For frustrated editors

Reached your politeness limit as an editor?

Wish you had a tool to express your frustration with the flabby and the mundane?

Here you go.

Courtesy of Armin Wiebe, who has polished a few nuggets in his time.

Why blog? A lament

My colleague Kenton Larsen, a loquacious, sagacious and occasionally salacious, not to mention ubiquitous (but not mendacious. Never mendacious!) blogger, laments the cessation or at least the pausing of blogging by Creative Communications students now that their semester is finished, and I concur with his argument about the value of blogging as practice writing – in fact, it’s all practice until somebody gets a job or gets paid for writing; as Samuel Johnson is quoted, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."

Define money broadly as professional experience and I think Dr. J is in agreement with Kenton, who writes:

What makes the blog assignment a “professional” endeavor is that it gives potential employers a sense of how well a person can write, how often, “voice,” style, interests, sense of humor, anxieties, etc.

As for the returning CreComm students who are still blogging weekly, 10 of those are fulfilling a requirement of my Intersession editing course. Last blog entry is due tomorrow, folks!

Perhaps the non-bloggers don’t need money.

Or could it be a simple case of scolionophobia?

Editing Shakespeare

Who’s afraid of William Shakespeare? Not the adventurous Winnipeg thespians Shakespeare in the Ruins.

The 18-year-old theatre company has done a serious edit on a pair of the bard’s historical plays, condensing them into two hours of swashbuckling, punning fun.

Judging from Saturday night’s performance of Henry IV Parts I and II, I think Will would have endorsed their cuts and thrusts.

The company’s Sarah Constible trimmed the 53 characters of Part II (plus a handful more from Part I) and approximately six-hour running time to multiple roles for nine actors including herself.

The resulting performance maintains the high energy for which the company is renowned.

Constible’s edit deserves a lot of the credit for keeping the action coming while retaining space for the guts of Shakespeare: his rich language, especially that of poet-buffoon Sir John Falstaff.

This staging certainly fulfils the company’s ideal: “Our ongoing commitment to making the works of Shakespeare accessible and enjoyable for everyone (through clarity of text and unusual environmental staging).”

In the last couple of years SIR has withdrawn from the promenade-style performances that originated in the ruins of the St. Norbert monastery.

Now they stand and deliver under a tent on a parking lot in Assiniboine Park. It’s less adventurous than their earlier settings, granted, but I was pleased to see a dozen or so preschoolers clinging to the outside of the fence, giggling and shouting during the battle scene.

A 400-year-old adult play that grabs kids? Now that’s good editing.

Editing carrots and parsnips

Inspired by my students' growing definitions of editing, here is a garden-variety blog post.

I have been editing parsnips and carrots in our Back 40 (square metres, not sections).

The seeds of these root vegetables are too small to plant individually, so you sprinkle them in a row, then stand back and watch 'em explode.

The result is a row of  tiny plants, competing for room to grow.

Unless they are thinned out, you'll get a mass of roots too skinny for human consumption.

Because we want crunchy, delicious carrots and shapely, tasty turnips for roasting, I thinned out those delicate growths, leaving fewer than half to compete for nutrition and sunlight. The losers go into the compost, of course.

This summer I will thin them several more times: ruthless, Old Testament style editing.

As Lyle Lovett says, Joshua Judges Ruth.

The New Yorker screws up, too

For 90 years The New Yorker has been North America’s epitome of stylish journalism.

As an intriguing weekly package of writing and drawing, one of the few remaining general-interest magazines to publish fiction and poetry in every issue, it has no competition.

There’s a dandy website, too, with intriguing blogs and daily news updates, as well as an iPad edition.

The magazine charges for much of its content, and most Tuesdays I eagerly pay $7 for the paper copy. The eclectic mix of topics and exemplary fact checking and editing create a rewarding read.

But reader, I have found a mistake in The New Yorker.

In the May 9 issue the fourth letter to the editor discusses political campaign spending. It contains this sentence: “The other two largest sources, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads, spent approximately $140 million dollars.”

Which should it be? $ or dollars?

The answer is $, judging by the previous sentence and by other articles in that issue.

That’s the thing about copy editing: Do it well and hardly anyone notices. Screw up and any schmuck can catch you.

Hey, Whipple, edit this

On Tuesday morning eight adventurous students will start my Red River College Intersession course, Editing Print and Online Media.

For seven weeks, two mornings a week, we will practise editing – making print and online materials make sense for audiences.

There will be some spelling and grammar and a bit of numbers.

We will spot screwups in written work from books to billboards to building walls, and in online material from everywhere.

But, more importantly, we will look at how editing and organizing can improve all sorts of writing and other activities.

You can follow the students’ weekly blogs on the list on the right side of this screen.

The last time I taught this course, in the fall of 2010, I was impressed by how broadly students were able to define editing. Check out some of their blogs:

Neil Babaluk wrote about editing video, a time-consuming but rewarding task.

Shelley Cook discussed editing political priorities (are you listening, newly elected MPs?).

Stacia Franz edited Europe (Napoleon and others tried but failed).

Sandy Klowak considered the editing that should go into novels but often doesn’t.

Kimberlee Lawson edited time (I wish I could).

Keep spotting those screwups!

It's Intersession time!

On May 11 a small but select group of students will begin taking my Intersession course Editing Print and Online Media.

In the newsroom at the Princess Street campus of Red River College in Winnipeg we will work on improving our skills at organizing and editing material for ... yes, print and online media.

You can register for the course until the day it begins. There are no prerequisites other than a good understanding of English, so you do not need to be a Creative Communications student to join us.

The students who have registered so far have completed the first year of CreComm. As part of that curriculum they have created the blogs that are listed on the right side of this page.

One of their assignments will be to blog at least weekly on a topic related to the course, so you will be able to follow the public part of our learning.

Another assignment is Spot the Screwup. Students look for mistakes online, on billboards, on bus boards, in all kinds of print media. Then they fix them.

It's a dishearteningly easy assignment. Guess that means there will always be jobs for editors.