David C. Hughes, Writer

“For the LORD your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your JOY will be complete." –Deuteronomy 16:15

Archive for the tag “The Writing Life”

01 May 2014
7 Comments

I’m Ruined: Confessions of an Editor (2014-05-01 Daily)

 

 I’M RUINED: CONFESSIONS OF AN EDITOR

by

David C. Hughes

 

“There are two typos of people in this world: those who can edit, and those who can’t.”         

                                                                          ― Jarod Kintz

 

I’m ruined as a reader.  Absolutely ruined.  I edit everything, and when I say everything, I mean everything!  Not only books, articles, and blog posts, but billboards, construction signs, and advertising splashed across panel trucks can’t escape my squinted eyes or furrowed brow.  Last Christmas Mary and I exchanged T-shirts as gifts.  The one I gave to her declares, “Those who can, TEACH.  Those who can’t, pass laws about teaching.”  It matches her attitude, her gift of sarcasm, and her calling to homeschool our daughter.  The T-shirt Mary boxed, wrapped, and placed under the tree for me says, “Grammar Police: To correct and to serve.”  Yep, that’s me to a T.  Shirt.

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy reading.  A lot.  I’ve loved to read ever since my dad taught me how when I was four, and reading definitely played into my passion and desire to write.  I remember sitting next to Dad on the avocado green vinyl couch, his arm around my shoulder as I read story after story out of a children’s encyclopedia and activity book.  He guided me with patience, corrected me with gentleness, encouraged me with love, and I never quit. Even now, at any given time, I’ve got three or four books started, and when I finish one I’ll start another right away without having finished any of the others.

But over the years my perfectionism, developed as a child and honed as an adult, has resulted in my looking at life in hard binary rather than in fuzzy logic.  My formal education in electrical engineering and the resulting corporate career spanning almost three decades did nothing but sharpen the edge of the critical sword I wield with relish, and over the years I’ve found a certain pleasure in tearing apart (and putting back together, of course) other people’s documentation.  I can relate to the spirit of reconstruction after war: my hope is that the end result is better than the original.  In the meantime, let’s blow up things.  As my reputation as an effective technical editor grew, one of my coworkers started to use me as a weapon: “If you don’t get this document right this time,” he’d tell our suppliers, “I’ll sic Dave Hughes on you.”  Nine times out of ten the engineering writers complied.  I exist to serve.

Editing definitely plays to the “J” in my Myers-Briggs assessment.  One time a friend of Mary told her she admired my non-judgmental attitude; I think I spewed water out of my nose as I choked on the irony of that statement.  As a Spiritual gift, mercy languishes under the weight of the other gifts in my heart, barely able to raise its head off the floor let alone stand and deliver.  Just ask my daughter.  Don’t get me wrong, though: when it comes to people I try really hard to be Christ-like, accepting, loving, and forgiving.  But when it comes to people’s actions, or more specifically, their writing, I’m more like Saul of Tarsus before God smote him on the road to Damascus; I make a good editorial Pharisee.  You need to have thick skin to hire me as your editor, but I guarantee that if you stick with me as I drain my red pen all over your manuscript you’ll love the results.

As I said, though, I’m ruined as a reader.  I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll put a book down (or hurl it across the room) based not only on the story but on the sheer number of editorial mistakes it contains.  Like a field of burdocks it’s hard to get past these errors without them clawing at me, and if I do manage to continue, they cling to me until I finally give up, bury my head in a pillow, and scream.  Recently I ground to a halt reading a new release by a New York Times #1 bestselling team of authors; much to my grievous disappointment, I couldn’t go on.  Just couldn’t.  Good thing I picked the book up from the bargain bin.  Hmm, maybe that’s why I found it in the bargain bin.  And it seems with the advent of self-publishing the number of books smacking my bedroom wall has grown geometrically if not exponentially.

I’m a chronic sign-reader, and Mary wonders how I haven’t gotten into more accidents because I seem to pay more attention to the billboards than to the road.  On a drive to the Dallas-Fort Worth mid-cities one day I noticed a bright orange construction sign glaring at me from the side of the road: “Caution Low Clearence.”  Ugh!  Use a stinkin’ dictionary, for goodness sake!  Or Spellcheck!  Another day, on my way to DFW Airport, I read a large billboard advertising a hotel chain: “’This place is roomy and comfortable.’ no one said ever.”  No, no, no, no, NO!  You need a comma before the tag line, not a period!  Argh!  How do these things get through the editorial committee?!  But the one topping my collection of gross editorial mistakes is the panel truck adorned with an obviously expensive, professionally executed advertisement for a urethane foam insulation business. “Urithane” it said.  Urithane?!  I mean, c’mon, it’s your business!  Ugh!

So, as you can see, I’m ruined as a reader.  Absolutely ruined.  But putting all humility aside, I do make a pretty good editor.  And the more I read, especially lately, the better I become.  Now where’s that red pen?  Time to go back to the beginning and clean up all my typos . . . .

 

Copyright ©2014 by David C. Hughes

 

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29 Apr 2014
5 Comments

The Last Word (2014-04-29 Daily)

 THE LAST WORD

by

David C. Hughes

 

 

“Beginning in itself has no value, it is an end which makes beginning meaningful, we must end what we begun.”

          ― Amit Kalantri

 

On April 24, 2014, after almost three years of worrying, researching, interviewing, writing, imploring, and praying, I typed the last word of the last chapter needed to finish The Epiphany of Joy manuscript. The word was “said.” Yep, just plain ol’ “said.” It was in the middle of a paragraph in the middle of a sentence in the middle of a page near the end of chapter 16, an ooch past the two-thirds mark in the overall manuscript. I’d written the literal last word of the book a month prior (that word was “others”). That’s just the way I write.

When I wrote my first novel, On the Inside, which, incidentally, also took three years to produce, I generated the prologue and the epilogue first, then filled in the middle. I knew how I wanted the book to start, and I knew how it had to end, and I knew–sort of–how the story would transition from page 1 to page 510. So for several years the literal last word, “Medallion,” languished in a file somewhere on my computer’s hard drive, waiting patiently for me to type the actual last word so it could finally meet its predecessors. It did, and I was done. Yet I wasn’t, not in the least.

Almost twenty years later, when I typed the word “said” in The Epiphany of Joy, the feeling which descended over me was eerily reminiscent of when I typed the last word of On the Inside: it was anticlimactic. No bells clanged, no confetti fell from the ceiling, no applause erupted, no grunt of satisfaction or even acknowledgement emanated from my pursed lips; the only indication I’d even finished the manuscript was the muted “click” of the last keystroke on my laptop. Then you know what I did? I scrolled back to the beginning of the chapter and started cleaning it up. There was no hurrah, no deep breath of finality, no popping cork (the popping cork happened hours later). Chef Ramsay didn’t hug me and present to me a check for $250,000 and a new J.A. Henckels 16-piece knife set. I didn’t even call Mary to tell her the good news, and at least five minutes ticked by before I stopped to pray a word of thanks to God, the One who started this whole crazy deal.

And you know what I realized? For a writer, there’s never a last word. Never. Oh, we finish essays, we complete blog posts, we bring novels to a satisfying conclusion, we write “The End” at the bottom of a manuscript with a flourish, but it never really is “The End,” is it? Alas, no. It’s like the closing sequence of the 1958 horror classic, The Blob. As the helicopter flies over the flat, frozen tundra carrying the box containing the alien Jell-O mass, the words “The End?” pop onto the screen. The inflection rises as the scene fades to black, turning a traditional–and expected–declaration of finality into an open-ended question. And so it is with us: the inflection always rises because, like a mortician, a writer’s work is never done. Never. “The End” indicates the conclusion of one chapter of life and the teeing up of the next, a small section break inserted between one adventure and another.

But isn’t that the beauty of this craft? There are a million words in the English language, and, like the Blob, it continues to expand and grow as people touch it. The factory of human imagination, technology, functionality, and necessity churns out word after glorious word and adds them to the product selection, then we writers get to take those words and assemble them in infinite ways, limited only by our fears and misbeliefs. The joy isn’t in the finishing but in the process; “The End” is merely a road sign on the journey telling us we’re still heading in the right direction. “The End” is the signature on a masterpiece, or the baby’s breath amongst a handful of yellow roses. “The End” is not. Period.

As writers, our ordination, indeed, our obligation, is to take the pallet of a million words and craft as many beautiful combinations of those little pieces of experience, those iotas of pathos and jots of ethos, into our life’s work, our lifeblood, in the hope our careful (or not-so-careful) arrangement of the heart might inspire another heart to laugh, cry, love, live . . . awaken.

For me, “The End” is always the beginning. In fact, the title of my novel’s epilogue is “The Beginning.” No, for me, “The End” proves I’m just getting started. For me, “The End” is a rally cry to lower my head, raise my eyes, and charge forward. “The End” separates the real writers from those merely going through the motions; for real writers, “The End” is a carriage return rather than a hard stop. As Amit Kalantri said, “we must end what we begun,” but for a writer, there is no last word, only the next one.

 

-THE END-

 

Copyright ©2014 by David C. Hughes

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