Erotica author, aka Elspeth Potter, on Writing from the Inside

Sunday, April 12, 2009

I love you, Arthur Plotnik

The Elements of Editing: A Modern Guide for Editors and Journalists, by Arthur Plotnik

"What kind of person makes a good editor? When hiring new staff, I look for such useful attributes as genius, charisma, adaptability, and disdain for high wages." [p. 1]

"...self-serving, retentive, fastidious, fetishistic, and even some aesthetic and ethical types of compulsiveness have no place in mass communications under deadlines..." [p. 2]

"A polite name for hounding people is "nudging," and systematic nudging is "following up"...virtually nothing happens when it is supposed to happen without well-timed reminders." [p. 5]

"Is editing like processing fat into soap or packaging toilet tissue? Yes and no. Some editorial products do call to mind these commodities." [p. 11]

3 comments:

  1. Love you, too, Victoria. Down with dysfunctional compulsiveness!

    Art Plotnik

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  2. "A polite name for hounding people is "nudging," and systematic nudging is "following up"...virtually nothing happens when it is supposed to happen without well-timed reminders."

    Heh. That.

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  3. I swoon! *searches for sal volatile*

    ReplyDelete