Done!

Congratulations, Roberta! What was the book about? Was it good reading at least?

Wow! Congratulations!

It was about finance (money markets). I understood very little of it. Not fun reading.

Even when I'm editing something that might be fun, editing requires different kind of attention in reading, so it's rarely fun or interesting. Just, well, editing.

Wonderful. Freedom. Wonderful.

Can you afford some time off? Or do you have to work to eat?

No time off. You hit the nail on the head, Noddy. I work to eat.

A 1251 page book on market/finance? That sounds like writing suicide. Will the audience they are targeting want to read something that long?

Roberta--

May your new assignment be a more congenial way to spend the dark, winter months.

Gala, This is the fourth edition. The first three versions sold exceptionally well. Go figure.

Noddy, I'm working on a book of legal forms. Trying to keep my eyes from glazing over.

Roberta, Hooray! I know they send you the tough ones, so I hope that the author was at least able to put together an intelligible sentence.

I still think you should write a book about some of your editing jobs--the professors who know nothing of English grammar and even less about thier own subject. Some of your stories have been astounding. I'm sure there would be a good audience for that sort of thing. As long as you change the details enough to avoid lawsuits, it could be a bestseller.

Roberta--

I hope there are fewer than 1000 pages of legal forms.

I think that is a fantastic idea, Diane.. wonder if Roberta will thing so..

Noddy, The legal forms book is a few hundred pages. A piece of cake.

Diane, I've been collecting mistakes, real howlers, for some time. Unfortunately, I didn't start collecting them when I first started working. If I had, I would now have enough to fill at least one volume. You didn't start noodging me until fairly recently, so I don't have enough to fill even two chapters.

Time, querida. These things take time.

I once rewrote an entire book. The whole shmear. The author's comment?
"I didn't know I knew so much."

Another author once accused me (and other editors) of "dulling things up." Yup, the official duller-upper. C'est moi.

The huge book I just finished contributed nothing. If there was something outrageous, I didn't understand enough of what I was reading to find it.