January 31, 2013

• Where's the "undo" button?

  I never thought I'd say this, but really wish I hadn't accepted this new author. The owner of the publishing company asked me to edit his manuscript because she was going on an emergency medical leave, and I stupidly said yes. The ms is nearly 100,000 words long and I was being given less than a month to work on it... AND I had another ms due shortly before it. So I finished up my other ms, and got started on this one with three weeks to go. 

  Then the head line editor tried to bump up my due date to give more time to the line and copyeditors since the ms was so big, and I had to say "no dice!" since I had only just gotten the thing. I kept the managing editor in the loop so she knew what was going on, and it seemed no one had realized that the boss transfered it to me last minute making me wonder if I was supposed to have had him to begin with or they just weren't informed. 

  So I do the first edits over the next four days as I had two days off plus the weekend, and got them back to him saying I don't need them until sometime Thursday. He gets them back to me by Tuesday --obviously does NOT have a day job-- but I couldn't work on it until the weekend as I had to work. Yes, there were evenings but that's about an hours time to spare, tops, as I cannot stand to look at a computer screen for more than ten hours a day.

  He wanted the dratted thing back by Thursday! Um, even if I wasn't working I wouldn't have been able to get second edits back to him that fast. I have to read the entire freaking ms all over again, which is always slower the second time for multiple reasons: one, I hate reading books back to back and thus my concentration level is generally pretty low. two, he didn't use the track changes feature allowing me to see what changes he made. and three, it's freaking huge! 

  I told him I planned to devote my weekend to it and hoped to get it back to him early in the week... but then my parents had that huge fight and thus I couldn't get any work done. If I could have escaped the house I would have, but i know my parents. If they saw me I'd be detained and completely pulled into the fight. I tried working with earplugs, but I could hear through them AND my mother kept bursting into my room to give me updates on what my "father has done now!" and/or yell at me. Then on Sunday my grandparents came over for a visit and I was forced to socialize. 

  I told the author on Tuesday that I hadn't gotten as much done as I had hoped and would get the ms to him mid to late this week. He asked if we were still on track and I said yes, since we still had nearly two weeks left. Maybe I shouldn't have assumed he'd be able to get second edits finished himself in under a week because he isn't pleased with me. So much so that he went to the managing editor to state how nervous he was with my less-than-promptness.

  After working on the ms for three hours after my eight-hour shift at work (I even at supper at my desk and it went cold), I fell asleep when I decided to take a break. I woke up at 4:30am to find an email from the managing editor asking for a status update. Needless to say, I'm none to pleased about this. Apparently I wasn't reassuring enough, or professional enough, or who the heck knows what! 

  The boss-lady worked on this author's first manuscript but the company is her only job, she can probably rearrange her schedule to work on the author's time. I cannot do that. I am not taking time off from my day-job with a decent wage just to edit a manuscript I'll earn change on. Now I'm severely agitated and cannot get back to sleep, thus my rant. 

  SUMR

   

  • 5:15 am
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