The Results Are In · 9:16pm May 25th, 2018
And I mean what I said in the title twofold.
I guess I'll take this in chronological order. Those of you who are here because I tagged Daring Do and the Ancient Outpost can just skip to the second part, if you like. I made the letters bold, even.
First, I pretty much decided on what I'm going to consider using my blog for. I know writing advice is fairly common around here and on the internet in general, but I have seen far less in the "editing advice" department. At this point, I consider myself an editor slightly more than a writer, so why not give that a try? Right now, I am supposing that each blog I would be putting forth would attempt to both explain a given topic related to editing (which, I note, any writer could potentially use while writing as well), and possibly support/expand on my ability to explain it with some additional research (that I'd try and link to). With any luck, this'd help anyone who has no idea how to edit/write and might serve as a case for reference for those that already do – I imagine a lot of what happens in my head will be included and the blogs will be well qualified, because n=1 isn't enough to draw generalized conclusions from and I'm no master of editing anyway (no matter what Bugsydor might say).
Blog topics may draw from the following ideas: what you do as an editor, not stepping on the author's toes, how to locate typographical errors, typogrophy and stuff like it, identifying missing or superfluous information and words, successfully communicating an idea to the readers, properly communicating with the author, logical specificity, where logical specificity does not help, keeping characters self-consistent and other character stuff, and probably a lot more.
If I can (e.g. permission form the author), I'll include actual examples of things I (or others, maybe?) have edited, where applicable. Regardless, I'm going to try and avoid being one of those "you'll have to figure out what this means for you"/etc. people where you only give half a solution at best. Again, n=1 doesn't work for everyone, but I should at least be able to explain why I did something or think what I do. If people want to correct me if I did something stupid, that's cool too. This is going to be a learning experience for me, anyway, provided I actually write any of these posts. Once upon a time, I had to learn everything anyway, and I still remember those days.
Here's the second update.
Equestria Daily finally got back to me about Daring Do and the Ancient Outpost: Swing and a miss.
It's the same prereader that rejects most of my submissions, so I dunno. Bugsydor was right when he said that was my best story yet, because there was a compliment or two in the rejection email. Oh, and the rejection email is pretty long. Maybe the longest I've had, even. I think the takeaway is "Don't write about archaeology because archaeology is boring." I did all sorts of other things wrong, though (I am told), so I won't pretend that was the only issue. I am definitely done submitting anything to EqD, because it's not even worth the 5 minutes it takes to fill out the form. I always seem to end up with someone taking preconceptions to my stories and thus misunderstanding them, which I say because nobody else (at least, those who give me feedback) comes close to having these issues. I wouldn't know anywhere else to look if I wanted someone to do that. I don't know how Bugsydor got any of his works accepted, either, because I got called out for doing something that he and I very recently discussed him doing as part of his writing style.
Getting feedback like this is fuel for my desire to be an editor that doesn't screw up the author's vision because reasons (and maybe make a blog series about that?). I find it disgusting and at least 80% unhelpful.
I could rant on a bit, but I am instead going to acknowledge that I don't know anything about the prereader and where they're coming from... which is also part of the problem.
Well, that's bogus of them on a number of levels.
Come to think of it, how did I get my crap on EqD? I never really thought of myself as an insider kind of guy.