deadlines

[winterbadger]

My editing friends will appreciate the humour of this situation. One of my colleagues brought me a job of copyediting to do (minor rewrites needed here and there, some technical editing, plus careful proofreading, checking for consistency, typos, etc.) and aksed if I could do it by Monday or the end of Monday at the latest. I pointed out I was going to be out tomorrow morning for minor surgery but could probably work in the afternoon, and said "Maybe."

He'd only brought me a few chapters and made a guess as to the length (maybe 200 pp.?) I got the whole thing today. Over 300pp of *laid-out*, formatted copy! :-) Monday morning? No, I don't think so...

Comments

[ariadnesthread.livejournal.com]

Kill 'em a lot. I've had that sort of crash editing job dumped on my desk before. People know that they've really annoyed me when I growl at them. They learn to back away slowly, making no sudden moves, lest I use a ballpoint like a throwing knife and give them an unplanned tracheotomy.

When it's our #%^&*( customer, I just smile and nod. Even if it means delivering five drafts of three volumes, 100-300 pages each, within the space of four days. And us with only one high-speed printer and a couple of very slow printers.

On the plus side for me, in a few weeks, my editorial days will be over for the forseeable future! Yay! I'll be happy to get back to analysis work. My only editing will be for my writing group (they know I'll catch the grammatical and punctuation and word choice errors in their submissions) and for other friends who ask for help. Maybe I can hang up my Grammar Bitch crown.....except for when I *choose* to wear it.

[winterbadger]

I explained gently that there were ~100 more pages than we had discussed and I was going slower than I had expected, and he said it would be no problem to deliver Wed or Thurs. Chris is a sweetie.