Starting To Write

You've got your topic, your audience . . . so now what? How to get those ideas down on paper? Brainstorming is one way: just let your mind concentrate on the topic and write down your thoughts. Here's an example--the brainstorming I did about this blog:

"The first two blogs were written at the computer. The first was about the copyediting blog and copyediting in general. The second discussed the reasons for copyediting and included the G3/FBurney conversation about proofing from The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes and two samples of my copyediting work. The third blog will be a review of the book The Elements of Style. The next will be a book review. I'm not sure about the rest. I know I want to discuss the two Zinsser books I have, plus the Gordon books, and Altick. I'm also going to include the book reviews/evaluations of the Star books I've reviewed/evaluated. And then other books. And then I also want to discuss writing and why it's not just for English majors and how you need to know how to write a good resume, cover letter, thank you for the interview letter, and now no matter what sort of job you have, you might need to write something . . . casual writing is fine for e-mails and letters to friends and relatives i.e. writing that uses slang or abbreviations or dialect words, but for formal things like job application letters, etc., you need to learn to write Standard English. I could also blog about diff aspects of writing, the nuts and bolts of it--what makes a good sentence, sentence variety, diff sorts of problems like grammatical errors, syntax errors, word usage/language awareness errors, then go on to discuss errors of cohension and organization, etc. . . . anything that'd crop up in an English Comp class, and all this interspersed with book reviews. First I'll use the reviews of Star books interspersed w/ reviews on writing, then I'll go on to other books like my favorite kids' books authors--Wilder, Lovelace, Montgomery, Enright, Alcott, Estes, Lenski--and then review more writing/grammar books, and then other books like Lewis, Tolkien, Rowling, the Brontës, Eliot, etc., history books, etc. I need to organize topics/days of the week, though."

Don't worry about anything in brainstorming, except perhaps being able to read your handwriting or making sure you saved the file . . . just get your ideas written down so you'll have some basic information for reference when you start writing.

icopyedit

The title of this blog was inspired by my cousin's cooking blog http://icooktexas@blogspot.com (lots of good recipes, by-the-by). I like to cook too, but I also like to copyedit. No, make that love to copyedit. I've been known to copyedit travel brochures while on vacation, just to get some copyediting in. And some of the travel brochures have needed it. And travel articles in magazines. I am not one of those "correct people's grammar in conversation" types--I am very anti that because it's rude and gives English majors a totally unjustified bad rep. What I'm interested in is clear, concise communication for readers, any readers of any thing, be it book, article, brochure, letter, or even memo. Or even the direct mail that sometimes doesn't get much of a read because it's something we didn't ask to receive.

My interest in good communication for readers began in childhood, though I did not realize it then. When I wasn't with family or friends or watching tv, I was reading, and that was simply another form of entertainment. I read the My Book House Books series my parents bought for me at the State Fair, and kids' books--fiction and biography--with an occasional foray into the World Book Encyclopedia just for a change. Later I moved on to young adult fiction, more non-fiction while continuing with biographies, and poetry and plays. All that reading gave me a knowledge and instinct for what makes a good sentence and a not-so-good sentence, a knowledge and instinct for what readers should expect out of whatever they happen to be reading. Later on, my schooling gave me more knowledge and more practice writing, which also helped. I really don't remember what I copyedited first. But I soon realized that I loved that task.

Why do I love copyediting? Besides making sure a text communicates properly, my love for copyediting has to do with the creativity and problem-solving mystery of it all. Now, problems like subject-verb agreement or typos are clear cut--you fix the agreement, retype the word correctly, and that's it. But if a sentence is really snarled, or there are what one of my profs called "wandering verb tenses," or the pronouns go from singular to plural and back again, there's more than one way to fix the problem, and that's where the creativity and problem-solving mystery of it comes in. It's like, perhaps more prosaically, fixing a plumbing problem or filling the potholes in a road. It's like carving out what's unnecessary, to reveal the text. It's like putting a puzzle together and being able to change the pieces without changing the picture. It's challenging, creative, and fun.

But that's not all there is to it. Read this blog tomorrow for why copyediting is important. And have a good day!