Where We Also Blog

The editorial department at my job has started a new blog. Editorial Ephemera is a place for us to collect tips, tricks, tools, and tidbits as well as whatever else catches our passing fancy.

Some of it will pertain only to us, but feel free to stop by for some copyediting/proofreading tips and interesting tidbits about the travel and publishing industry as you see fit.

Currently Reading:

Gurl lives in an orphanage in New York and is one of a rare few "leadfoots" who cannot fly. Not even a little bit.

But she can do something else.

When she finds a rare cat on a midnight excursion (or does the cat find her?) Gurl discovers her hidden talent.

Bug can't remember where he was before he was at the orphanage, but he knows one thing. The cat he found in the hallway chose him, not Gurl, and he wants to get it back.

OK, I have a new favorite toy, and it's called Wordle!

I pasted in the text of the first few chapters of my novel and got this masterpiece:



Very cool.

Almost gives you shivers…

I *love* good writing, and this profile of Barak Obama in today's New York Times is a great example of it.

You just know that the author knew this would be his conclusion before he even started. And for good reason. It's a doozy:

“I love when I’m shaking hands on a rope line and”— he mimes the motion, hand over hand — “I see little old white ladies and big burly black guys and Latino girls and all their hands are entwining. They’re feeding on each other as much as on me."

He shrugs; it’s that distancing eye of the author.

“It’s like I’m just the excuse.”

Booklust

When I was a kid — I guess we'd call me a "tween" nowadays — I read voraciously, adictively. I would lock myself in a quiet place for hours and hours on end. I distinctly remember my mom chiding me one time, telling me to come out of my room and "be a person" for a while.

Probably there aren't TOO many moms who have that problem with their teenagers. ;) At least, not addicted to books.

I've been rediscovering my addiction passion lately. I've been reading the "Uglies" series by Scott Westerfield, and I CANNOT. STOP. READING.

I spent three hours yesterday finishing "Specials," the third in the series, and I went to the library today to get the fourth.

I read sixty pages when I got home, and then put it aside. I need to be a person for a while.

But it's still sitting in there.

Waiting.

Thoughts and Books

It's becoming increasingly apparent to me that I don't write when I'm unhappy. I don't do much of anything I'm "supposed" to do (exercise, eat right), but it seems particularly hard to force writing.

This past week has been something of an unhappy week for me, for various reasons. I turned to journaling to help me through it, but I didn't do much of any writing on my project.

And maybe that's OK. It seems worse to force it. It seems like it would only make me feel worse to write crap, and have to deal with the subsequent self-doubt that would emerge. I'm much better at dealing with crap when I'm feeling generally positive about the rest of my life.

~*~

On a lighter note, I finished "The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney" last week, and quite enjoyed it. It was a library read, and not something I would normally have picked up, but I am trying to broaden my horizons.

Now I'm working on "Specials" and man — why didn't I pick this up sooner? It's everything I love about scify, and well written to boot. So yay for that.

YA

There's a great post from Boing Boing's Cory Doctrow about good reasons to visit the YA section of your bookstore.