am actually working for myself — and that change of perspective helped me a lot with the business side of things. 

Before I became a remote or freelance editor. I worked as a junior instructor and taught college laboratory classes. I was always with people — colleagues, students, random people on public transportation. But when I got married, I left my home, my job, my friends, and moved to a new country, to a whole new life. That may sound daunting, but when you’re young, you’re fearless. So, I felt nothing but excitement and adventure. Sure, I had to do some adjusting and coping, but for the most part, I was blind to any and all roadblocks. I didn’t have a car, I didn’t have a driver’s license, there were no bus stops near where we lived, no cabs or Ubers. I had little money and zero contacts. All I had was my green card, a phone, and internet connection (and my loving husband, of course). And somehow that was enough – I was 100% confident that things were going to work out fine. I found two jobs fairly quickly – a remote editing position and a remote translation and editing contract, both of which I could do from my apartment. As a military spouse, portable work is crucial because we move all the time. And when we eventually had kids, I was thankful that editing was work that I could do and still be with my young children. 

Several years into my freelance career, I began feeling restless and wanted to expand into fiction. Because I was so desperate for it, I guess I didn’t have time to second-guess myself with this expansion. I trained and prepared for it as best as I could, I had enough faith in my skills, and I just jumped right in. I found clients who were willing to take on my relative inexperience, some of whom I still work with to this day. From having no fiction clients to now contracting with a Big 5 publisher just fills me with gratitude. 

Now that I’m older, I try to tap into the confidence of my youth, to not be afraid of new endeavors and new adventures. I do try to shift my thinking and not refer to myself as being old and over the proverbial hill, because I’m really not, I’ve got a lot of miles left and a lot of life still ahead of me. 

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I would like to further establish myself in the editing community. As a person of color and a bilingual editor, it fills me with great pride to see more and more people of color represented not only as authors but also as part of the editorial team. Diversity is important in all levels and aspects of any industry.  

I would also like to write and publish my own books someday. I’ve had this idea and desire for a while now, and I know I better get on it. That would be the next level of my creative journey. I have a handful of nebulous book ideas. But it would be great if they would somehow reflect my Filipino heritage and my experience as a Filipino-American. I did write something last year after a long, long time of not writing anything – a personal essay on motherhood. It was accepted and published as part of Kara Forney’s anthology, Boy Moms: Collective Tales of Mothers and Sons. So that’s certainly a move in the right direction. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bananaleafpublish.wixsite.com/ritchelle-edits
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ritchelle_edits/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ritchelle.edits
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritchelle-b-14a6757/
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits
Photo with client Zara Teleg, romance author
Photo with client Sa’eed Mustafa, army veteran and author of Resilient Transition