kate rothwell

Yesterday, as I did my quarterly whine**, I tried to think of actual actions I regret, careerwise.  There are a few lost opportunities, stories that could have used more work, dumb moves, that kind of thing. But I only got a true pang of regret when I remembered the guy I interviewed about 20 years ago. Back then, I worked for local magazines and newspapers (one of which still exists wowee). I wrote free-lance until I got a job as an editor. I wrote dozens? hundreds? of articles during my feature article years. I interviewed all sorts of people--bee-keepers, collectors, athletes, politicians, movers-and-shakers, bankers, acrobats, a real cowboy, Billy Ripken, artists, actors, writers, chicken farmers, crooks, Other Women, home-schoolers, police officers, judges, lawyers.... Regrets. Right. When I think about all those interviews, two stand out: one with a woman lived in Frederick in the 1940s and another with a man who'd stormed Normandy during D-Day. I was supposed to writ...

You were right when you read your marked up manuscript and said to your significant other, "that bitch must be a sadist." It's true. Editors enjoy catching those mistakes! They love it. They cackle like happy, evil-genius children when they find that anachronism in your manuscript. They hum with pleasure when they root out your repetitive words. (You know you have them.) Every now and then a small "aha! I was right!" escapes their smiling lips. You know that means other people --you -- were wrong. They love their jobs. I know, because I work in the same space as a few (fiction and non-fiction) editors and they rub their hands with glee when they catch your mistakes -- unless you make too many. If you made a botched job of your draft, then they wear the look of a martyr as they plow through it. So make an editor happy today. Give your manuscript a few mistakes (misplaced modifiers are their favorite) but not too many. If you make too many mistakes, the editors...