Another Stab at Typing

Here’s a shameful confession for a write – I can’t type. I can hunt-and-peck at a decent speed, about 40 WPM, but that’s not nearly as efficient as I’d like. Time is money, after all. Besides that, I sometimes get very sore fingers from overusing the same two to three fingers.

Months ago, I found a great typing program that allows me to use the Dvorak keyboard, Key Advantage Typing. I’m going to start using it again. I learned the Dvorak keyboard at one point, but stopped because I was too painfully slow at 15 WPM to stand typing that way.

For now, my plan is to do two lessons a week in six, 10-minute bursts. That’ll be an hour of training a day. I will allow myself to do typing games for the same fingers. There are 24 lessons, so in three months I ought to be fairly competent. I’m setting this goal for now in lieu of my daily writing. I hope that doesn’t backfire.

As always, this goal is subject to revision at any time.

Progress Report

My fiction writing goals for the summer and the year are pretty much blown, other than writing 1000 words daily. I discovered two things:

1. I’m expecting too much from myself; I was trying to work myself too hard.
2. I’m far more of a novice at writing fiction than I wanted to believe.

I’ve been quite busy over the summer -- especially the last month-and-a-half -- with school, acting as webmaster for my local Society for Technical Communication chapter, and my normal family duties. I was able to begin many, little short stories, but I didn’t get much further than that. At first, I was keeping up with critiques, but I lost that battle about a month ago when my course load doubled.

My vision is to work as a freelance writer and editor. Assuming fiction and creative non-fiction is undependable for paying the bills (except for a lucky few), I want to develop part of my career doing freelance copy editing and business/technical writing. My income goals are modest, and I think I can eventually provide the bulk of my income from the latter portion on a part-time basis, leaving plenty of time in the future for the soul-enriching fiction and creative non-fiction work. Towards the editing and business/technical writing part of my goals, I’m making great strides. In the last few months I’ve:

1. Continued to make top marks in my bachelors program in English - Professional Writing. I graduate in December!
2. Been building a good network in my local Society for Technical Communication (STC) chapter. The cool thing is I genuinely like hanging around those folks.
3. Just got my first freelance copy editing contract for a publisher of market research reports in the medical field.
4. Been working as as webmaster for the STC chapter, among other things starting a project to modernize the site.
5. Written a monthly column for the STC newsletter on Web 2.0 and the technical writing trade.

I think that’s quite a bit of progress! The best part is starting to pull in income as a copy editor. Money makes it real. The preceding four points will keep me busy for the rest of the year. For next year, I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to focus on the freelance editing and business/technical writing business, or start following a progressive course to improve my fiction writing. There are arguments both ways.

The goal of earning my bread as a writer and editor isn’t so far off now. I wish the fiction portion was a little closer, but we do what we can.

Lawd Have Moicy, I's Paid at Last!

Last Monday I entered into a work-for-hire contract with TriMark Publications, "a global leader in the biotechnology, healthcare and life sciences market research and intelligence space." I’ll be copy editing some of their market reports.

Paid work: the highest pitch of excitement. I’ve been paid before for some of my publications and for my work on The UTD Mercury, the student paper at the University of Texas at Dallas, but that was all gas money, chump change. This contract with TriMark is the real deal. It’s awesome to get paid as a wordsmith.

It’s also great to be bringing down some real money after being unpaid as Mr. Mom. I can’t complain about my Mr. Mom standard of living or the benefits of a close family, but there’s something nice about a check with dollar signs on it. Sweet cash-ola!

Of course, I’m busy as all get out right now. I’m just finishing up a double load of classes, completing my organization of the kids fall activities – including organizing two groups – and planning the major revamp of the STC LSC Web site. My eyeballs are about to pop out. You can imagine I’m not writing any fiction right now!

Ah, yes, another step is taken in my grand scheme for a freelance writing and editing career. Now to take over the world....

Flavors of Editing

A great description of the types of editing from the American Library Association blog, ALA Editions.

1. Developmental Editing: Working closely with the author at the draft manuscript stage to help direct and shape the content.
   
   
2. Substantive Editing: Improving the organization and expression of ideas. Identify places where the author needs to rewrite or add content. (I think of this as a paragraph-level edit because it typically involves moving paragraphs around and reshaping the flow of the content.)
   
   
3. Line Editing: Improving the writing at the sentence level. For example, eliminating jargon, passive voice, wordiness. Querying any remaining problems that would fall under substantive editing.
   
   
4. Copy Editing: Correcting (or making consistent) capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, usage. Querying any remaining problems that would fall under line editing. Creating an editorial style sheet.
   
   
5. Editorial Proofreading: Reading, with reference to the editorial style sheet where one exists, to make sure that the copy editing is complete. Typically this stage occurs only if the copy editing stage has been skipped for some reason, or if the copy editing was done by a subject matter expert rather than by a professional copy editor.
   
   
6. Traditional Proofreading: Comparing final copy word-for-word against an edited manuscript to make sure that they match. Marking anything that the copy editor has missed.

Americans Are Emotionally Incontinent

The "Doublespeak" column in the August 4th-10th issue of The Economist had the following pithy observation:

America under Mr. Bush is not at its most popular in Britain, or elsewhere. To many British eyes, both president and country are too bombastic, myopically self-assured, lacking a properly tragic view of life and sometimes emotionally incontinent.

And that, my friends, is what divides the real writers from the hacks.

The New York Times is Talking Trash

Last week the New York Times published an article titled “Is Junie B. Jones Talking Trash?” The title itself makes me wonder about the effect of poor grammar in literature on the editors of the New York Times. While I use the idiom “talking trash” myself in everyday speech, I know that it’s not appropriate for a newspaper with the stature of the New York Times. Given that the article is about the deleterious effects of poor grammar in the Junie B. Jones children’s series on its young readers, perhaps the article title was meant ironically. It definitely is ironic.

I wonder how “talking trash” became normal? When I was growing up (I’m only 36), I understood that the word, talking, related to the act of making sounds orally, and the word, speech, to the creation of meaning from oral sounds. Also, shouldn’t the adverb “trash” be “trashly”? Granted, “trashly” isn’t an accepted word, but it would be more consistent with other adverbs we apply to talking and speaking, like loudly or clearly.