Voices on the Page

Well, the voice thing still gives me trouble, but I think I'm making progress.

I recently did an editing job for someone who was really pleased with my work and the fact that I helped her preserve her own voice and didn't try to re-write her.

Wow. When she told me that I was just floored, what with all the trouble I've been having with this very issue.

So I think I'm starting to figure out where I stumble. I have a newsletter I edit every month. One of the columns in it is a tech/computer advice column written by the biz owner's spouse. Once the author subs the column they ~never~ see it again. My job is to get it ready to print from that point on. This apparently, is where my virtual red pen goes into overdrive.

The good thing here? Now that I've become aware of what I've been doing I think I'm doing a lot better at not doing it so much. Well, okay, yea, and the columns have incidentally gotten better lately on their own. Enough so that I shot the author a note complimenting them on it.

I guess, for this job at least, I need to retire my big fat red Sharpie and go back to the red pencil.

Now if I could only find my own damn voice, wouldn't that be something?