Yeah, whatever.

[channonyarrow]

The truth has been admitted. I will never, ever, ever finish my fanfic100 commitment, so why pretend?

Actually, I'm giving pretty serious thought to whether I should write anything ever again. I do not seem to have the drive or the fucked-in-the-headness that I think good writing (at least in my chosen genres) really takes.

Food for thought.

Comments

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

No, seriously, don't threaten me with that. That's really not cool. I'm completely serious about that. I'm assuming that you're mostly not serious, but I don't want to hear something like that in this way. I can't react, and I have no idea if you're saying that you THINK you should be, or that you're about to walk out the door. I realise that you have big, big problems that are not, unfortunately, currently solved, and that the light at the end of the tunnel is pretty fucking far away, but that's a threat, and I'm not interested in threats. I'm interested in you, and in helping you and knowing you, but I won't be a party to threats like that.

[dreadnot.livejournal.com]

February sucks ass. Seriously. I try not to make any life-altering decisions in February if I can help it.

If writing doesn't make you happy, don't do it. If it makes you happy, do it and damn the man. The fucked-in-the-headedness is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. Not sure what I think about it.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it does or not. It does when it's going well, but it's not going well, and it never does when it comes time to finish something. I think I need to take note of yuki_onna's latest post and remember it - that there will be a time, near the end, when I think I'm writing the worst shit ever, and I need to push past that. And, in my case, not be afraid to do that. I've been stalled out for months now, and I'm 25K from done, on a 180K book. I am so far over the hump it's not even funny, and I need to just do it.

I'm curious to know what your conclusions on fucked-in-the-headness are when you reach them. I'm starting to think I'm too well adjusted to write what I AM writing, so if I STAY writing I should change genre.

Pardon me, stalked from Warren Ellis' Census

[mithikall.livejournal.com]

If I may be so bold as to ask, what sort of editing do you do? And how did you break into it? I'm a recent college grad, trying to get in to copy editing/proofreading/editing sort of work, and don't know of anyone in the business. Figured common worship of Internet Jesus might gain me a glance at least.

Re: Pardon me, stalked from Warren Ellis' Census

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

I kind of fell into it. I edit fiction for a major publisher in our field (primarily shared world). For obvious reasons, I'm not going to disclose the name of the publisher, but assume that our practices are a bit different from most, if necessary, given that we're not primarily a publisher.

I was temping after grad school (degree in anthro + no desire to BE an anthropologist = oh shit) with the agency that placed people at our company and got a call the day I was informed my long term contract at Kinko's was going to end (that wasn't agency placed, so it was completely luck). I started here doing graphic proofing, but was given the books to compare to print samples - the other proofers hated that job - and started noting a lot of errors. I read too quickly, so even though I was supposed to check the first word and last word of each page to be sure the vendors hadn't doubled the pages or something, I was winding up reading a lot of text, and one of the production managers wound up introducing me to the (now) managing editor, and that got me a gig first doing freelance proofreading, then freelance copyediting. When the law regarding temporary workers changed in this state I was laid off but told that they were going to be expanding the editorial department in the next year and to watch the job boards. Then I wound up bullying my (current) boss into giving me the job - I had turned in my application, but this company is notoriously slow for hiring, and I'd turned in an app to a medical journal for a similar role at the same time. I got the interview there and told my boss here and he completely blew the schedules out of the water to get me interviewed and get an offer to me. Even then it still took forever, but he was able to do it in the end, and I've been here since.

I have no formal training in editing, and I know I'm really, really lacking in a lot of skills, primarily networking, but I'm good at copyediting and good at picking out books to purchase and good at editing those books, so I'd say I mainly broke into it by being in the right place at the right time, but also by not underestimating my talents when asked. My lack of degree didn't hurt me, in light of my skills.

I would say that I would completely recommend networking, networking, networking. It really is who you know. I can't tell from your comment whether you're talking about starting up a freelance copyediting business - we work with people like that all the time, who have their own businesses doing that - or whether you're looking to do deskwork, but I would strongly recommend networking any way possible, including going to any kind of cons that might have a book presence nearby and talking to editors, particularly managing editors. I'm not sure, but I assume that there is some kind of resource beyond checking every publishing house's web page whether they handle freelance proofreaders/copyeditors or not, but that might be a good start to get you moving in the right direction, and I've passed on cards of people that have approached me at cons and we've wound up hiring a few of them. Also, again depending on what you want to do, check into local publications. One of our copyeditors makes a lot of her living doing editing for regional publications.

If you're talking about doing deskwork from the start, I'm not sure how I'd go about that, other than by networking, networking, networking. *g* It's a nepotic industry. And if you're not subscribed, Publishers Weekly has a job board that they run, but the details are, unfortunately, part of the pay site.