h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... and how would we be going about that? Well, as the head copy-editor of the magazine, I just finished making my way through the packet of 29 submissions, grading each on a rubric adding up to a total score of 15 for each submission. It was a really fun exercise - as I myself had three submissions in the packet, it was interesting to see what other people had done, and I also liked seeing my peers' creative strengths and testing my strengths as a reviewer and grader. I expected a lot of tripe, but many of the submissions were genuinely fun to read and some were really stellar. The grading was blind - I recognised a few of my friends' distinctive styles, but by and large it was a broad, anonymous spectrum of the writing population of my school. A few favourites included:

A short piece about the writer's childhood experiences on an island. It was so identical to my own experiences on Saturna Island (in PR! - A17548329) that I liked it, and besides I very much liked the author's distinctive style.

A poem about feeling lonely and isolated. We get a lot of these in high school, as might be predicted, but this one stood out. It was written in complete sentences, but its compact style and reliance on metaphor and the sounds of words made it far more a poem than any sort of essay. This may have just been my personal preference, though, because I often have difficulty understanding more obtuse poetry.

Another piece about loneliness and depression and things, but this one was a first-person essay. My favourite genre to write in is the first-person essay, so I found it very interesting to read someone else's take on the genre, and she (I gathered from the content that it was a she) carried it off well. Her unique voice breathed life into a topic that's a tad overused.

A satirical piece attributing the character of today's world leaders to violent video games, while hypothesising that President Bush must have played Hello Kitty Adventures. I know this must have been my friend's work - I am a great admirer of his satire. This particular one made me laugh out loud.

An essay expressing concern at the overachiever ethic that is visited upon many university-bound students, leading to stress and burnout. It's an issue that's very close to my heart, and I like how the writer addressed it.

A piece (of my own authorship, I must confess) detailing my experiences with writer's block in coming up with a topic for my own litmag submission. It's very characteristic EMR - kinda self-centred and addresses the subject lightly, but with a more serious central message (god, I sound like an idiot analysing my own writing). I wasn't originally going to include my own submissions in the final favourites list I will have to present to the other staff, since it seemed presumptuous to toot one's own horn, but because of its discussion of the writing process I thought it might be appropriate as a sort of introductory piece to the magazine.

... I also wrote a piece that can be found at A16841559 in its expanded form (I had to abridge it to the 750-word limit for the litmag). Comments on the AWW thread are certainly welcome.

So yeah... that's my life. Yet another reason why I *know* I want to write and/or edit things for a living.

Traveller in Time on his head
"Did you not also do ?

( for Real Life )"

I completely forgot to mention my favourite submission in the packet!

This was the only real fiction that I liked in the packet (though there really wasn't that much of it on the whole). It's the story of a man and a woman, beginning when they're little (age 5) and tracing their lives. They start out as best friends, but because of economic disparity and different family values they grow slowly apart - but they eventually meet each other years later and marry. The ending was a bit trite, perhaps - a short of sugar-coated resolution - but some of the parts in the middle were really amazing. The author used this very simple, understated style with short sentences that got straight to the point - something I admire, with my own verbose inclinations. Certain parts of the middle literally made my eyes water up a bit.

The best submission to the magazine wins a prize donated by a San Diego business or event (I think it's museum passes or play tickets or something of that sort), and this would be my recommendation to win that award.

Yup, I was working on for the rest of the afternoon after I finished grading, TiT. And I could edit all night, if I didn't know I needed to wake up again in 7 and a half hours. That's one of the reasons I know I want to do this for a living.

I too share a desire to write, but not so much edit. One of my problems when I've tried to write a novel or short story is that I find it very difficult to go back and vet my own work as I know that to change a bit will lead me to change the entire thing, so everytime I try I never get anywhere.

That said it's still my long-time ambition to get published and use that fame to write an editorial column in a newspaper, though more and more I feel my desire to become a cricket commentator based on my love of how radio commentators of the sport divert into such odd tangents that I think my otiose knowledge and somewhat ready-wit would come in useful. That and flying to hot countries around the world to talk all day about a sport that I adore and then any other manner of subjects that spring up just sounds wonderful. How does one get into such obscure lines of work I wonder.

Which line of work? Radio commentating? I'm *sure* there's a college major for it.

Just make sure you know what you're getting into, Echo. Around here, you need to do time as an ed assistant first, so it takes years before an editor even does any editing. And it seems like the editors are either busy coddling and babying the authors or working on publicity.

Of course there's other sorts of editing. There's newspapers and magazines and blogs and ezines and h2g2...

What about copy-editing, Leo? That delightful, desk-bound pursuit of grammar pedants with no life... it's not exactly Editing with a capital "E', is it?

No because it's in the middle of the sentence, thus grammatically it should be a small e :p

There are certain times, though, surely, when capital letters are used to indicate emphasis - or am I living in the 18th century?

Editors who are sort of senior staff types, and the publishing sense of "editor" is sometimes capitalised - the Editor, the Assistant Editor, the Deputy Editor, etc. Somehow, no one ever capitalises the copy-editors.

I was merely beign facetious girl, chill Winston!

copy editors are like ghost writers. They don't officially exist. They're just there in the background doing their job, completely statusless.

...which left me musing about why skill doesn't seem to have much to do with status, and concluding that creativity is really the key. Copy-editors spend all day applying age-old rules to other people's stuff. Your typical capital 'E' editor is supposed to have a bit more vision.

Another thing to keep in mind: how much of what you do needs to be your own stuff?

So what is the difference between copy-editing and being an Editor? I think I'm doing both with the club mag I edit.

As far as I understand it, copy-editors are like h2g2 sub-editors. They don't actually get to make decisions or anything; they correct grammar and make sure the small stylistic points (such as spelling conventions, date formats, etc) are in line with the format of the publication.

Editors (capital 'E') are "in charge": just like the h2g2 Editors, or Shazz and I at , they have the ultimate say in what's featured in the publication. They may solicit submissions from established authors or accept ones already submitted. They work in a complex hierarchy that Leo can probably explain much better than me, but they find pieces that will conform to a publisher's or publication's style and that are well-written. Then they delegate.

Leo, I love copy-editing - correcting pedantic bits of grammar and style is one of my favourite hobbies. But lately I've come to realise that I *can* write my own things - particularly essays. I don't know if it's the sort of thing I could do to make money at, though, which is why I so like the idea of copy-editing. Getting to read other people's work in the publication process - and then correct it - is a great thought.

Grammar, style and clarity come naturally to me. (This is not a boast: we should only boast when we've had to put in effort). I can copy-edit anyone's work but my own.

My new head of department is what we call in Scotland 'a sweetie wife' - he likes the t's crossed and i's dotted in reports. I know that I can write lucid reports. But I also know that I'm bound to fail to spot the mis-typed sentences. When I read back what I've written, I see only what I *meant* to write.

In the olden days (before emr was born ), we wrote reports in longhand and gave them to a typist to 'word process'. The rule was that the report would then be proof-red *by someone else* before being submitted for approval. Nowadays, the route is straight from keyboard to boss.

Ain't technology marvellous? The humans are still left to pick up the pieces.

I think subeditors have more power than a copy-editor. Copy-editors and proofreaders just look for mistakes and correct them. Subbies can also rearrange things, reword things, etc, (only as necessary), more like a regular editor.

Hmmm. So is it that the h2g2 sub-editor is not analogous to the "real-life" British sub-editor? Cause I'd always been given to understand that sub-editor and copy-editor were relative terms.

Lynne Truss's "Nothing But a Lousy Free Packet of Seeds" has the best description of sub-editors that I have ever read. It's one of the things that made me think it would be entertaining to be one.

Nothing but a lousy...?

Honestly, I never heard of a subbie before h2g2.

It's a reference to the gardening magazine that's being edited in the story (which is more or less a novella, I suppose).