Anal people, unite!

[cjsmith]

Saturday afternoon I took a short course titled "Become a Copyeditor or Proofreader." Amusing factoid: the guy who spoke to us is the person responsible for Hershey's Syrup spelling "recipe" correctly on their bottles. I knew there were rare other people who'd notice such a thing, but it was validating to meet a guy who writes to companies and gets such mistakes corrected!

As for my fellow students, I have never seen so much anal-retentiveness gathered in one room. Wow. I had found my tribe!

I was a little disappointed that no one there, including the speaker, could spell better than I could. :-)

I'm sure I could make a living at this if I spent a bit of time building up a resume and a portfolio. It won't pay what embedded OS work pays, of course, but if I went freelance it would be a fine supplemental job. I haven't yet decided to commit to it. I'm mulling it over.

Comments

[aleeceh.livejournal.com]

Copyediting is one of the things on my "this might be a good fit for me" list, because I, too, am one of those folks for whom spelling and grammatical errors tend to leap off the page—especially when I'm reading someone else's writing, less so when it's my 2nd or 3rd pass through the same article.

However, I have a love-hate relationship with deadlines. Without them, I can procrastinate indefinitely, so I really do need them to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time. But my stress level goes through the roof when I'm up against one. My 18 months editing the 24-page monthly magazine for our Porsche Club region with my husband strongly reinforced all of the above. Our end product was among the best the organization has seen, but it was killing us to get it out every month. We ultimately had to get out from under it before the term we had originally committed to was up, just to save our sanity. Of course, that was on top of working full time and juggling very busy social and relationship lives. Maybe it would be easier to tolerate if it were my primary job.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I have a similar relationship with deadlines. Without them I procrastinate and with them I panic. I suspect you're right that if it were your primary job it would be easier to handle. Good copyediting takes *time*; it's very easy to forget that and try to squeeze it in between laundry and a late evening at work.

I think it's great that you spent that time editing the magazine! It's too bad you couldn't keep it going and stay sane. I wish more people who were naturally good at it would give it a go. After all, there's so much stuff clearly in need! :-)