Writing, Schmiting...

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Writing, Schmiting...
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Requesting?

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Daphne Xu's picture

Is he requesting that the story be put through dissociated press?

That is an idea. What would happen if I put a story of mine through dissociated press?

-- Daphne Xu

This is only somewhat related.......

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D. Eden's picture

But the HR manager I have to deal with at work feels she has to change at least one word in anything you submit. It annoys the hell out of me - I have twice the education she does, not to mention years more experience, and in my humble opinion I am considerably more intelligent than she - but apparently I am not the only one she does this to.

I decided to test the fact that she does just because she can, so a few weeks ago when I had to write an employee up for excessive tardiness, I took the last write-up she sent me and simply changed the names and dates and then sent it to her. Of course, she found a few words to change in it that she felt were incorrectly used.

When I called her and told her that she had written it and sent it to me several months back she was completely embarrassed. Hopefully I got my point across.

Some people just have to change something because they can, and because it makes them feel superior.

D. Eden

Dum Vivimus, Vivamus

Reminds me of a dear friend of mine.

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Patricia Marie Allen's picture

I once worked a job where a dear friend of mine became my boss. It was good that I had an easy going relationship with him. I learned that no matter how well I'd thought out how to do a job he assigned me he invariably found a way to improve the process. So after that I started out by asking his advise on how to do the job. He would consider the project, offer his version as to how it should be done. I would then offer a way to improve on the process and most often he would acquiesce. Turns out he simply thought that anything could process could be improved on and the second thought was always better than the first.

I worked well for me and could then do the assigned jobs the way I wanted to.

Hugs
Patricia

Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann

Maybe it is insecurity or fear …

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… of being made redundant?

"If you do not need to change anything, then what do we need you for?"

So maybe she feels that she has to justify her position by changing some minor part of any document, just to make sure she keeps her job.

In journalism...

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erin's picture

In journalism they say that you have to let the editor piss in the prose so he will like the flavor better. :) Heinlein said this somewhere, too.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Adventures in publishing

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Iolanthe Portmanteaux's picture

Back in the twentieth century, I worked for several years in publishing, and at one point worked for a niche magazine. During the holidays, they suddenly decided to put out a special edition, but there was only a skeleton crew on hand -- which included yours truly.

There were several translated pieces in this number, so they were quickly sent out and quickly came back.

The content editor told me, "I want you to mark these up for the printer, but DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING. This translator is very famous, very highly regarded, and if you change something, it will not go well with you."

Fine. I did the minimal markup. Found a few typos and fixed them, and off they went to the printers.

A few days later I got a call from the production editor. She was at the printers and asked me to come IMMEDIATELY. She sat me in an office and gave me the galleys, fresh from the printer. They had printed the original foreign-language version of the text side by side with the English translation. The English side was longer by a mile, sometimes by two pages. (I'm not exaggerating.)

"We need the English cut down so it's the same length as the original," she told me.

"But I was told that I can't touch this guy's prose!" I protested.

"Do a good job," she said, "but do it as fast as you can." She handed me a blue pencil and left.

I started chopping like mad: simplifying verbs, condensing phrases, replacing long sentences with short, and back the galleys went.

It took me three passes to make those articles the same length, and I never heard any blowback from anyone.

- io

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