by rdw | 12 August 2024 | Editing, Writing
Would I ever have become editor of ES World, the in-house magazine of the biggest science publishers in the world, without Abi Daruvalla? No way. She was my first ‘real’ editor. Recently Abi and I chatted about her career as a journalist and professional...
by rdw | 11 May 2024 | Editing
I’m used to editing other people’s writing (it’s the day job1) and quite accustomed to editing my own writing (not the day job; let’s call it revising) but having Becoming Janice published by Iguana Books (April 2024) introduced me to the benefits of having my writing...
by rdw | 8 May 2024 | Editing
Editing on paper, bah! Since I’m cack-handed (nope, it doesn’t mean what you think; check it out) my handwriting has more in common with a Jackson Pollack painting than the winning entry for a prize in penmanship. Perhaps I should have been a doctor. Then at least my...
by rdw | 20 January 2024 | Editing
Some people can write with both hands. If you can, you’re ambidextrous, a word derived from the Latin roots ambi-, meaning “both”, and dexter, meaning “favorable” or “right”. I can’t write with both hands (I’m left-handed) but...
by rdw | 15 January 2024 | Editing
Now that we’ve dealt with the importance of having an A-1 attitude to fixing our mistakes, let’s move on to the B that stands at the basis of self-editing. No, not that “body language”, meaning the movements and gestures people and animals use...
by rdw | 10 January 2024 | Editing
Now that we’ve developed the write Attitude (ha-ha) and can read and write Body Language, let’s move on to the next stage of successful self-editing. This is sometimes called “mechanical editing.” In this round you should be doing very little...