Bad Quote Quotient - Part 4 of 5

If you've seen Parts 1 through 3, you know that these have all had a bit of a theme. Today we look at some of the relationship- and life-based quotes.

• Never divorce and if you are not married yet, pray God to give you a wise wife

• No matter the situation you are in, never worry and you will find the way out, at the end the angels and people in your neighborhood will celebrate you. 

And, of course, being a child of the 70s (or 80s, depending on how you look at it), while the first one made me kind of cringe/shrug, the second one made me go to a much happier place.

Join me there, won't you? (Then tune in on Wednesday for my favorite BQQs from this round.)

Bad Quote Quotient - Part 3 of 5

Okay... If you've read Parts 1 and 2, you've been forewarned that today's post might be a bit beyond the realm of things you'd say in polite company. But, really, it's all in how you read the turn of phrase that the author used.

Even so, if you're easily offended by suggestive material, please don't read this. Come back on Monday, when there will be a Sesame Street video included. (Yes, really.)

And, yes, I know that this is only funny because it is based in idiomatic language and probably isn't funny to a lot of people, but here it is, anyway:

• Then he came with them on the earth.

That probably wasn't worth all of the build-up, was it? Oh well... It's just... I dunno... it's funny to me.

Bad Quote Quotient - Part 2 of 5

Assuming you saw Tuesday's post, you know what's going on, here.

Today, we have the start of what seems to have been a Biblical workout regimen. Or something.

I mean... If you see the paintings and sculptures of that era, most of the people are represented as being pretty ripped, so maybe this was the start of that?

• The way to get this excellence level is to exercise you in it. 

• [Psalms] gives believers the power to work out in Jesus' name.

Reminder - I've got a kind of racy one for tomorrow, so feel free to skip over Part 3 of 5 and come back for Part 4 of 5 - complete with a vintage Sesame Street video - if you're worried about it. 

Bad Quote Quotient - Part 1 of 5

I have been working on the same manuscript for the past four months. Yes, four. Usually, I work on one - or four - manuscripts per month. But I've been working on this one manuscript (okay, with other tasks along the way) for the past four months.

As you might imagine, a manuscript of that length lent itself to some doozies of bad quotes. After some serious consideration, I've decided to post a few of the best over the next few days.

You'll definitely want to tune in for the final one in the list (and, you know, all the rest, obviously).

Oh. I should mention that the book has a Biblical background. In part 3 of 5, I'll be posting a couple of things which are a tad off-color, if you read them as written. (I'll remind you of that warning at the start of that post.)

Let's start with some of the ones that are just weirdly written:

• How comes that the dead body which has no faith got healing?

• Whether you have made the good choice by choosin3g this, or have choose the other... (yes, the 3 is from the original)

• ... as it is wtitten...

 And the final one for today is a particularly Christmas-y typo:

• "Lord, who may dwell in your holly hill?"
  
  

Why I Edit

People occasionally ask me why I work as an editor. It's obviously not a glamorous job. It's not an "in the spotlight" job. In fact, if I do my job right, no one will ever know I was there - kind of like a fine art restorer, or a make-up artist.

They want to know if it means that I actually want to be a writer (I guess it's like all those actors who say what they really want to do is direct). They want to know how I can sit in front of a computer for eight hours every day (as if every other office worker doesn't do the same thing). And they want to know what I get out of it.

Over time, I've come up with the three top reasons why I edit, and so I thought I'd share them in case you were wondering, too. 

1. I have always enjoyed helping people to bring out the best in themselves and - by extension - their writing. Think of it as coaching a gymnast to a perfect score, or coaxing the perfect aria out of a singer. The excitement of watching the potential bloom is intoxicating.
2. I'm not exactly a frustrated writer - and I don't really want to be a ghost writer - but I do enjoy getting my hands dirty from time to time. And, while working with authors' manuscripts, I am studying style, form, mood, grammar, rhetoric, and all of those elements that create a manuscript. Not only am I studying them, but I'm practicing them. My job is to make the author sound more like the author, not less. Yes, I'm working to make every manuscript "correct" but even more I'm trying to make it match the author's style. That's a fine line, and I love walking it. 
3. I'm a bit of a grammar geek. I love words. I like the way they sound and the way they look on the page. I enjoy following a well-constructed sentence as it leads you exactly where it wants you to go. I am not, however, a grammar stickler. As I mentioned in #2, although I believe every editor wants to make every manuscript "correct," I also see a need to make sure that the author's style comes through. Sometimes that means rules get... bent... just a bit. I usually won't break any major rules of grammar without a fight (or at least a hearty discussion), though.*

Overall, I think it's a pretty cool job. I get to help authors achieve the goals they've been working toward - sometimes for their whole lives. And, okay, I get to read books for a living. How great is that? 

*Oh - to answer the other question that everyone asks: No. I don't correct people's grammar when they're talking, in their emails, or on social media. (I might want to, but I figure if they didn't ask me - or pay me - for my input, they probably don't want it.)

Friday Food - Lent

There's not a lot of Catholic ritual that I follow. I haven't gone to a mass in a really long time. And I'd be hard pressed to tell you what the Holy Days of Obligation are. But one thing I do pretty much every year to this day is avoid eating meat on Fridays during Lent.

I'm not overly strict about it. I mean... last Friday I was out to lunch with my financial advisor, and she ordered all these appetizers as our lunch (totally the kind of meal I love), and one of the appetizers was meatballs in marinara sauce. She offered me some - she knows I'm not vegetarian - so I said yes. Basically, I didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable, so I ate one. But every other Friday of Lent this year I've avoided meat at lunchtime and had veggie pizzas and the like.

I think that, at some point, I started doing this just to see if I could make it. Could I figure out a way to avoid meat on Friday without causing problems with my place in the world around me? Could I find interesting things to eat that were meat-free?

I knew I could find meat-free things. Long before meatless meals were a big thing, my mom was cooking one or two meatless meals for dinner every week. So that was easy.

Finding ways to succeed at that when I wasn't at home - and without making anyone else feel uncomfortable - that was a bigger issue. After all (and I guess I have to thank the horrible edit for this viewpoint), when you fast you're supposed to do it so no one knows you're doing it. So grimacing your way through a meatless meal kinda misses the point.

So we're now at the end of Lent, and I've done... okay. I've eaten mostly meatless on most Fridays. And I think I managed it all without making anyone else uncomfortable.

Hmm... Something in that makes me think of my post from Wednesday. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone tried to deal with their religious choices without imposing them on those around them? Interesting idea...

How to Get Me Riled Up

There are very few things that I won't just let roll off my back. I can deal with pretty much any topic of conversation by simply ignoring it, chalking it up to the ignorance of the speaker, or figuring I should just take a breath and respond to it later.

In the past couple of days, though, I've found two things that have really gotten my goat.

The first happened at work. One of the contractors that works for our company sent a message to me - not really knowing it was to me, more just sending it to the company in general - which was so snarky and disrespectful it just made me seethe. I spent the next 20 minutes writing and rewriting my response until - eventually - it was nice and polite and only readers who know me very well would have realized how pissed I was.

Thinking about it, today, I'm still just massively annoyed by the lack of respect in the message I received. I've been at my company for years - years longer than the contractor - and I probably know her job better than she does. So to be completely dismissed as if I didn't know anything... not cool.

Which, I guess, leads me to the second instance. This one was courtesy of the blessing and curse which is social media. Yes, I know that you never know what people are going to say online, and you never know for sure whether it's being said sarcastically or not. But there are some things that you read and just think "WTF?"

With all of the news about states enacting "religious freedom" laws, lately, that's been showing up online a lot. And usually I ignore the rhetoric, because it's from people whom I may or may not know, and I don't want to get into a shouting match across the Internet - I'd rather have an in-person discussion. But tonight I was basically told that my concern for what is going on in this country - and my praise for companies standing up against it - was misplaced because things just aren't as bad as I'm making them out to be.

Apparently, the fact that in some states I could very soon be denied service pretty much anywhere, including hospitals, hotels, restaurants, emergency rooms, etc. - not to mention that in those same states Christopher and I could be denied access to each other if something happened and one of us went to a hospital where a nurse didn't want to see us together because it was against her religious beliefs - apparently that is just an exaggeration. The statistics about the number of people who are killed or beaten during hate crimes - which often have defense arguments along the lines of "he was flaunting his gayness, it was self-defense" - basically makes it seem in many states that gay men and lesbians are already second-class citizens. How much worse would it be if a policeman, or a judge, decided that there was nothing to do because the victim was gay - and that was against some religious belief, anyway?

So... Yeah... I commented back and made my case for the other side of the argument. I even took my time and made sure that my response was grammatically correct and fairly snark-free.

Twice in two days. I'm on a roll.