I'm Open for Business! Also, Hamlet and Michael J. Fox!
Readers! I took a few weeks off work for my mental health, and they were GLORIOUS. Allow me to frankly say that you’re lucky I wasn’t editing you these past weeks. You’d have gotten far from my best work, and that would have broken my heart and made you never recommend me to your writer friends. I DON’T WANT EITHER OF THOSE SCENARIOS TO BE THE CASE.
But now I’m fresh as a newly-washed set of sheets! I’m booking for late May now, and I’m mostly booked from September till the end of the year. I sometimes have cancellations/changes of heart in my clients/schedule shifts, etc., so please don’t let my schedule keep you from contacting me. Click that pretty little contact button up there, or click right here to go to my contact page.
I’ve told you about my self-editing e-course before, but it’s a good time to look at it if you’ve had a rough writing year (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH LIKE WHO HASN’T) and you want to edit your book yourself before hiring an editor. Read all about that at this link. It’s for prose writers (fiction or non-fiction), and as we speak, I’m developing and building a course specifically geared toward memoir.
A recent memoir I edited (Tiny Lights for Travellers) was nominated for the Governor General’s award and won (or was shortlisted for) eleventy trillion other prizes, so I like to think I know what I’m talking about in that department. Details will follow as soon as I’ve got its shit together.
~~
While I wasn’t editing, my ability to read for pleasure returned (ALERT THE MEDIA!). I missed it like nobody’s business. I missed it like I miss the movies and dim sum and HUGGING MY BROTHER and about a billion other things. But I think I’d have to say that my ability to read books suffered most severely over the past year. Normally, by this point in the year, I’d have read around thirty books. I’m teetering on the edge of sixteen or something. Which isn’t a bad record, I know, but don’t ask me what any of those books were about. They went in, but they didn’t go in, if you know what I mean. Yeah. You know what I mean.
What does any of this have to do with this national treasure, or editing for that matter? Plenty! First off, I highly recommend Michael J. Fox’s books. He’s a hell of a good writer, and if it’s possible to love him more, you will after you read his stunningly (but not falsely) optimistic views about the life he’s been given, along with its challenges. I’ve got his latest memoir on hold at the library and I can’t wait. Because I know I’ll read it and it will go in.
What brings me to him is a book I recently read. I won’t name and shame because we all make mistakes when writing/editing. In this book, the author refers to “British Columbia’s Michael J. Fox.”
Um….
While it’s true that Michael spent parts of his childhood in BC, he was born at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton in 1961. A simple web check would have revealed this startling fact. But I didn’t have to look it up, because I was also born in that same hospital three and a half years later. I sometimes like to imagine we were born in the same room. It’s possible. I suppose the maternity ward was smaller than it is now. I claim him fiercely as an Albertan.
Fact checking! It’s a thing! I have a full lesson on this in my e-course, because it’s so incredibly important and can ruin your credibility as an author. The book was otherwise well-researched, to the best of my knowledge, but this one thing stuck in my mind. Which was a good thing, because it means that my editor brain still works (Lucky you, future clients!). Honestly, I do wish I could turn it off sometimes, but I think a lot of people who were born in Edmonton, editor or not, might know this fact about him.
~~
Then Shakespeare again. I’ve talked before about making sure you’re quoting from him accurately. It’s easy enough to fix if you’re editing your own writing, but what if you’re writing or critiquing or editing something in which someone other than the author misquotes Shakespeare (or anyone else)? It’s the neatest little fix ever.
Another book I read recently had the author quoting another person. That other person had misquoted Hamlet. The person being quoted had said, “As a famous playwright once said, ‘We shall not look upon his like again.’”
Once again, NO.
Of his dead father, Hamlet said, “I shall not look upon his like again.” If you know me at all, you know I’m a stickler for quoting that old dude properly. It’s the easiest thing in the world to look up. But you’re in a bind, because you’re quoting someone else misquoting Shakespeare. Here’s your handy little tool to fix that:
This, loosely translated, means “thus” or “just as”. Or in easier terms, “It’s totally wrong, but this is the way it appears in the original.”
The correct way to quote the person misquoting Shakespeare would look like this: “As a famous playwright once said, ‘We [sic] shall not look upon his like again.’”
You don’t have to correct the quote. [sic] tells your reader that the quote is incorrect, but that’s how it appeared in the original.
My hopefully useful editing tips have returned to me, and I have lots more in my wacky little bean! Yay for nearly having a vaccine appointment. It’s certainly helped clear my mind.
~~
All of this to say: I STILL GOT IT. And if you want a piece of it (my editing brain, that is), pop me a note. I’m on fire, baby!