The Editing Process

In my line of work I receive many many proof copies - samples - of books which will release into the market in the next few months. I get everything from thrillers, general interest fiction and non-fiction, religious titles and romances to our more amusingly termed genres. Each of these proofs are less than perfect copies of the finished product. There are spelling errors, occasionally print errors, zero jacket designs, sometimes the text is laborious because it hasn't yet been cleaned up by an editor... Ag, there can be all sorts "wrong" with the book. And yet proofs are designed to give people like me a very strong feel for what the final product will be like. We must then bridge the gap between unfinished and final copy and sell the product to people in the know - bookshop managers and so forth.

Now imagine we could create "proof" copies of our own lives and future lives, complete with unfinished "covers" (our looks which will change, without prior notice), odd idiosyncracies which flow throughout (bad learned behaviours and childhood traumas), and plot twists which are hard to follow (sometimes we just can't decide exactly how we'd like things to work out). We'd present these "proofs" to our prospective partners and employers to peruse and decide whether or not they'd like to have you - in your exposed entirety - or not. There would be input from all sources - the designers (God), editors (your parents), marketing people (your friends) and others. It would be possible to get feedback so that positive changes could be made in advance, and then you'd send out another "proof" copy to, say, an employer who would like to know more about you. It'd be as simple as saying "Sure, I'll send that right on over. It's a summary of my life so far and the rest as it shall happen, give or take an event or 2."

What do you think? Yay or nay? I like the idea of constant change and improvement, perhaps that's why I like the idea of a proof being a work in progress. Sure the final book is gorgeous and smells nice and looks pretty and reads well, but really its the result of months of hard work put into making it what it is. And even then some books bomb and others sell and sell. Maybe its more about seeing the the innate value in each and every book, for what it is, in the same way as we should look beyond the obvious in each person and see the work in progress and the achievements which have been hard won. Imagine what your life "proof" would be like to read, so far, and how would you like the next few chapters to turn out...

Strange Days...

It's been an absolute age since last I posted and quite frankly, I have no excuse. Ok, I had an op on my foot and recovery wasn't fun, but should that have stopped me? And I've been busy - with work, with friends, with moving into a new house, but should those things have prevented me blogging? Surely if writing the odd post is something you want to do, you'll prioritise it and get it done regularly? Apparently, not so. But all things aside, I'm back and I'm making a fresh start. So...

Today I want to talk about weird things. You know, when you're merrily going about your day and you witness something just, well, odd, and you realise that some people are just weird. For instance, in an effort to find boxes for my recent move I popped into the local Pick 'n Pay to ask if they had any and while I waited I watched a man behave strangely. He walked up to where the eggs were stacked, chose the smallest box and then, without skaam, transferred a box of jumbo eggs into the place of the little eggs, which he placed carefully into the "jumbo" box. Who does that?

And then later in the day I watched a man walk down the eisles in Checkers and help himself to cans of food which he placed inside his oversized jacket. When I pointed this out to a person packing shelves, he stopped, watched the man, and then shrugged at me and went back to work. Amazing. Truelly amazing.

And that's not all, I've now become alert to this weirdness and I've been seeing all sorts of weird things ever since, almost like I went through a one day initiation of weirdness and now I'm alert to it. I live in a special city, Cape Town, but now I'm seeing all kinds of "special". As my friend A would say; "That's a special kind of f***ed up right there!"

What strange or notable things have caught your eye lately? I'm not talking oh-my-god-bring-down-the-city kind of weird, just, well, odd stuff.

Yours in pursuit of odd
A.