(no subject)

[alg]

FOLLOW THE RULES: an article on following the rules of the playground -- because if you don't, we won't let you play in the sandbox.

Comments

[mimerki.livejournal.com]

I think (though I cannot be sure) that many writers don't understand that they can use any formatting they want to *write* the novel/short story/whatever. The editor will never see that, and if some editor were to magically intuit that I like Palatino, single-spaced and double-space between paragraphs I have trouble believing they would care as long as they didn't have to read it like that.

And fixing the format takes, like, five minutes. Really.

Heck, it's part of my process to shift over into correct manuscript format, print, and mark-up. It means I've changed process. I'm not writing this anymore, I'm editing it...

[alg.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of writers don't consciously understand about moving out of writing-mode and into editing-mode. (A lot of writers who have livejournals do, though, and I wonder if that is partially a function of moving out of fiction writing mode, and into non-fiction writing mode?)

[mimerki.livejournal.com]

It may be about shifting from one mode to the other. It's definitely not just fiction vs. non-fiction, because I see it as a tech writer too. (It's even more confusing as a tech writer: I don't own this Standard Operating Procedure. Some guy in manufacturing owns it. And he's going to ask for changes, and those changes will be to make it better because he knows what it needs to be faaaaaaar better than I do. So why is anyone upset?)

I think it may be about ownership or distance or some other thing I can't quite put my finger on. (And I'm certainly not the best at it, but I try.)

Writing vs. Editing Mode

[(Anonymous)]

That's an interesting point to mention. I do technical reviews and editing but I am also an aspiring fiction author and I definitely have to shift modes between the two. If I'm really tired, it takes a conscious effort to do so.

I think that my non-fiction (read technical) writing is another mode entirely - at least for me.

- Maura