Susanna J. Sturgis   Martha's Vineyard writer and editor
writer editor born-again horse girl

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Cobwebbing

October 13, 2005

See, I was going to blog after I laid off editing last night, but then around 10:30 the power went out and I took this as a sign that it was time for bed. I was asleep by the time the power came on about an hour later. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Right after I decided (not for the first time) that I'd rather proofread than copyedit -- it generally pays a couple of bucks less per hour, but copyediting wears my brain out and makes it harder to write -- I wound up with two complicated copyediting jobs. One of them's big; the other one's huge. (Carefully shaken out of its box, it looks like a note cube for giants: as tall as it is wide. Scary.) Brain has been too drained to blog. It's also a little pissed off: You committed us to do not only that but that? Like what are you, nuts?

The weather continues dramatic: we're in the middle of a three-day blow, punctuated by drizzle and the occasional downpour. The drizzle-and-downpouring has gone on since last Friday night. If the sun doesn't come out soon, I'm gonna have to buy more underwear or start doing hand laundry. (I'm a diehard laundry hanger-outer, and anyway the dryer in the basement is currently on strike. Scab I am not, even when I don't entirely understand the issues. This dryer probably, and with complete justification, believes it's long past retirement age and deserves to break.)

There are only two horses at the barn these days; the last summer boarder left a week ago, and two more winter residents are supposed to arrive at the end of the month. Noon chores -- hay or turn out two horses, pick out two stalls and two paddocks, check water (right -- with all this rain?), and make up evening and morning grain -- take about half an hour, and I need a longer work break than that. So we've swiped the wet/dry vacuum from up the house so I can start cobwebbing. Not that the barn would ever be taken for a bayou, but cobwebs laced with windblown bits of hay and shavings do make the place look a little frowzy.

I got one stall done this lunchtime. Cobwebbing is like proofreading, you're just hunting down dust, hay, shavings, and cobwebs instead of typos and stray punctuation marks. In my chambermaid days, I figured that anyone who could catch a typo at 50 paces could spot a hair in an otherwise immaculate shower stall. You don't have to have great eyesight (who, me?), just the ability to focus on the task at hand. One job; many avatars.

Someone should invent a red pencil that could suck all the typos out of a manuscript.

 

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