me and my red pen

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
-Winston Churchill

At the age of 26, after having finished six years of university, after having written a thesis and gotten some minor things published, and after having taught Writing 1 for four semesters, I am taking my first non-fiction writing course since AP English, senior year of high school.

Okay, it's not a writing course: it's a copyediting course. And work is paying for it. But still.

I am writing this entry because I am avoiding doing my homework. HOMEWORK! My current assignment is to read Chapter 14 from The Copyeditor's Handbook, "Grammar: Principles and Pitfalls." It's not bad actually; I wish I had known about it so I could have assigned it.

Having never taken a writing course (other than playwriting), I am learning a lot of little things, and, yes, as a writer I really do geek out over them. This whole concept of notional agreement (which formally disregards formal agreement by relying on the meaning of what is being said rather that the words being used) BLOWS MY MIND.

Rachel is sitting next to me, working on a real writing assignment. She is struggling to get started, and asks for advice. I read over the prompt: basic, beginning of the semester, let's see how loose I can get them to go (is this phrase a subjunctive?!), assignment. Write about anything from the perspective of anyone but yourself in a detail-oriented style. I turn off the student inside me (careful, you sick bastards) and turn on the teacher and go to work, with 5 pages left in Chapter 14: the preposition section.

"The more pressing issue for copyeditors is to ensure that the author has selected the correct preposition."

Soon I get to do a worksheet!

in appreciation of articulation

The human body evolved over eons into an intricate machine whose expected fuel is fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, meat, and, since the last Ice Age ended ten thousand years ago, a modicum of wheat, corn, and rice. Food was abundant only seasonally, while migration or at least nomadism was a way of life. In the epochs before domesticated meat sources, those centuries of hunting wild prey with spears and traps, the body's metabolism adapted to store any caloric surplus in the form of fat--which could be broken down during subsequent starving times into fuel again.

That plan remains the evolutionary strategy of all the human bodies now making their way though our entirely different contemporary world. Reduce the greens in that body's intake, add dairy and processed carbohydrates, make meat a daily part of the diet, shovel in sugar and oils, provide a steady supply for the appetite, and on top of all this turn the hunter-gatherer into a mostly sedentary being, and the result is both unfortunate and predictable. The machine stores fat to its own detriment, while the body's strategy for nomadic survival becomes a fatal anachronism. Evolution did not anticipate nine to five. Evolution has no reply to TV.

From Stephen P. Kiernan's Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System (which I am reading as part of my research for Jane Anderson's Quality of Life, in which we explore the topic of Right to Die)

off the job training

I did not know this morning that tomorrow I would be a student again, but today I found myself registering for UC Berkeley's Extension course down the street from where I work at A.C.T. in the heart of San Francisco. Tomorrow at 6:30 p.m., I will be sitting in a computer room learning the finer points of copyediting. And, yes, I am excited.

I have actually really been wanting to learn Spanish so I don't have to read Hispanic / Latino / Mexican / etc. plays in translation. I searched Craigslist for a used Rosetta Stone (Tangent: This was before Mr. Phelps started promoting Rosetta Stone with that stupid "I like to do everything fast" commercial. If the pool at the 1972 Olympic games had been as deep as the pool in China's Cube, and if the swimmers wore the same Speedo LZR Racer suit that they wore this summer, Mark Spitz would still not have been able to win eight medals because there weren't eight medals to be won), but all of the deals sounded sketchy--the kind of sketchy that means that either a) the program wouldn't work properly or b) I would be caught up in some FBI sting operation targeting this guy named Sam:

I have been in the business of selling these for 3 years now. I am aware
that others on craigslist is selling stuff for cheaper but in all
honesty, I can bet those are not authentic. I can sell burned stuff for
even $50 and make more then what I make on authentic stuff but I care
for my customers and don't want them to get in trouble!

You have to be very carefull with
non authentic rosetta products as there is a license as a copied one
will work anywhere from 3 days to 6 months as rosetta will then see a
duplicate of the license being used and will blur it as the disk will
then read as disk error and there is a good chance rosetta will issue
you a $1000US fine as I can give you contacts of people who have got
these fines.. the sellers of copied rosetta don't care for the buyers
as they are trying to make a quick buck! If you have any problems with
my rosetta products I promise to give even 10 times your money back!

Please let me know
thanks kindly
Sam

So I didn't buy from Sam. I learned that you can access some verion of Rosetta Stone through the library here, but it won't work on my computer yet. All this is to say that I am in no way opposed to becoming a student again, even a student of Chicago Manuel editing rules.

musings of a sore throat in september

It is an ugly day. San Francisco, realizing it should be autumn now, has covered itself with a wet blanket of fog that, unlike its frequent fog, has lasted throughout the day. I think it too is moody that it doesn't really get autumny here. My boss took last week off, finally having someone she could trust with the office (me!), only to get slightly sick with a soar throat. We both joked (when we spoke the one time I called her so that she could explain to me what a House Board is and what my role should be in acquiring the information for said House Board) that it was just her immune system's way of saying, Yeah, well if you can take a break so can I; I've been holding this ship together with chewing gum and paper clips for two years while you went full speed. So screw you, I'm going to Vegas.

But now I too have a soar throat, meaning that it was not just a psychological-turned-physiological phenomenon. And we are out of juice. And it is an ugly day.

I dropped a commission last Thursday. Horrible, isn't it? Someone is actually willing to pay me to write a play, and I tell them to go screw. Criminal. But they didn't meet my terms (my terms begin that I, not they, would own the end product). And I could have probably negotiated, but they were only giving me a month to write the thing, and, honestly, I was sick of dealing with it. Too much going on here.

Stage direction: As he writes this last bit about the commission, a bright pink post-it should slowly fall from the notes from the project in questoin, notes he has tucked between two magazing holders. The post-it should fall like a spray painted leaf, and when it lands the words, "Luis = Warrior" and "Nesto = Serious", should be visible to remind him that he had put some thought into it. He will be left with the question, Should I throw this note away just like I threw the commission away? Or should I save it as a reminder? Should I save it for some future play when I need two brothers, one who is fighting for change and one who is too serious about his future to disrupt the status quo.

I dropped the commission and then preceded to waste my weekend. I have never been good with spare time. Rachel says I need to learn how to relax. I tried to relax by watching Arrested Development on Hulu, and then moseying through episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Very different shows, both good and bad for very different reasons. I kept trying to tell myself that I was relaxing, but I kept retorting, you aren't relaxing, you twit, you're wasting time.

Time I should spend doing what exactly, I ask.

To which I scoff, Time you should be figuring out how you are going to spend your time.

You twit.