Archive for July, 2005

You know what?

I tried being a troll yesterday.

It was mighty fun.

I called the bugger 'an archaic author who is in love with his own voice'.

It was mighty fun.

And you know what?

The bugger had the cheek to ask me, 'Who you are are you older than me who tells you you can call me that? How can you resort to cheapskate shots like that.'

I didn't resort to cheapskate shots uncle, (you very old mah). I tell you this. You write so much, so many things, you argue so much, halfway through your arguments you lost your trail of thoughts and its so hilarious I have no idea what you're mumbling about. The best thing is I bet you don't even know, that's why you attacked me like that. Ah well. I've been defensive too. Forgiven.

And way the people who defended this guy asked me the 'who you are how old are you' question which is irrelevant… you know the answer so what? You going to go home and stay gossiping about that 25-year-old who think she very clever liddat one, issit? Aiyoh…

I want to give him the answer here.

I am minishorts lah you stupid doh-doh. This one supposed to be everyone also know already lah blur blur. I'm 20-something already. I am an editor. I edit books. Academic ones. Readers. Educational books. Storybooks. Occasionally I write scripts. Do freelance work. Write articles for magazines. I've been soaking myself in the industry for many many years (since I was in uniform ooh I like to listen to myself gloat!) I decide whether people are fit to be authors or not.

Yeah lah people like you.

And you my dear, you do not qualify.

At least, you do not impress the archaic editors like me who will always stand in your way to not give any biggie chances to people like you. Unless you stand up and start speaking sense.

Wah piang it's so nice to be a troll to other people even in my own blog. Whee whee… now I understand why the silly little trolls keep on coming back to my blog to fart. You know why?

Because when you get annoying and stupid enough to keep on attracting a potential-troll, the trolls gets a perverted high out of being addicted to dissing you off.

OK enough of mindless innocent-slashing blah. Once in a while I get generous and share tips with people who want to be in the industry.

When you first write something and submit it to a publishing house (an established one with trained editors, copyreaders and the whole works) you must remember this: you will be slashed from top to bottom by the editor who will sometimes throw you a sarcastic line and tell you off.

I've done this before.

There was once an author, an established, published author, who was supposed to submit a chapter in a book to me. The text which she submitted was impressively verbose and its language very-the-powderful lah… means to say, at first read it was quite the 'wow'.

I'm not a very very experienced editor, I must say this first, but sometimes, you know, when you're in the field, you're able to ferret things out, like its a fucking stench.

The submitted chapter had the stench of copy-ism, plagiarism, to the very max. None of the lines sounded like her.

Suspicious old me took out a line of her writing, and ran a search on it.

Sure enough, the proof was damning. Wah-piang the femes author had gone and copy chunks of paragraphs from a published-very-long-ago research article.

KNNCB.

I called the woman into the office (where I was working then). The conversation went a bit like this:

Me: I've got something to ask you. Can I have the source to this chapter?
She: Huh? I don't know lah. I ran a research here and there lor. Took me ages to come up with it. About three days I think.
Me: Well I'm sure there's a source. The Internet? Or something? You sure you wrote it yourself? It doesn't sound you. Not like the usual you.
She: Of course I did it.
Me: I read it before.
She: Really? Got people plagiarise my work ah?
Me: Urm. I have the exact same article from where you copied your paragraphs. If you want to adapt a passage I'm okay with it, but I'm not okay with authors passing off other people's work as their own. Especially not the authors I work with.
She: Lemme see.

(Here, she takes the article and reads it.)

She: Wow. I didn't know I was so clever to be able to think and write the same things as this person did.
Me: Urm.
She: So how?
Me: You have to write it again. If you want to use the work still, reword it, and say you adapted it. There might be a copyright fee on this.
She: Aiyah I'm a very busy person you know. A lot of other people want to work with me. Why don't you believe me. I've been published several times before.

Archaic authors…

…think highly of themselves.

Can't stop gushing about HOW MANY BLOODY BOOKS they've already published.

And then when the editor confronts them… (I don't always speak directly, telling a person to her face that she's a bloody a**hole who can't write for nuts kills the author's ego, which is no-no, not in the industry. ANYONE can be a potential writer)… they I don't know… how you put it… go to the lowest ditches to pull out ribbons so that they'll make themselves look good.

The cheapest shot I ever got from a bloody-very-established-published-damn-a-lot-of-books author was this, 'Girl. How many years have you been working ah? You know ah? I've published like 10 books already ok. I eat salt also more than you eat rice ok. I'm teh fame.'

OK so she didn't say 'teh fame' line. But trust me, when conversing face-to-face, some bloody published authors can be quite the bastards.

On behalf of my colleagues in the industry, I'd like to say this to these type of people. There's a reason why we're the editors and you're the author. Our job is to help you make your work better. If you can't face up to the editor's criticisms, you might not be able to face up to your reader's criticisms. We're not here to damn you you damn duhduh. We're here to make you better. Try to think about that.

Out.