Hello, friends! I hope you are doing all right in this weirdly warm weather. I can tell you I have not been overly excited if this is a preview of the summer to come. The heat I could handle, but humidity? Yuck!

I have received twenty-one responses to the survey I sent around a little while back, and I wanted to share the results and offer folks an opportunity to respond to them! Without further ado, here we go!

People have by in large said they would like to have virtual chapter meetings run by the chapter head as well as regional meetups both virtual and/or in person. This makes perfect sense to me since New England covers a large geographic area, and I understand that travel would be difficult for some of us.

Given the birth of the EFA Discord (which I am active in) I would love to use our chapter space to have some of those virtual meetups happen. I would also like to see how many people are in which areas so we can encourage you to find one another! Myself, I live in southern New Hampshire, about an hour north of Boston and twenty minutes south of Manchester.

When asked what people wanted from their New England chapter, the overwhelming response was that folks would like to network with other editors and learn from those with more experience as well as make edibuddies they could get together and have a cup of coffee with. I love this idea and would like to support us all finding some editing friends to whom we can turn for accountability, encouragement, and advice. While the editing communities virtually are phenomenal, having local friends you can actually visit is an altogether different experience.

The question of what the biggest challenge we face is, unsurprisingly I suspect, getting clients, though some others mentioned loneliness, struggles with marketing, and wanting mentorship. Those are absolutely expected difficulties for freelancers, and I am looking into ways to address some of these various difficulties and how we can leverage our community to help one another in these spheres.

The activities most requested of the chapters are things like networking meetings, educational opportunities, and maybe an opportunity to meet authors. That last one is something I am going to be pursuing this fall as I am working to contact local colleges to see if we could have an opportunity to have a meetup with students in the creative writing programs. I intend to start with SNHU because that is my alma mater, but I would gladly hear from folks who have contacts in other schools! I am also the chapter head for New England of the developing Author Nation community and am looking into opportunities to connect those two efforts into a networking event.

Requests for accessibility have included ensuring physical meeting spaces are wheelchair accessible and captioning on larger meetings if possible. Those are both heard and will be met to the best of my ability. If any of you have other accommodations you need to get the most out of our chapter, please tell me! As a disabled person, myself, I believe that accessibility serves everyone.

In the questions section, someone has asked me if there are plans to work with other chapters, and the answer to that is yes! I would love to network with some other chapters, and I am working to get to know some of the other chapter heads to see if we can get some exchanges going.

Lastly, you will have noticed the occasional email sent around to the group from the New England Medical Writers Association. I have developed a friendship with their events coordinator for our area and am sharing events of theirs that I feel would be a good fit for us as a resource. More resources will be coming in the future.

I’m sorry that I have been a bit slow; I took leadership of the chapter in November and promptly had a health emergency that wasn’t resolved until March. I am now getting on top of everything and working to serve the community as best I possibly can. I look forward to getting to know you all, and if you have any questions or concerns, please email me directly at ehprybylski@thirteencentsshort.com or contact me on the Discord (@ehprybylski).