Marginal Notes
posted: August 23, 2012
Small World
You'�d think that editing in a small town in Massachusetts would be peaceful. But this year much of the tumult of the world has been showing up at my door.
One of my clients lost family members to a suicide bombing in Iraq and had to leave her home in Lebanon in part because of the growing civil war in Syria. Another client from Bangladesh wrote a book � a fictional exploration of the dangers of Islamic extremism � that may well place him under a fatwa. And another�s novel is based on his escape from North Korea and his brother�s continued captivity there.
Editing a book can be an intimate act, and I often come to care for my clients enough to worry when I see them affected by events that, over here, are only headlines. All I can do is help them make their books better. I wish I could do more.
A year ago I could just ignore what was on the news. But it isn't happening to strangers any more. I'm often disturbed by this connection to madness and cruelty, though I like feeling involved with the hard truth of the world. And my tiny corner of it becomes even more peaceful than it was.
posted: 22 May 2012
A New Website at Last!
If you’re a regular visitor, don’t panic. You’re not lost. The old dial-up-friendly version, with pages designed to look like typewritten manuscript, is gone. Dial-up is dead, and it’s been a long time since the post office delivered a hefty chunk of paper manuscript.
But this faster-paced e-world has made it possible to include before, during, and after samples of line-editing in three different genres. Those who have never seen line-editing can finally understand what a good tool it is for fixing a book and understanding writing techniques. I’ve also expanded the Writing Advice pages and added a list of useful links on this page.
Here in Marginal Notes, I’ll be sharing whatever drifts across my mind or desktop that I think may be useful to aspiring writers. If you’d like to comment or join a discussion, just go to the Dave King Editorial Services Facebook Page. I’d open up discussions here, but I don’t have time to weed out all the spam, unseemly language, and brawlers. I’ll let Mark Zuckerberg and his pals do that for me.