Self-portait, in pathos...
This is how it happened.
I finished high school with no direction, career-wise or life-wise. I remember being envious of my best friend at the time, who knew she wanted to be a florist. I have absolutely no desire to be a florist - I don’t even much care for flowers - but she had a goal, a focus, and I did not; I envied her that.
So, like any directionless person with no actual hatred of learning, I decided to put off joining the real world for a bit longer, and went to university.
My one great talent has always been writing, so there was some discussion that I might grow up to be a writer. My mother used to joke that someday I’d write the Great Australian Novel and set her up in a mansion in St Ives.
While it’s true that I like to write, and that creative writing has been a hobby of mine since my early teens, I always doubted that I would ever really make it as a fiction author. Take as evidence my story-folder: two-hundred-odd story-scraps and ideas for interesting characters or worlds or problems to solve. Four - count ’em, four - finished stories. None more than a few pages long. (Oh, and one poem I’m quite proud of, despite not really being a poet.) And, yes, that is the product of over a decade’s worth of hobby-work.
Still, lacking direction as I did at that time, pursuing my one talent seemed the only option. So I went to university and got my BA, majoring in creative writing just to make the degree that much more useless, employment-wise.
I did learn some quite interesting things, though.
For instance, do you know how to tell a newbie humanities student from an experienced one? By whether they pronounce Michel Foucault’s name Foo-calt (greenhorn) or Foo-coh (worldly-wise).
Still, anyway, I went to uni, learned stuff, and came out the other end still pretty directionless. However, sometime around this time - we’re in 2003, now - I had my epiphany and figured out what it is I want to do with my life.
Are you ready for it?
I want to be an editor.
Of the written word, that is, not a video-editor or what-have-you.
This is what my talent has always been about. My writing talent, not enough to sustain the writing of a full-length fiction piece, is plenty enough to reshape some other author’s awkward bit of prose. And although I’m good at writing, what I’m truly best at is reading - though it’s not usually counted as a talent. I’ve always prided myself on my excellent spelling, too, and have long been pained at those grammar and punctuation errors you sometimes come across in public signage… I remember, it must be at least ten years ago, now, my father had this Harley-Davidson bumper sticker that read, If I have to explain…you wouldn’t understand. I never could stand that thing, because, damn it, it should be “won’t”. If I have to explain…you won’t understand. Tense agreement, anyone?
So, anyway, there I am, fresh out of university, reasonably unemployable, but with a new vocation to my credit.
So how does one become an editor, anyway?
Well, I still can’t tell you for certain, since as yet no-one is paying me to be an editor so I don’t think I can truly call myself one…but the method I chose involved finding a small private writing and journalism college and laying down three grand to enrol in their book-editing diploma course.
The better part of a year later and heavily in debt to my parents, I had a diploma to stick on my wall, a fair amount of knowledge under my belt, and grim warnings about job prospects ringing in my ears. According to my editing teacher, book editors are not well-paid even at their best, and furthermore the editing field is small. There’s just not much call for us, it seems.
This was true, I found. I put my degrees to good use wallpapering my study and joined the dole queue. About year later, I secured a job - as an office assistant. Seven months after that, I was fired (unjustly!).
This brings us to February of this year. Unemployed again, now with few more useful job-skills and the stigma of having been terminated. The job-market has not been kind.
A few months ago I went to a different journalism college and got myself qualified to be a subeditor - the magazine-and-newspaper version of my previous qualification - on the theory that there are more newspaper and magazine publishers than there are book publishers, and that therefore it’d be easier to find work as a subeditor than a book editor.
No joy so far.
Most subediting job ads read something like “three years’ experience required”, or, if not, they’re for “journalist/subeditors”, and I’m no journalist.
So, a month or so ago I was looking through the job ads in my local paper and stumbled across the “Work Wanted” column. You know the sort of thing - a handyman or cleaner or plumber advertising that they’re available for hire. I joked to my mother that maybe I should run an ad there “work wanted - editor”, that kind of thing.
She said it was a great idea, and encouraged me to do it.
I was sceptical, and put it off. However, a month later, and still no-one was beating the door down to employ me, so I thought, What the heck? And did it.
Forty bucks for a couple of lines, running for one day in a free paper that only covers a dozen or so suburbs. }:-(
Much to my surprise (not), no-one answered the ad.
Or so I thought; I later found a message on my voicemail enquiring about it.
I e-mailed him with bated breath, as it were. We went back-and-forth a few times, then met at a small business expo he was attending. It all seemed to be going pretty good; he ran a little marketing company and wanted me to rewrite press releases for him. He offered me $20 an hour, which was five more than I’d asked for.
In order to work with him, he said at one point in our correspondence, I’d need an ABN - for tax purposes, I imagine, since he wasn’t employing me but contracting my services.
So I registered myself as a business, and decided to go the whole hog - got myself a free webpage and e-mail address with my company name as the domain name, and business cards from this pre-designed-business-cards place I found on the Web.
Meanwhile, I haven’t heard for Marketing Company Guy in about a week and am getting nervous that his business has slipped through my fingers.
But anyway, that brings me to the point I described in my last entry.
Oh, except I forgot my “pro bono client”… Well, it’s not much of a story. Long before all this business stuff happened, a cousin of mine who lives in another town had come down to Sydney for a visit. She’s close to getting her doctorate in…well, I forget the technical name, but it amounts to sheep science. I mentioned my then-rather-new editorship to her, and Mum suggested I could edit her doctoral thesis.
We laughed; she agreed; I thought she was just being nice.
Still, a few months ago she brought it up again, and it seems she actually does want me to edit the thing. I figure editing a doctoral thesis has to look good on a résumé and/or business record (especially since we don’t share a surname, so no-one can tell we’re cousins unless I so inform them), so I’m happy to do it - even though she’s family (and furthermore just had a baby), so I can’t charge her for it. But I’m still going to milk as much positive publicity out of the phrase “I edited the doctoral thesis of Emma D___, PhD” as I can.
Though she hasn’t finished it yet, so I haven’t seen it, let alone edited it.
Sigh.
Still. There you are - or rather, here I am.
And, what the hell…if anyone does ever read this…
Got anything you want edited? Why not check out my business webpage at [hyperlink deleted]. Ampersand Editorial Services - editing the written word.
I finished high school with no direction, career-wise or life-wise. I remember being envious of my best friend at the time, who knew she wanted to be a florist. I have absolutely no desire to be a florist - I don’t even much care for flowers - but she had a goal, a focus, and I did not; I envied her that.
So, like any directionless person with no actual hatred of learning, I decided to put off joining the real world for a bit longer, and went to university.
My one great talent has always been writing, so there was some discussion that I might grow up to be a writer. My mother used to joke that someday I’d write the Great Australian Novel and set her up in a mansion in St Ives.
While it’s true that I like to write, and that creative writing has been a hobby of mine since my early teens, I always doubted that I would ever really make it as a fiction author. Take as evidence my story-folder: two-hundred-odd story-scraps and ideas for interesting characters or worlds or problems to solve. Four - count ’em, four - finished stories. None more than a few pages long. (Oh, and one poem I’m quite proud of, despite not really being a poet.) And, yes, that is the product of over a decade’s worth of hobby-work.
Still, lacking direction as I did at that time, pursuing my one talent seemed the only option. So I went to university and got my BA, majoring in creative writing just to make the degree that much more useless, employment-wise.
I did learn some quite interesting things, though.
For instance, do you know how to tell a newbie humanities student from an experienced one? By whether they pronounce Michel Foucault’s name Foo-calt (greenhorn) or Foo-coh (worldly-wise).
Still, anyway, I went to uni, learned stuff, and came out the other end still pretty directionless. However, sometime around this time - we’re in 2003, now - I had my epiphany and figured out what it is I want to do with my life.
Are you ready for it?
I want to be an editor.
Of the written word, that is, not a video-editor or what-have-you.
This is what my talent has always been about. My writing talent, not enough to sustain the writing of a full-length fiction piece, is plenty enough to reshape some other author’s awkward bit of prose. And although I’m good at writing, what I’m truly best at is reading - though it’s not usually counted as a talent. I’ve always prided myself on my excellent spelling, too, and have long been pained at those grammar and punctuation errors you sometimes come across in public signage… I remember, it must be at least ten years ago, now, my father had this Harley-Davidson bumper sticker that read, If I have to explain…you wouldn’t understand. I never could stand that thing, because, damn it, it should be “won’t”. If I have to explain…you won’t understand. Tense agreement, anyone?
So, anyway, there I am, fresh out of university, reasonably unemployable, but with a new vocation to my credit.
So how does one become an editor, anyway?
Well, I still can’t tell you for certain, since as yet no-one is paying me to be an editor so I don’t think I can truly call myself one…but the method I chose involved finding a small private writing and journalism college and laying down three grand to enrol in their book-editing diploma course.
The better part of a year later and heavily in debt to my parents, I had a diploma to stick on my wall, a fair amount of knowledge under my belt, and grim warnings about job prospects ringing in my ears. According to my editing teacher, book editors are not well-paid even at their best, and furthermore the editing field is small. There’s just not much call for us, it seems.
This was true, I found. I put my degrees to good use wallpapering my study and joined the dole queue. About year later, I secured a job - as an office assistant. Seven months after that, I was fired (unjustly!).
This brings us to February of this year. Unemployed again, now with few more useful job-skills and the stigma of having been terminated. The job-market has not been kind.
A few months ago I went to a different journalism college and got myself qualified to be a subeditor - the magazine-and-newspaper version of my previous qualification - on the theory that there are more newspaper and magazine publishers than there are book publishers, and that therefore it’d be easier to find work as a subeditor than a book editor.
No joy so far.
Most subediting job ads read something like “three years’ experience required”, or, if not, they’re for “journalist/subeditors”, and I’m no journalist.
So, a month or so ago I was looking through the job ads in my local paper and stumbled across the “Work Wanted” column. You know the sort of thing - a handyman or cleaner or plumber advertising that they’re available for hire. I joked to my mother that maybe I should run an ad there “work wanted - editor”, that kind of thing.
She said it was a great idea, and encouraged me to do it.
I was sceptical, and put it off. However, a month later, and still no-one was beating the door down to employ me, so I thought, What the heck? And did it.
Forty bucks for a couple of lines, running for one day in a free paper that only covers a dozen or so suburbs. }:-(
Much to my surprise (not), no-one answered the ad.
Or so I thought; I later found a message on my voicemail enquiring about it.
I e-mailed him with bated breath, as it were. We went back-and-forth a few times, then met at a small business expo he was attending. It all seemed to be going pretty good; he ran a little marketing company and wanted me to rewrite press releases for him. He offered me $20 an hour, which was five more than I’d asked for.
In order to work with him, he said at one point in our correspondence, I’d need an ABN - for tax purposes, I imagine, since he wasn’t employing me but contracting my services.
So I registered myself as a business, and decided to go the whole hog - got myself a free webpage and e-mail address with my company name as the domain name, and business cards from this pre-designed-business-cards place I found on the Web.
Meanwhile, I haven’t heard for Marketing Company Guy in about a week and am getting nervous that his business has slipped through my fingers.
But anyway, that brings me to the point I described in my last entry.
Oh, except I forgot my “pro bono client”… Well, it’s not much of a story. Long before all this business stuff happened, a cousin of mine who lives in another town had come down to Sydney for a visit. She’s close to getting her doctorate in…well, I forget the technical name, but it amounts to sheep science. I mentioned my then-rather-new editorship to her, and Mum suggested I could edit her doctoral thesis.
We laughed; she agreed; I thought she was just being nice.
Still, a few months ago she brought it up again, and it seems she actually does want me to edit the thing. I figure editing a doctoral thesis has to look good on a résumé and/or business record (especially since we don’t share a surname, so no-one can tell we’re cousins unless I so inform them), so I’m happy to do it - even though she’s family (and furthermore just had a baby), so I can’t charge her for it. But I’m still going to milk as much positive publicity out of the phrase “I edited the doctoral thesis of Emma D___, PhD” as I can.
Though she hasn’t finished it yet, so I haven’t seen it, let alone edited it.
Sigh.
Still. There you are - or rather, here I am.
And, what the hell…if anyone does ever read this…
Got anything you want edited? Why not check out my business webpage at [hyperlink deleted]. Ampersand Editorial Services - editing the written word.