Posted in Writing, tagged America Star Books, career change, creative writing, editing, job search, Miami Book Fair, PublishAmerica, rejections, short stories on 03 Sep 2015| 1 Comment »
It’s been an interesting week, writing-wise, and while no, it wasn’t “interesting” in the sense of “Oh God Oh God We’re all going to die!” it was interesting in the sense used by the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.
This week I received:
Posted in Writing, tagged ACES, career change, copy editing, creative writing, editing, online courses, Poynter on 13 Aug 2015| 9 Comments »
A large part of my “journey” from IT professional to editor is bolstering my own confidence level. While I’ve edited, copy edited, and proofread over a dozen novel-length books and scores of shorter works — both for myself and for others — I haven’t done this work as an editing professional. That, when put alongside the generally unstructured education I received in grammar (Hey, it was the ’60s; we didn’t burden ourselves with rules), means that while I have an innate command of the English language, I sometimes struggle to put into words exactly why an error is, in fact, an error.
The curse of being an autodidact is that I can miss things in my self-learning curricula, and that means I often fret about the completeness of my skill sets. The old 80/20 adage states that most of the time (80%), you only use a small portion (20%) of the skill set; conversely, the lion’s share of the skill set is seldom needed. In teaching myself a new skill, it’s relatively easy to learn that first twenty percent, but it is deuced hard to uncover the secrets of the infrequently used remainder.
As you can imagine, these gaps erode my confidence. Big time.
To counter this, I’ve been studying like mad. I quizzed my editor friends about classes and coursework, and received some guidance on what is of value and what might not be. Some suggestions were easier to implement than others.
Posted in Writing, tagged career change, copy editing, copywriting, job search, proofreading on 29 Jul 2015| 6 Comments »
It’s been a week of riding the rails, but not trains. . . roller coasters.
I’ve been studying for my new, hoped-for profession, and have been jack-rabbiting between euphoric leaps of über-confidence and bone-crushing impacts of complete despair. The fact is, even though I know how to edit and proofread, I still have much to learn–it’s why I’m shooting for a junior position and not expecting to swan into a job as an editor.
The massive amount of information I’ve been ingesting–reading, studying, taking tests to improve my skills and technique–has set my brain on fire. Sleep comes only with assistance, and lasts only until about 4 A.M., when my brain wakes up again, my inner vision spattered with blood-red proofreader marks and my heart hammering in panic. I try to clear my eyes, blinking away excerpts from the Chicago Manual of Style and swatting at ill-formed sentences hanging in the air above my head.
Worse, it’s affected my waking life.
No longer can I walk down the street, take the bus, or read the paper in peace. Now, every written word is a challenge, a test, and here’s the worst part:
There are mistakes everywhere.
I can’t not see them, now. Grammatical errors, spelling errors, then vs. than, rogue apostrophes and quote marks. Every-frakking-where.
Monday, I watched a training video for work. Not having audio, I turned on the closed-captioning. It took me half again as long to complete the damned thing because I spent so much time mentally correcting the errors in the text as it scrolled past.
I presume that professionals either become inured to the effects of these mistakes, or learn how to switch it off. For me, though, right now, it’s a constant barrage of misshapen sentences, Caliban-content cavorting around me, just beyond the reach of my red pencil, taunting me, testing me.
Some days, some hours, I know I can do this job and love it, too, but when that roller-coaster tips over the edge and I see just how deep the chasm is, it’s petrifying.
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Posted in Writing, tagged copy editing, copywriting, job search, writing portfolio on 14 Jul 2015| 10 Comments »
This week, just as local fledglings are leaving their nests, trusting their futures to untried wings and thin air, so are copies of my résumé taking to the digital skies. Ten went out yesterday and today, panic has set in.
Am I ready? (more…)
Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged being poor, budget, career change, copyeditor, copywriter, creative jobs, downsizing, economy, job stress, living on a budget, living wage, software developer, stress management on 06 Jul 2015| 9 Comments »
I used to love programming but it’s changed so much in the past 25 years, I can’t stand it anymore. When I only stay at a job for the salary and the time off, when I hate everything about what I do, when I wake up at 4AM with my heart pounding because my brain is preparing me for the day’s fight with a surge of adrenaline, it’s definitely time to go.
But, as I posed it in the previous post in this series, what career to I pick instead?
Posted in Writing, tagged blogging vs writing, creative writing, editing techniques, essay structure on 12 Jun 2015| 8 Comments »
In my last post, I suggested that blogging steals time better spent writing novels. The flip-side is what blogging has taught me about writing.
So, what have I learned?
In the past three years, I’ve published over 550 posts here, racking up over 400,000 words, so the first thing I’ve obviously learned is how much I actually can write when I don’t think I’m actually writing. The second thing is that blogging is writing, just a different form.
But these are about having written, and aren’t useful when writing. What have I learned that I can use while I write?
Posted in Writing, tagged blogging, blogging vs writing, creative writing, Writing on 02 Jun 2015| 8 Comments »
Is writing keeping me from writing?
I did not start this blog as a marketing tool. Good thing, too. I experience enough failures in my life without creating more of my own.
No, I started this blog as a writing tool. At a time when I was struggling to find the time and mental discipline to write another novel, I figured a blog would be a good tool to keep me writing on a regular basis.
And it worked. I have kept writing. Regularly.
But, has it kept me from writing?
I know that sounds stupid, but let me put it this way: Have my self-imposed blog writing “responsibilities” prevented me from working on my novel?
Taking a dispassionate, purely quantifiable view, the answer is Yes. (more…)
