The blogging hiatus is now over. We are completely finished with editing each individual chapter for the eBook and have sent them to the design team... And I gotta say, it's looking SO good!
 |
| Photo via Flickr |
I was put on the editing team (along with Nyssa Silvester and Ashley Nelson) with zero experience. I am planning on pursuing a minor in editing, but as of yet I haven't taken any classes and haven't really edited papers aside from classmates'.
Nyssa sent me a style sheet and my assignments-- 6 classmates' final drafts to do a first, medium edit. I was worried that I would be absolutely no help. After finishing the first chapter, Sam McGrath's, I sent it on to Nyssa for a second edit with this plea: "Please let me know what changes you made." When I received her email I was pleased with the results. She said, "Here's a copy of Sam's essay with the changes I made. I only took your edits out when they changed the voice of the essay or when they wound up obscuring the meaning. Overall, I think you did a very good job."
Nyssa's email was not only relieving but gave me ideas on how to be more effective. It helped with the rest of my edits, and the second edits sent to me by Ashley.
Using the Microsoft Word "Track Changes" feature, the editing team made grammar, punctuation, and minor content changes, sent them to the next editor in line via email, and then sent them to the author of the chapter so they could accept changes and send them back to Nyssa for the final look-through. This was easy and effective to get edits between editors and authors. I pretty much completed my entire assignment in two nights, long nights, but two nights nevertheless.
Of course, I have a lot to learn. But contributing in such an obvious way (this is what everybody who sees this eBook is going to read!) when I felt like I had nothing to contribute gave me a reason to continue at the fastest possible speed and do my best work. There wasn't too much stress either (but I only speak for myself; I bet Nyssa would say otherwise).
I feel good about the way the eBook is turning out. I have also found a lot of wonderful resources through this experience (like the online Chicago Manual of Style through the BYU Library). And I'm excited about where I'm going-- I like editing! Hooray!!
I'm so happy that you like editing! You're going to be really good at it. You haven't taken the classes yet and you were making excellent suggestions and queries. You definitely have an editorial eye that you'll be able to refine over the next few years--the rest is just learning the tools.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all your hard work.