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An Editor's life Is not easy ...
not mine, anyway -
the kidnappers have two women hanging UPSIDE DOWN in a cellar. The author then says:
Her head throbbed in agony, it made her neck ache intolerably just to hold her head up and it soon became marginally preferable just to hang motionless, her hair cascading around her sweating face.
So tell me, where is his heroine growing this hair ...
Comments
https://skitch.com/lizbrownlee/ry223/skitched-20101117-123851#lightbox
I already edited the sentence where the sound of the gun reverberated back and forth around the cellar ... this guy cannot write. Never has been able to, never will. His books sell really well when I've done with them, though ..
Its not going to throb with pleasure is it?
It made her neck ache intolerably just to hold her head up:
No need for the adverb; I think the reader will understand shes in some discomfort.
It soon became marginally preferable just to hang motionless:
Yet another adverb, and the repetition of just, in only 34 words.
Who cares where her hair is cascading; I wouldnt like to read any more.
Good luck with this one Dorothy
We had a model (one of many but she was one of the very willing ones) who agreed to be part of the 'let's put this pesky pestering customer in her place' schems. Said customer had designs on the director (my partner) and didn't seem to want to take the hint. So we suspended this model, nude, from the ceiling in the photographic studio and awaited the arrival of said woman. Who came, was shocked, left, but whether she got the hint that we only wanted young slender beautiful girls I never did find out.
The problem was ... BT called whilst she was there and wanted me to answer questions for a survey and I had to go let the poor model down. So I said to this guy, 'sorry, please excuse me, but I happen to have a nude model suspended in the photographic studio and I really should go get her down as she's been there over an hour already.' That probably made his day ...
It wasn't an hour, we limited all suspension to 20 minutes but he didn't have to know that, did he?
Might use one of those instead of tinsel at Christmas it would give the neighbours something to talk about :)
Actually, thinking about it - the next annoying person who arrives at my door trying to sell me Broadband or Sky TV might just get the job.
BB, behave ...
To be fair, I misread it as well :D
I was wondering why said afternoon poop was so much brighter than usual :P
[quote=dorothyd]OK, BR, behave ... [/quote]
To be even fairer we didn't actually do any of the pooping.
Been working on and off on a major edit of a book from a new author, removing the dashes, the ands, the buts, the additional two spaces on every indent ... then asking him to cut chunks out which had nothing to do with the story and write in something that was.
The book I sent back to a new author yesterday requested:
please remove 99% of your ! which are not intended to be used as full stops.
Please remove every 'and' and 'but' at the start of sentences (he did it with virtually every single one)
please add some action, I was bored by chapter 2.
Usual covering letter,' if this is not publishable, please advise how to make it better.' Well, that was the start...
It gladdens my heart to hear that. I get frustrated at being on the receiving end of all the 'tuition for writers' and the huge checklist of things you have to remember...and then some really famous rich person writes a truly horrible nauseating missive and it gets published AND media coverage AND prime display position in all the retailers etc. etc.
One author stomped off into the sunset when he sent me a letter outlining the £4000 to £5000 royalties he said were due to him. Right ... so we printed 200 copies. 100 went to trade for which he got 10p per book, the others filtered away over a year, sometimes two, at the rate of £1 per copy ... he had six books in our system ... I could not see where he got his figures from. We never heard from him again.
Off topic: Years ago I knew a mail order catalogue had underpaid my commission by several pounds. It was easy to work out because my only customers were my mother-in-law and myself. I wrote to them, with all the figures neatly set out and they sent me a cheque. For £0.01p. I couldn't be bothered to query it, but I kept the cheque as a symbol of their stupidity because it must have cost them a fair bit more than £0.01p to process and post it.
One year the tax man wrote to tell me I had underpaid them by 42p. (I am self employed.) They said I could add it to my next payment. I didn't, I sent them the 42p because I knew well they had overcharged me. They had, I got several hundred pounds back (enough to buy another second hand car!) and there, in the overpayment cheque, was my 42p.