just minishorts.

I'm a pessimist. The very fact that I work in a publishing firm makes me a horrible person to be with, especially when it comes to the subject matter of books. No, I'm not taking back the fact that I've gleefully announced to the whole world that I love my job. I do, I sincerely do?hey it's been a lifelong dream to be able to make books. And here I am now.

Except I never did count on 90% of the job being in the business of mis-education.

But then again. You can't do much. Here you are at the other end of the continuum, the so-called creme de la creme when it comes to prowess of the English Language (although I beg to differ), and you are painfully aware of the fact that Harry Potter is too difficult for most 5th Formers.

So anyway, when I tell people that I'm an editor for an established publishing firm, the first feedback I get is always like this.

'Oh so you write books lah. Wah, earning lots of money lah.'

Darn. You think what? Stephen King ah? WTF, you think Stephen King earns as much as HarperCollins? You think JK Rowling earns as much as Bloomsbury? In most cases, writers only earn a very small royalty of what the publisher takes. And editors earn a very, very, very tiny per cent of what the publisher takes (after the publisher further breaks it down into overheads and what not).

And the workload is horrible, horrible. Editors like me DREAD reading newbies and wannabe's hopeful letters. This is the sickening truth. We hardly read new manuscripts. We'd rather rely on trustworthy, deadline exact-ers who write dreadfully boring scripts. You come to us with a sample chapter, or maybe a complete and full text, but if you are unknown, and we can't trust that you'll be able to accept criticisms (90% of authors CANNOT take the line, 'You need to polish up your work, I'm saying this to help you write better'), don't even hope that we'll read your manuscript. We even have a template for rejection letters that we turn to faithfully whenever we see a hopeful manuscript lying on the desk. And please lah, don't bore us to death with page after page of your credentials (I once read a writer-wannabe's resume that went up to 11 pages). Sometimes, the higher your academic qualifications are, or the more your experiences are, the more you'll put us off. You'll come across, from the papers, as a person who's probably very, very difficult to work with. And there goes your chances.

Don't ever, ever attempt to blow your own trumpet in your cover letters to publishers.

Moral of the story? If you want to publish your own book, go find a very, very small company, or else do self-publishing. Ooh of course, get a professional editor to be your advisor. Also get a professional typesetter and designer, and artist, if necessary. You'll probably improve better that way. And chances are, you'll definitely see your work on the shelves. And who knows, it might sell really well, and you'll become the next biggest thing after Rowling.

Mum's out of town for the final days of The Great Singapore Sale. SL has taken on the responsibily of weekend 'caretaker'. Not too sure if he's doing a great job though ;).

In the meantime there have been meetings and meetings. I attended three meetings in two days (not counting the mamak meet-ups). Look, 1 1/2 hour in the office doesn't sound that bad at all when I expect the next weekly ELT meeting to go up to five hours or more. It's an oxymoronic situation, on one hand you are expected to focus your attention to the manuscript and try to 'knock it into shape', as we usually say. On the other hand, you have those bloody idiotic meetings where you sit down and listen to the higher powers nag.

You know there's this joke going around that meetings are a necessity because some people (you know who-lah) just don't have any friends, and meetings are the only time that they get to be in contact with human beings at the same time.

Shit.

Then there's the (what I deem to be) totally strange emergency call-ups. Hello? No such thing as better friends, and best friends! No such thing as favourite friends and good friends! Trashing things out and at the end of the day hashing rumours aside? The truth will set you free? What are you living in, dude? Utopia? Point is, if one is 15, maybe I can understand the idealism and dreams. But this is reality. There is no Utopia. You can't expect tears to shed, hearts to break and go home and pretend everything is okay. There's this thing called the on-off button, and there's also the reason why human beings have a brain. The brain governs the heart (and vice versa), wait, your own brain governs your own heart, and it certainly does not (never did) belonged to anyone else.

You know the thing about hitting your mid-twenties. Suddenly the greys have become more grey, and the whites are hardly there.

Here I am again.

I?m pretty new at this, even though the setup did take up less than 5 minutes. I?m keeping all my archives to myself. From now on, we start afresh. Hello.

If you know me already. Hello.

If you don?t know me yet. Hello.

I?m minishorts. For this round, I?m remaining as obscure as possible. Sometimes things are best left unknown.

And I?m just too darn busy to redesign this page for now. But I?ll work on it.

Yes I missed the blog too.