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Copy editing eats the soul
Aside from a brief fleeting thought that hey, maybe I could try to write a couple Yuletide treats -- quickly extinguished when I remembered that I don't know 99% of the sources and besides that I can't write -- I haven't participated in any of the end-of-the-year writing frenzy that's overtaken my friendslist. But don't feel sorry for me! Instead I've been keeping busy composing FAQs and conference call notes and funding requests and tl;dr emails and memos. I'm fairly confident that a few of them even end up getting read or at least skimmed.
But that's not what this is about -- I wanted to extend my praise and sympathies to the undersung legion of beta readers who make this season so merry and bright and typo-free. You have my deepest admiration, after having spent much of the last two days copy-editing stuff I didn't write and fighting the resulting urge to stab myself. Hyphenation is not a dark art! Parallel sentence structure really is your friend! Random capitalization doesn't make your tired jargon look more impressive!
So when I dive into this year's crop of Yuletide stories, dear betas, I'll be thinking of you, the watchful guardians of readability.
But that's not what this is about -- I wanted to extend my praise and sympathies to the undersung legion of beta readers who make this season so merry and bright and typo-free. You have my deepest admiration, after having spent much of the last two days copy-editing stuff I didn't write and fighting the resulting urge to stab myself. Hyphenation is not a dark art! Parallel sentence structure really is your friend! Random capitalization doesn't make your tired jargon look more impressive!
So when I dive into this year's crop of Yuletide stories, dear betas, I'll be thinking of you, the watchful guardians of readability.
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I've enjoyed beta-reading for Yuletide, actually, but much of that enjoyment hinged upon the writers I worked with and the nifty stories they wrote. (Didn't have time to offer beta services this year.) Editing is often kind of a stabbity thing, as you say....
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Much easier than the year I edited HG's umpty-thousand-word novella, which she wrote as a pinch-hit, so there was even less time than there would have been!
I would have happily done more, as the office is dead this week, but nobody's asked!
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But at least it was HG! I really like her writing.
I've never beta'd fan fiction, and thought about offering, but my work got really crazy this month and will probably stay that way through most of January. Someday....
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