A Thorny Decision & Editor Copyedit Consultation (16/09)

In Retrospect 23
This post is a streamlined extract of [CLASS] #33: Wednesday September 16th Class. That post was uploaded on 19/09/20, but this one has been corrected to the day of the actual class.

In Section 1, I discussed the secret I had been heavily debating on either revealing or concealing in the end. I personally think it's a big detail but I liked the idea of teasing the audience (who might suspect that I'm keeping a secret). This all comes from Peta Murray's advice about "Deep Listening". Readers who are unable to pick up on the secret wouldn't have been Deep Listening. Granted, I haven't made it very obvious, but it's there as a cheeky little treat.

In Section 2, I briefly went over my consultation with Carly, going over the copy edits in my piece. I didn't go into much detail there, but it's still a noteworthy event to place into the Folio.

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Section 1: Thornier Decisions in the Essay

Task
"Choose & highlight one of the thornier decisions you have been weighing up in a particular sentence/paragraph of your essay. A specific place where you have wondered, 'Should I change this or not? Should I follow this suggestion or not?'"

I mean, the ultimate non-edit related decision I had to make was regarding this sentence: "There are no secrets left worth telling." There is one left, but it's really big and I don't have the word capacity to fit it in. But I liked the idea that the audience will perceive that sentence as quite possibly, a lie. It still grants N, G and I a little privacy, something I can still hold sacred about the day. 

After all, I'm merely concealing the truth, not lying about it... and it isn't quite so ground-breaking, so... ; ) I'm enjoying the prospect of toying with the reader a little there.

But the more edit-related decision would be how to unpack and make clear the following long sentences (they're already fixed but this post is pretending we haven't done that yet, ssh). I understand from my years of high school English that the longer a sentence is, the more likely you'll lose control of it.

• "Despite my underlying paranoia about inadvertently bumping into a family member who might mistake a guy I’m with as my boyfriend—not to mention my natural modesty surrounding anything indecent—being cooped up for months had led me to be more daring."
• "But he wasn’t about to let my self-righteous bullshit get in the way; saying no to punish myself, and treating any possible meet up only as a reward to finishing my assignments—which ultimately would have only made me more depressed . But initially I wouldn’t accept his suggestion."

(I didn't get to share this. The first part of class just slipped away without us realising it.)

Section 2: Editor Consultation

Um... as for the actual editor consultation? I don't have much to say. I ran Carly through which comments and track changes I agreed with or changed, as a thumbs up for the submission on Friday. I felt a little guilty that Rhianna had less time but I think they wrapped up just in time anyway for us all to meet back in the main room to share what we had done. Phew for that!

That's all for Wednesday.