Tag Archives: editing

Blah blah adverse events blah blah important safety information

by

I may have discovered an even more counterproductive way to write. As I have previously mentioned, my first two books were written in first draft with paper and pen. When I wrote the first chapter of Witch Blood, I was almost ready to release Wild Blood, and wanted to include it at the end. In my hurry to write, I did the unthinkable, and typed it directly into Word. That led me to my revelation: typing is much quicker than writing longhand. And, since that means the second draft doesn’t consist of transcribing notebooks of copy, that would make the process go faster as well. 

At first, I was elated that I had joined the rest of you in this century at typing my book directly onto my computer. And it was going so much faster than the first two books. But then, something bad happened–a new drug was launched. Okay, so technically that’s not a bad thing. Some may even call it a good thing, as I’m a freelance medical editor who gets paid by the hour. And don’t get me wrong–I love making money. But having transitioned from non-drug-launch average of about 20 hours of work a week to the drug launch average of about 50, I have to say that it is also quite tiring. 

While I used to get off work by mid-afternoon and have plenty of time to get home and write about two hours a day and also make dinner, I am now going in early and staying late and even working when my kid goes to bed and on weekends. Making mac and cheese has now become a time luxury I can’t afford. So you can guess what has happened to my writing in all of this. 

Believe me, when you spend ten hours a day staring at a 165-page document that goes something like “Blah blah liver failure blah toxoplasmosis blah antihypertensives,” the last thing you want to do is relax by sitting in front of a computer and typing. Let’s just say my sofa and I are almost as friendly now as we were during my maternity leave. So apart from waiting a few weeks for the work insanity to be over, I wondered when I could fit in some daily writing. It occurred to me that I didn’t want to sacrifice any of my precious relaxing on the sofa time, so the only occasion I would have to write was when it was otherwise impossible to relax. 

Since it’s fairly impossible to write while washing dishes or cleaning the cat litter pan (if any of you have figured this out, please let me know!), I began writing on the subway during my daily commute. And because it takes 45 minutes each way on a good day to get back and forth from Queens to TriBeCa, I manage to get a fair bit of writing done. 

Now, one may ask whether it is feasible or even safe to work on a computer while riding the subway. Since I have a desktop rather than a laptop, the answer for me is decidedly no. So have I once again abandoned technology in favor of paper and pen? No. Instead, I may have come up with an even more ineffective way of writing. 

What I do is this: I take out my handy iPhone and open up a new draft email. Then, since there has been a rash of iPhone theft on the subway (aka, apple picking), I clutch the device tightly with my left hand and type everything in with my poor, abused right pointer finger. Once I get home, cook dinner, eat dinner, read to child, bathe child, and put child to bed, I am free to go to my computer and copy and paste what I’ve written into my Word document. Then, if I haven’t brought work home with me, I am free to go sit on my sofa and dream of a future in which I am a full-time writer.

damn that international journal of something and something

by
In direct contrast to the three amazing jobs I wrote about yesterday, here are the three very worst jobs I have ever had in my life:
 
1. Clerk at the Bursar’s Office of my College: This was when I went back to school as an adult and needed a part-time job somewhere that worked with my schedule. While it did fit nicely around my classes, I had some vivid nightmares about this job. The most common nightmare I had involved me getting yelled at by students who were angry when they were dropped from classes due to not paying their tuition. I would actually wake up from these dreams frustrated and screaming. The second most common nightmare I had was about counting tuition money incorrectly and being held responsible to pay the school back for it.
 
2. Cashier at CVS: Now, I love CVS for providing me with ExtraBucks and drugs, but working there was awful. This was while I was in college for the first time, so you can assume that most of the time that I  was working there, I had absolutely no idea what was going on around me. My first day, my register total was under by more than $100. I attribute this to me not grasping the exact meaning of numbers. Instead of firing me on the spot, they let me work at the pharmacy. For some reason, I thought only pharmacists could work the pharmacy, and not barely-functioning hungover college students. I don’t remember much about this, but it lasted not so long, as they eventually did fire me.
 
3. Managing Editor at the Journal of International Something and Something: This was my worst job of all time. In my opinion, being an editor is all about sitting quietly by yourself and writing on pieces of paper with a red pen. Or at least, that’s how it should be. This was a monthly, widely-read journal that had a total of one person on the editorial staff. I was responsibly for everything involved in the printing of the magazine. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Once I was asked to go to a medical conference, which is in itself not unusual, but I was required to transport all the materials to the convention, set up the actual booth, and stand there and sell subscriptions. At other medical journals I’ve worked at, all I had to do at conventions was go to cocktail parties and make small talk with the doctors. And I am so much better at that than any sort of manual labor and construction. Our booth looked like a life-sized version of one of those dioramas made with Popsicle sticks that kids make in elementary school. And I had to sit there for two full days selling journal subscriptions. But I do not like to directly confront people, so I think I only sold three the entire weekend. And the cost of the space rental for the booth was $6,000. The last straw for me was that the job did not offer any medical insurance, and during said conference I was suffering with a tooth that needed a root canal I could not afford. If you can’t tell, I am still very bitter about this job, which only lasted three months but felt like three decades.
 
Currently, I have a job that would not make my best or worst list. But I am a freelancer, so I don’t have to attend meetings or have anything to do with day-to-day office nonsense. I just sit quietly at my cubicle and write in red ink on a piece of paper, the way the Powers That Be intended for an editor to do. And it also allows me to use the office computer for doing things like writing blog entries (although my actual blog site is blocked!), and write and edit my own books while I have downtime. And believe it or not, after years of trying, I managed to get a job at yet another place that gives out free Diet Coke! 
 
Mentally, I am now going through a shift between what I think of as my job and what I think of as my career. My job is medical editing. It’s tedious and not fun but it pays relatively well since no one in their right mind likes doing it. My career, on the other hand, is being a writer. It’s what I put the majority of my energies into. It’s what wakes me up in the middle of the night when I suddenly realize the perfect ending to a chapter. It’s what makes me frantically type with two fingers onto my iphone when I’m on the subway. So I may have realized this late in the game, but my job is just something I do for money, while my career is what really makes me feel fulfilled and self-actualized. And at least I realized that before I tried to make a career out of playing minesweeper and drinking Diet Coke.

getting paid to drink diet coke is actually the best job

by
Today, I find myself having several different jobs at once. In order of preferance, they are: mother, writer, editor, and medical editor. But I have had many, many jobs in my life, some of them worlds better than others.
 
Here are the top three favorite jobs I have had:
 
1. Something-or-other for a Security Company: Originally when they hired me, I thought I was to be answering the phone. But the few times I did answer it, my boss picked up and said, “Don’t answer the phone!” My first day at work, I got there before my boss and sat for about an hour doing nothing. Then, I got bored and started reading a book. At that point my boss came in and said, “What are you doing?” I was nervous because I had obviously missed the part where I was told what I was supposed to be doing as far as work. Then, my boss followed up with, “Turn on the light when you’re reading or you’ll hurt your eyes.” Then next time he spoke to me was when he asked me to order him lunch, which I ended up ordering and picking up for him every day. Sometimes, I made coffee. Sometimes, I even made Irish coffee. But that was all I did. Eventually, they got me a computer and I naturally thought I was to do some sort of work on that. But instead I played minesweeper for hours (there was no internet). The job unfortunately ended when his daughter came back from maternity leave.
 
2. Flea Market Helper: When I was very young, like under ten years old, my parents sold various items (mostly new hand tools like hammers and screwdrivers, if I remember correctly) at flea markets. We went all over the five boroughs of New York City, as well as Long Island and the Hudson Valley. I liked the car trips and the eating of junk food at the flea markets. But most of all, I liked it that people handed us their money, and all we had to do was sit there in order to get it. I am only now realizing this was very much like my job at the security company.
 
3. SomethingSomething Continuing Medical Education Company: This place knew they needed an Editorial Assistant, but they didn’t know the function of one. So I sat at my cubical all day for weeks and months on end and did nothing. This was after my deadbeat college period, so I genuinely tried to be helpful; I offered to edit things on a regular basis, but always got a cheery “No thanks!” from my boss. The company had a free soda machine, so you could drink ten Diet Cokes a day if you wanted to (not that I did that). They also had bagels one day a week, and parfaits one day a week. There were even free feminine hygiene products in the bathroom. At company meetings, we were given gifts of stuffed animals and Starbucks gift cards. Once a month, there was massage day, and we always had parties for every holiday. There was even a festival for Arbor Day. And almost once a week, there was an email from the president saying, “Be the first to respond to this and win a prize!” It was a very good year for me, but eventually they ran out of money and let us all go. 
 
This is getting much longer than I anticipated, so I’ll post again tomorrow about the three worst jobs I ever had. In direct contrast to the above-mentioned three jobs, all of these involved doing actual work!

how am I even typing this?

by

A little while ago, I wrote a post about my love for writing a first draft in longhand. In my list of reasons why I do this, I had not thought to put “I have absolutely no idea how to use a computer.” But apparently, I should have.

So now I am caught up in a version-control nightmare of having converted the wrong file. In fact, I only noticed it when I was reading printer proofs. Ugh. No to belabor this cautionary tale, let me conclude by saying that if you bought the book from amazon, delete it from your device and re-install it. The correct one is now up there, with B&N and Smashwords soon to follow. 

If for some reason it’s giving you trouble, message me and I’ll send you a pdf. Thanks!

On an unrelated note, we had a family photo shoot last weekend, and I took a new promo photo. I told the photographer I wanted to look “vaguely menacing” but he assured me I would not be able to pull it off. Oh well.

Image