Editrix

5 Questions with Kate Harding

Kate Harding writes for the Salon column “Broadsheet” and for the blog Shapely Prose. Her new book is Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere.

 

Q: What is your preferred environment for writing?

 

A: Today is the first day in 2009 it’s been warm enough for me to write in my preferred environment: on my back porch. I really need a more comfortable chair out here, if not a proper desk, but I love sitting outside with my laptop. During the winter (which in Chicago, of course, is roughly October–May), I usually sit on the living room couch. I have a home office with a door and a desk and everything, but that’s become a repository for crap I can’t find space for anywhere else in the apartment, so it’s not the most welcoming environment. In the living room, I can sit in front of the fireplace and be slightly less miserable about being stuck inside, at least—even though I’m probably doing terrible things to my body by writing on the couch. 

 

Q: What punctuation mark are you fondest of?

 

A: Oh, lordy, the em-dash. I am a crazy em-dash enthusiast—or abuser, depending on how you look at it. (See what I did there?) When I started using WordPress as my blogging platform, I was bereft because the only way to type an em-dash in its WYSIWYG editor is to put two hyphens together, and the only way to do that is to leave spaces around them. (Otherwise, they’re automatically turned into a single hyphen.) The spaces drove me nuts at first, but now I’m used to them. I still want any purists reading to know I don’t actually believe they belong there, though. 

 

I will occasionally make use of a semicolon or parentheses instead, and I often find it’s good to remove a few gratuitous em-dashes before publishing, in the manner of removing a piece of jewelry before one leaves the house. But as someone who writes in a very conversational style and is prone to interrupting myself, I make em-dashes do a whole lot of work.

 

Q: What punctuation, spelling, grammar, style, or usage error annoys you the most?

 

A: You know, I do have an answer to this (or a few), but in recent years, I’ve been actively trying to be less of a jerk about other people’s writing issues. It finally dawned on me that all of it—grammar, spelling, punctuation—came so naturally to me, I can’t even take credit for whatever skills I may have. (And I should note that I just deleted a comment on my author blog that said something to the effect of, “For someone who talks so much about writing, your punctuation is terrible!” I have indeed gone a bit soft since I stopped copy editing for a living, but also, eff you, Jack. Knowing all the rules means you get to break ’em.) Also, we all make mistakes. I’m still mortified by the memory of getting back a paper (about 14 years ago, mind you) with a snotty comment from the prof, exhorting me to “look up the difference between ‘affect’ and ‘effect.’” BUT I DID KNOW THE DIFFERENCE! IT WAS A TYPO! YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME! WAAAAAH!

 

So, between my own fallibility as a grammarian and my recognition that I completely suck at basic skills other people take for granted—notably arithmetic—I finally decided to quit judging other people’s writing mistakes. Sure, seeing “definately” still elicits an involuntary cringe, but I am trying to be a bit more zen about it these days. (“FINITE!” Think “FINITE!”) 

 

Q: If you weren’t in your current line of work, what would you be doing instead?

 

A: Probably editing. I have never been good at a damned thing that didn’t involve words, and I’ve been quite lousy at a few things that did (e.g., public relations). I loved substantive editing, but I gave it up because it taxed the same parts of my brain I needed for my own writing, and I wasn’t yet ready to abandon the dream of being an author. Now that I am one, it remains to be seen whether I can continue to be one, let alone make a living at it. There might yet be more editing in my future—but as long as I can still sit on my porch wearing yoga pants and play with words all day, that would be just fine. (Please note that I do recognize how ludicrous it would be to cast editing as a stable and adequately remunerative alternative to pretty much any other profession. It’s all relative.) 

 

Q: Why do you write?

A: Because I don’t know how to stop. 

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5 Questions with Arthur Plotnik

Arthur Plotnik is the author of seven books, including Book-of-the-Month Club selections The Elements of Editing and The Elements of Expression. His latest is Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style (Random House). He is a contributor to and Board member of The Writer magazine. 

Q: What is your preferred environment for writing?

 A: My cell-sized study, where I can look past the monitor at a street tree (horse-chestnut) that inspired The Urban Tree Book: An Uncommon Field Guide for City and Town (Crown). Working in the adjacent room is Mary H. Phelan (a.k.a., my spouse), the artist who illustrated the book. Sounds like a precarious set-up, but it's wonderful.

 Q: What punctuation mark are you fondest of?

 A: I'm out of love with the usual ones, though we remain friends. My eye roves toward such foreign punctuation as the Spanish inverted question mark at the head of interrogative sentences (¿Don't you love it?). Also, I have a hankering for marks yet to be developed, like one for the complex coloratura of a teen's spoken "duh."

 Q: What punctuation, spelling, grammar, style, or usage error annoys you the most?

 A: Lately, it's the epidemic use of "amazing" as the one-size-fits-all adjective, even for the most mundane entities. "What an amazing wash cloth!" If only to break my own habitual use of the word, I'm compiling a thesaurus of fresh alternatives to it, as well as to "awesome," "great," "incredible," "unbelievable," and other used-up acclamatory terms. Choices, among thousands, will range from the grandiloquent ("aureate," "ecstasiating") to the vernacular ("reality on a toot") and funky ("butt-puckering").

 Q: If you weren't in your current line of work, what would you be doing instead?

 A: In my dreams, I'd be a golfer on the pro tour. I'm about 35 strokes a game away from that proficiency, but I fantasize being the very first celebrity golfer to speak brilliantly and originally in interviews. Never mind that I'm still a duffer when speaking off the cuff.      

 Q: What drove you to become a writer?

 A: Someone told me I had the knack in third grade, when my brain lay softly in a small head. By fourth grade I appeared in print, and the malady became hard-wired.

5 Questions with Linda Grant

Linda Grant is the author of The Clothes on Their Backs, Still Here, and Remind Me Who I Am, Again.

Q: What is your preferred environment for writing?

A: Laptop at my living room table, despite the fact that I have an entire office dedicated to working.

Q: What punctuation mark are you fondest of?

A: Semi-colon, very definitely.

Q: What punctuation, spelling, grammar, style, or usage error annoys you the most?

A: My iPod Touch, which allows me to e-mail, in its predictive text programme, inserts an apostrophe into its where it should not be. It's is a contraction of it is. How hard is that?

Q: If you weren’t in your current line of work, what would you be doing instead?

A: Making everyone else's life miserable with my disappointment at how my life turned out.

Q: What drove you to become a writer?

A: Because I was an only child until I was eight, and I read, and read, and read, and then realised that I too could make up stories.

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5 Questions with Martha Brockenbrough

Martha Brockenbrough is the founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar and the author of Things That Make Us [SIC]. She also writes for Encarta and MSN Movies.

Q: What is your preferred environment for writing?

A: Oh, I am not picky. I will write in a coffee house. I will write in my chilly basement. I will write in the closet I call my office as long as it isn’t too messy. I have written in bed and on airplanes. I once wrote in a hotel bathroom because it was too cold on the balcony. I do, however, prefer writing on computers than on paper because my handwriting is abysmal.

Q: What punctuation mark are you fondest of?

A: I had a grammar psychic make appearances with me at various bookstores. She read everyone’s punctuation personality. Choosing just one . . . so difficult. I cheer for semicolons, because they have been called awful names and that’s just not right. I like colons, because they make for easy scatological puns. The exclamation point might be my new favorite, though. It’s another maligned punctuation mark—it’s been said that using one is like laughing at your own joke. Terry Pratchett said that anyone who uses more than five in a row is insane. While he has a point, I do think that in an electronic age characterized by frequent, brief messages, the exclamation point helps communicate a friendly tone. When I say “thanks!” it sounds so much more sincere and less zombified than if I simply say “thanks.”

Q: What punctuation, spelling, grammar, style, or usage error annoys you the most?

A: It depends on who’s talking or writing. I find my eight-year-old’s spelling errors to be adorable. She wrote “WECLOM” on our front steps; I was proud to weclom guests to my home until the next rain came. I suppose it’s the unnecessary apostrophe that really gets to me. It’s not hard to add an “s” on the end of a word. What’s with the urge to apostrophize?

Q: If you weren’t in your current line of work, what would you be doing instead?

A: Does librarian count? I would love to be a librarian. I imagine they roll around naked on huge piles of books. I could do that. I have been a teacher, and I did like that (though I must say I never rolled around naked on huge piles of students). Or maybe I’d be a photographer or a designer. I can’t imagine wandering very far from the page or screen, though. Almost everyone else in my family is a doctor, nurse, or other health-care worker. Blood makes me woozy. I’m right now looking at a wicked paper cut and feeling quite sorry for myself. Ehhh. What was the question?

Q: What drove you to become a writer?

A: I love words, I love stories, I love books. When I was eight, I had a teacher who really encouraged me to write. She also let me read whatever I wanted, which led to some choices that were over my head, but hey, at least I was trying. It was then I vowed to become An Author. I had only the vaguest notion of what that might entail. My parents thought they did. They weren’t too keen on the idea of me becoming an impoverished drunk, so they encouraged me to go to law school. I rebelled and became . . . a newspaper reporter. Is there any surer route to becoming an impoverished drunk? At least strippers get tips. Anyway, I didn’t stick around long enough to find out, and starting in 1995, I worked a variety of jobs on this crazy newfangled thing called the Internet. Eventually, and before there was such a thing as a blog, I started keeping an online journal that became my first book (about pregnancy and parenting). And I just kept on going, hustling my words wherever they’d have me. Opportunities seem to keep opening up magically and I hope that continues. Meanwhile, I work every day, every chance I can get, hoping to learn as much as I can and write good things every so often. I love doing it and so far have managed to avoid impoverished drunkenness (though I do like a solvent tipple every now and then).

Oh, and as far as *being* a writer goes . . . it’s great. Yes, it can be lonely pounding away. But I have met amazing, wonderful, inspirational friends. (Hello, readergirlz and SCBWI peeps!) This is what makes me feel I’m making a life as I make a living.

And now I can say I’ve met Editrix, too—at least online! My life just got that much better.

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5 Questions with Scott Bateman

Scott Bateman is a cartoonist who creates daily animated shorts for Salon.

Q: What is your preferred environment for writing?

A: I do all my best work at Starbucks. I have too many distractions at home.

Q: What punctuation mark are you fondest of?

A: When used properly, the semi-colon is a thing; of beauty.

Q: What punctuation, spelling, grammar, style, or usage error annoys you the most?

A: What I just did with the semi-colon there is #2. The #1 thing that annoys me is their/there/they're confusion. Most of us learned this in third grade, people. Were you sick that day?

Q: If you weren't in your current line of work, what would you be doing instead?

A: My last "real" job was as an assistant apparel designer at Nike. The only qualification I had for this job was that I knew Photoshop and Illustrator; I had no actual apparel-designing experience or education whatsoever (apart from occasionally wearing some).

As an assistant apparel designer, it was basically my job to color in the apparel the actual designers drew. A job where you get paid to sit around and color things in is pretty much the best "real" job that exists. Sadly, I could not stay within the lines and had to leave.

Q: Why do you write?

A: I have this weird compulsion to create. I may, in fact, be mentally ill and not creative after all.

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5 Questions with Mark Brazaitis

Mark Brazaitis is the author of An American Affair, Steal My Heart, and The River of Lost Voices, for which he won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. He has been awarded the ABZ Press Poetry Prize for his forthcoming book of poems, The Other Language.

Q: What is your preferred environment for writing?

A: Lately, my dining room table. It's close to the tea kettle.

Q: What punctuation mark are you fondest of?

A: The good old-fashioned period. I love the dash, too -- perhaps too much.

Q: What punctuation, spelling, grammar, style, or usage error annoys you the most?

A: For reasons I have thus far failed to fathom, my students often write "loose" when they mean "lose." It isn't the mistake I mind so much as the inexplicable frequency of it.

Q: If you weren't in your current line of work, what would you be doing instead?

A: I would love to be an op-ed columnist for a big-city newspaper. I could also see myself writing copy for the backs of cereal boxes.

Q: Why do you write?

A: It's the closest this poor musician can come to making music.

5 Questions with Rachel Kramer Bussel

Rachel Kramer Bussel writes and edits erotica. Books she has edited include Hide and Seek, Sex and Candy, and Best Sex Writing 2009. She also writes a wonderful cupcake blog.

Q: What is your preferred environment for writing?

A: I used to be one of those people who needed total silence, but I've found that having the laptop actually on my lap often leads me to set it aside and pick up a book. So my new and improved optimum writing locale is a cafe, usually Starbucks, after I've drunk some English Breakfast tea. I feel more accountable when I'm in public, like if all I'm doing is surfing the Internet, everyone can tell I'm not really writing.

Q: What punctuation mark are you fondest of?

A: The em dash; I love when I can incorporate it into a sentence. Something about seeing it on the page makes me happy. I don't even know exactly why, though I suspect it's about connecting two slightly related ideas into one power-packed sentence. I like anything in language that can do double duty.

Q: What punctuation, spelling, grammar, style, or usage error annoys you the most?

A: Probably "it's"/"its," which I often point out to people, who don't always appreciate it. I tend to be a big grammar nerd, but I have certain grammar issues that I constantly battle, so I can't harangue people too much.

Q: If you weren't in your current line of work, what would you be doing instead?

A: Probably publicity, though a friend and I have a half-baked (ha!) plan to open up a cupcake and lingerie shop someday.

Q: Why do you write?

A: I write because it's still the only way I can make sense of my emotions and thoughts and life. I find that when I put off writing, it will come find me, waking me up in the middle of the night, haunting my dreams, basically harassing me until I give in and get the words down. And then, invariably, no matter how awful my life feels at the time, it gets better. Sometimes only marginally, but writing always helps. I absolutely can't imagine my life without writing in it.

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5 Questions with Editrix

Q: Why isn't there a "real" edition of "5 Questions with . . ." this week?

A: Because I suck.

Q: That's not an adequate answer. Care to try again?

A: OK, fine, if that's the way you want to be: It's because I've spent most of this week editing hairy, fanged, eight-legged reports; busting ass to meet a deadline for a story I'm working on; attending High Holiday services; and blissing out on sinus medication. I haven't had time to contact any authors or editors about "5 Questions with . . ." So there. Is that answer satisfactory.

Q: Somewhat. Anyway, moving on . . . When are you going to get your act together?

A: Next weekend. I promise.

Q: Oh, really?

A: Yes, really. That's what I said, isn't it?

Q: Yeah, but Sarah Palin says that some of her best friends are gay people, and I don't believe that for a minute. So why should I believe you about this?

A: Beats the hell out of me.

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5 Questions with Steve Kleinedler

Steve Kleinedler, a lexicographer, is supervising editor for the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH). Since 1997, he has worked on dozens of additional titles at HMH, including the recent 100 Words Almost Everyone Mispronounces.

Q: What is your preferred environment for editing?

A: My desk in my office. This desk is piled with papers, books, coffee . . . well, let me start over. On the left side of my desk there are twenty-seven books lined against the wall, with two others lying on top of them. Sandwiched in between those books is a CD of a band that a former editor played in, the membership directory for the Dictionary Society of North America, a "Grammar Girl" CD, and a printed out list of entries in the American Heritage Dictionary of run-ons that have hyphens. There's a canister of red pens and a variety of highlighters. There are seven open books, stacked on top of each other. A coffee cup, two lids, a ruler, my pink bunny mug that I got as a gift in 1984, spoons, more pens, paper, rubber bands, paper clips, and a stack of index cards with comments, suggestions, and corrigenda. And that's just about three square feet of space. I work well in clutter. I know exactly where everything is. If I'm editing on paper, I have a table that has a slanted surface so I don't throw my back out. About seven years ago, my neck froze up. I never want to go through that again.

Q: What punctuation mark are you fondest of?

A: The semicolon is what shot through my mind first. Actually, I like adding semicolons when proofreading. When you add the semicolon to the margin, you embellish it with the upside-down caret above the dot and the caret below the comma, and the combined effect looks really cool. The punctuation mark I most like to write is the delete symbol. When I doodle, it's often a cascade of these.

Q: What punctuation, spelling, grammar, style, or usage error annoys you the most?

A: I'm pretty laid back in that I don't go around correcting people. That said, hypercorrections set my teeth on edge, especially the use of "I" instead of "me" after prepositions and as direct and indirect objects. Sometimes, I yell at the television. I yelled at American's Most Smartest Model a lot. Mary Alice Stephenson did this all the time and I kept waiting for Ben Stein to yell "with you and ME!" -- but he never did. (Tim Gunn, on the other hand, is my hero.)

Q: If you weren't in your current line of work, what would you be doing instead?

A: I transferred into Northwestern as a junior, and I had to make a snap decision about a major, and I was torn between linguistics and geography. I'd always had a fascination with language and maps. I would like to think that had I chosen geography, I would be a cartographer. I find it interesting that both cartographers and lexicographers have been equally affected by the phased disintegration of the former Yugoslavia over the past 18 years. If not cartography, I would probably be pursuing a career in directing for the stage -- currently in the evenings I direct sketch comedy at ImprovBoston.

Q: What drove you to become an editor?

A: So many random things. After I graduated from Northwestern, one of my professors began providing me with lexicographic freelance work. For my nine-to-five job, however, I was a word processor for a mortgage banker in Chicago. The word processors transcribed letters that officers had dictated into a Dictaphone. The company president hated long-windedness and insisted that the letters be edited thoroughly. At first, he edited everything that I transcribed to show me how to do it. After a couple months, I was expected to edit everything I transcribed (including his letters). This is where I learned how to express ideas concisely and slash overblown verbiage. I don't think I realized at first how crucial editing skills would be in lexicography, but you need to know how to edit to be a lexicographer -- in addition to creating content, you have to know how to edit.

5 Questions with the Fug Girls

Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan write for Go Fug Yourself.

Q: What is your preferred environment for writing?

A: JESSICA: I'm okay as long as I'm sitting down. I'm not someone who prefers to do her work in a coffee shop or at the library. If I've got a place to rest my butt and a Diet Coke, I'm good to go.

HEATHER: I like to be at my desk, or on my couch, with a TV tuned to something fun and mindless. This is how I watch so many soaps and other cheesy shows -- I like the noise, but for some reason I prefer TV to music. I mostly prefer working when I am sure someone else is not reading over my shoulder. That is a huge pet-peeve of mine -- when people come up behind me and read over my shoulder. It makes me self-conscious.

Q: What punctuation mark are you fondest of?

A: JESSICA: I am fond of the semi-colon.

HEATHER: Me too! It's such a lovely breath of air in a sentence.

Q: What punctuation, style, grammar, or usage error annoys you the most?

A: JESSICA: This is something I hear on reality shows more often than I see it in writing, but it drives me nuts when someone incorrectly uses "myself" instead of "me."  For example, "It was time for myself to man the keg, but when I got there, Brad was passed out on it and I couldn't move him."

HEATHER: This is too hard. There are so many. I was a copy editor at our college paper, so I used to go nuts for all this. I hate misused apostrophes and the associated incorrect possessives (like "Phelp's" and not "Phelps' "), and I'm not fond of frequent word repetition within a sentence or paragraph unless it's a clear stylistic choice. Putting punctuation on the wrong side of a quotation mark or parentheses drives me bonkers, too. Really, they all annoy me. But I must also say that I probably commit plenty of stupid brain farts on grammar stuff that then drive someone ELSE bonkers. I try to be good but there are a lot of rules that are too obscure even for me. Oh, and I also hate redundancies like "4 a.m. in the morning." Because if it's in the a.m., it HAS to be the morning.

Q: If you weren't in your current line of work, what would you be doing instead?

A: JESSICA: In my fantasy life, I'd own an incredibly lucrative boutique selling fancy lingerie, shoes, books, pretty clothes, and shiny things. This boutique would require no work on my part and all my employees would love me. Realistically, I imagine I'd still be working in reality TV, which is what I did before the blog took off, or copywriting.

HEATHER: Yeah, I'd probably still be story-editing on "America's Next Top Model." I knew that wasn't for me, though, because I had no aspirations of rising any further up the ladder than running the story department. People would be like, "Don't you want to be the EP of your own show someday?" and the very thought would make me die inside. I used to be a journalist, but I hated it, and was not so great at it -- I don't like digging around for stories and I'm too nervous about walking up to random people for interviews -- so in a way things worked out perfectly. I get to write, still, but I don't have to report.

Q: What drove you to write?

A: JESSICA: I have always been a voracious reader and I have always written -- since I was in junior high, at least. I enjoy it and it's always been part of my life.

HEATHER: Yes, reading is a favorite pastime of mine, especially when you get the kind of book that makes you want to write down certain sentences so you can enjoy them over and over again. Jessica and I were just talking about how Kate Atkinson's books have inspired us in that way. I also have always adored playing with language, and dry humor. I love a pun and a double-entendre (some of which probably comes from the fact that I was weaned on British comedy, like the Blackadder series and Monty Python) and I love when people really attack a creative idea and immerse you in it. The Jasper Fforde books are among my favorites in that area -- his Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes series are both awesome. Sometimes the plots are a little too twisty and convoluted, but because all the knots are always untangled in the end, you can ignore it and sit back and enjoy a ride that is full of so many brilliant literary jokes and creativity. I aspire to entertain anyone the way books like that have delighted me.

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