I don't know if I ever announced it on this blog or not, but while I'm waiting to get my Big Break in writing, I fully intend to be a copyeditor. Why? Because the world needs copyeditors and no one else seems to want the job. Everyone else relies entirely on spellcheck to find their mistakes and they don't even want to get into grammar or anything remotely technical about style. And then there's little ole me who picks up a copy of her school's newspaper so that she can make marks all over it correcting grammar and spelling. Yeah...I actually do that. One day if I ever want to write for them again, I will present the editor with my pile of edited papers and tell him that he really needs me. I'm fairly certain that he will be inclined to agree.
Today while at the dentist getting my teeth cleaned my hygienist was talking to me about copyediting. (I love my hygienist by the way, she always remembers things about me, like my English major & that I am very allergic to mint) She was saying that if she ever decided to give up dental work, that she would get her degree in English and probably do the same as I am. There is a poster in that room that is very poorly worded and it bothers her very much. She made a great comment about it: "They spent so much time trying to find the perfect blonde model that they didn't even bother to read what they had printed on there." I think that's true of most things in society right now. These people who are in charge of these sorts of things just think to themselves "Well, it looks good," and that's it. They worry more about the appearance of being correct rather than actually being correct. Why? Because people tend to glance at things and never give anything a proper look. And even if you're not reading every word, you need copyeditors. You need us so that your message gets across, so that there are no mix-ups, and so that your product does not end up on the front page of Fail Blog.
And you need us to do all the grammatical things that you don't want to. This goes double for authors.
Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
The Triad of Dysfunction (My YouTube Collab Channel)
This year I will be doing a video correspondence channel with my two best friends who are away at school. You can all watch us here on YouTube, or just go to YouTube & search "triad of dysfunction"
You can also watch me on my regular channel, here.
So far we only have up our project introduction and my personal introduction, but I will be bothering the other girls to get up videos soon.
If you do watch, leave a comment! I love opening my email and seeing all the notifications for new comments. It brightens up my day.
Okay, that's all I wanted to say, really...hm...maybe I should make this more blog-y?
Well, today I pulled out my old laptop and started typing up everything on this laptop from one of my books. See, my old laptop only has a floppy drive (it's that old, I had a PC in between), so it's really hard to get information off of there. I could save it to floppy, transfer it to the PC, and then get it on my macbook via the network, but the PC is acting up and refuses to cooperate with much of anything today. And I really needed those old chapters. So I did it all manually and it's a pain, but I think I prefer it. This way I get to read through all of the older chapters and refresh my memory or find things to bring up again later. It's great for me! That, and I get to laugh at all my old jokes. :D
If anyone cares to read it, I wrote a ridiculous children's story here that is not meant to be a serious story, but as a joke for my friend Jenny. If I ever want to though, I'm convinced I could easily rework it into a real story.
You can also watch me on my regular channel, here.
So far we only have up our project introduction and my personal introduction, but I will be bothering the other girls to get up videos soon.
If you do watch, leave a comment! I love opening my email and seeing all the notifications for new comments. It brightens up my day.
Okay, that's all I wanted to say, really...hm...maybe I should make this more blog-y?
Well, today I pulled out my old laptop and started typing up everything on this laptop from one of my books. See, my old laptop only has a floppy drive (it's that old, I had a PC in between), so it's really hard to get information off of there. I could save it to floppy, transfer it to the PC, and then get it on my macbook via the network, but the PC is acting up and refuses to cooperate with much of anything today. And I really needed those old chapters. So I did it all manually and it's a pain, but I think I prefer it. This way I get to read through all of the older chapters and refresh my memory or find things to bring up again later. It's great for me! That, and I get to laugh at all my old jokes. :D
If anyone cares to read it, I wrote a ridiculous children's story here that is not meant to be a serious story, but as a joke for my friend Jenny. If I ever want to though, I'm convinced I could easily rework it into a real story.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Being Edited & NaNoWriMo
I'm sorry I haven't posted yet about meeting Louis Sachar, Cornelia Funke, & John Green all in one week (and I caught the tail end of Laurie Halse Anderson's speech on Wednesday night too), but I haven't had internet access in a few days. I'm going to try to get Comcast out to my house soon, but my mom won't call to set up an appointment, even though she's home a lot more than I am. I'm on the school's network right now & only have a little bit of time before my next class.
I was just flipping through the newest issue of my school's newspaper, The Blazer and read over the book review I had submitted. I realized something: I had been edited. I knew this would happen, but it still bothers me. Mostly because I sound really repetitive & unimaginative at the end. Then I got to thinking about how this would affect me as a writer. In the future, I will deal with editors who want me to change one thing or another in my books, short stories, articles, etc. that I might not want to change. But here's the difference: "big time" editors will (or at least should be) professional. They will (or should) tell me what they want changed and give me the opportunity to change it before it goes to press. They will not take that liberty upon themselves without asking me first. Some editors might, I realize, but if they do, they're not being very professional about their job and at that point, I really hope I'm not the author they are dealing with.
I'd expand, but I have to keep this short so I can eat before I go to class (I was going to wait until after, but I'm getting really hungry now).
In just a few hours, NaNoWriMo will kick off and I will again participate. You may remember I participated two years ago, but had to take last year off because of personal/family issues. But I'm back this year & I am very excited! I don't have a plot all planned out, in fact, it's not even there as much as I would like it to be before I begin plowing through, but I'll deal with it!
I'll try to make updates like it did in 2006, with tips I learn along the way, word counts, & just "I am avoiding my writing" posts. With the internet situation as it is, I cannot guarantee this, but I will try. I want to.
If anything, I might just learn how much I want an editor to change things for me, haha.
If you want to friend me on the NaNo pages, my username is once again TypesetJez and I've linked that so you can find me (the NaNo site has temporarily disabled author searches to save its server some).
I was just flipping through the newest issue of my school's newspaper, The Blazer and read over the book review I had submitted. I realized something: I had been edited. I knew this would happen, but it still bothers me. Mostly because I sound really repetitive & unimaginative at the end. Then I got to thinking about how this would affect me as a writer. In the future, I will deal with editors who want me to change one thing or another in my books, short stories, articles, etc. that I might not want to change. But here's the difference: "big time" editors will (or at least should be) professional. They will (or should) tell me what they want changed and give me the opportunity to change it before it goes to press. They will not take that liberty upon themselves without asking me first. Some editors might, I realize, but if they do, they're not being very professional about their job and at that point, I really hope I'm not the author they are dealing with.
I'd expand, but I have to keep this short so I can eat before I go to class (I was going to wait until after, but I'm getting really hungry now).
In just a few hours, NaNoWriMo will kick off and I will again participate. You may remember I participated two years ago, but had to take last year off because of personal/family issues. But I'm back this year & I am very excited! I don't have a plot all planned out, in fact, it's not even there as much as I would like it to be before I begin plowing through, but I'll deal with it!
I'll try to make updates like it did in 2006, with tips I learn along the way, word counts, & just "I am avoiding my writing" posts. With the internet situation as it is, I cannot guarantee this, but I will try. I want to.
If anything, I might just learn how much I want an editor to change things for me, haha.
If you want to friend me on the NaNo pages, my username is once again TypesetJez and I've linked that so you can find me (the NaNo site has temporarily disabled author searches to save its server some).
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