What the World Needs Now

Yeah, you guessed it. I have started another blog.

All right, so this announcement is not exactly an epic of massive impact. In fact it has already caused dismay in some people. When I told my Cousin Tabitha I planned to launch an editing blog, her response was: “Oh, no!”

It was unclear whether this had to do with editing or with blogging per se.

The establishment of this new entablature of all things editorial comes as an extension of my SuperScript website. That site, of course, exists to hawk my literary services. But as such there isn’t room to bemuse over, complain about or revel in my obsession with the printed word. Hence: The Editing Room!

And now we digress.

It turns out that there are blogs, sometimes many blogs, in existence on anything you care to make up. Try it – this is a fun game you and your browser can play together. Here are the results of my research, spurred by the flotsam (but not jetsam) of my mind at this moment:

Living by Cartesian principles

Famous nuns of the Reformation

Dangerous international eateries

Sexual embarrassments of early middle age

Now: search for editing blogs, and you yield 16,800,000 results! So in mustering the effrontery to make it 16,800,001, I wanted to do something different. Most blogs of this stripe, it seems, are dedicated to clarifying where apostrophes go, and the differences between “that” and “which.” Not that I’m above that, but, well…..I’m going to try something a little different. Like favoring the jetsam over the flotsam, and eschewing the schoolmarm approach. Because there are blogs a-plenty dedicated to that proposition.

What actually is rare is an editing blog where the visitors ever comment. So let’s buck the trend. Check out the new digs and say something – I dare you.

New for 2009: hanging out my shingle!

Color me sentimental, but I decided January 1 was the perfect day to go live with my new business: SuperScript Editorial Services, LLP. Yeah, the name pretty much says it all. For years I’ve been taking on various editing gigs as they fell into my lap; now I’m ramping things up a notch by actually seeking new projects. Tell all your friends. Right now.

Something that’s special about this new endeavor is that while I’m happy to take on all kinds of editing projects, I’m hoping that over time I’ll skew the bulk of the work toward developmental editing. Qu’est-ce que c’est? It’s a form of consultation, really, in which the editor works with an author as s/he writes. It may include discussion of the author’s intent, the structure of the work, and questions of style, among many other factors.

To date I have a good amount of experience working developmentally with non-fiction – less so with fiction. Yet I have the audacity to seek out such work because of the decades to my credit of dramaturgical consulting. True, the deep structure of a dramatic work is inherently different than a novel or a biography. But what crosses over is the sense of knowing how to work with a writer: when the writer needs reassurance as opposed to requiring serious criticism; when a vision should be teased out just as conceived and when it needs drawing out more fully.

{ Word o’clarification, however. At present, it’s best that I not do any dramaturgical consulting under the SuperScript banner. The reason: I perceive a conflict of interest. PCS employs me to be its resident dramaturg, and I perform such work in preparation for production, in addition to serving in a curatorial capacity for JAW and the regular season. And I would never want my editing business to be regarded as a back door into the company. If I ever retire from theater (and is that even possible?), this would be different, of course. }

SO. Special for you. Since I would like to get more experience as a developmental editor of fiction, I’m currently willing to assume two or three projects on a pro bono basis. Have you got a secret novel stashed away that needs to come out of the closet? Or a classic “monster in the box” waiting to be tamed into publishable shape? Maybe we can work together. Let me know. Let’s talk.