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Surprise, surprise

June 27th, 2011 at 02:19 am

As I wrote on my nature/gardening blog, you never know what's going to show up in my yard. This morning, I was up quite early, around 5:30 am. A short time later, as I ate my morning breakfast cereal, I caught sight of movement just outside the kitchen window.

It hurried on by over the blue stone footpath that runs along the north side of the house, just 5 feet or so from my home.

A gray fox! I've only seen fox a handful of times here in the past 15 years, and they've always been red foxes at that. So this was quite a special sighting. He was gone in a flash.

In other news, I began editing the novelist's book. I can see it's going to take me several weeks to do. There's quite a bit of editing. She doesn't always use complete sentences. I suppose that might be all right if you chalked it up to one's own unique "style," here and there, but I don't think it should be so prevalent throughout the entire story.

So it's just stuff like that. The picture I am getting is that while she says the stories just flow out of her effortlessly, she's more of a story teller than a writer, because when it comes to the nitty gritty of working with the English language, she doesn't seem that interested in getting it right. I think she's more interested in telling the story.

Although I'm getting paid a flat rate, I'm keeping track of time spent on it anyway because I want to see what it would work out to based on actual time spent. It could come out to very little!

Mowed the grass today and came upon the smallish toad I saw hopping about the other day, so I gave him wide berth.

Did some grocery shopping this morning. That was my Sunday.

5 Responses to “Surprise, surprise”

  1. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1309148636

    I wonder how she'd take it if you suggested that she dictate it, and then you transcribe it? Or would that not be any better?

  2. ceejay74 Says:
    1309149654

    Wow, I've never seen a gray fox in "person"! That would be a thrill.

    There are sentence fragments that are clearly for emphasis, and then there are ones that are obviously mistakes or amateurish writing. Good luck with that assignment; I hope you don't end up billing really low!

  3. patientsaver Says:
    1309170990

    No, I think trying to write from a recorded transcript would be much worse! In order to get this job, I matched the price she told me someone else had said they'd do it for, so I'm getting $1,000 and it'll be up to me not to spend unlimited amounts of time trying to get something perfect.

    So if, say, I do it in 40 hours (1 week), the pay would not be bad, $25/hr. If it takes me 2 weeks, it'll just be $12.50 an hour. I'm happy I got this job so I'm not complaining.

  4. Joan.of.the.Arch Says:
    1309181366

    Interesting. Are you editing before she even sends it in to her publisher? If so, won't it have a at least one more round of editing and proofreading anyway?

  5. patientsaver Says:
    1309181869

    Unless you're already published, or are exceedingly good, it's very hard to get anything published as a new author these days. She's decided to self-publish and promote the book herself.

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