No, No, No (in Simon Cowell accent)
To take my mind off things I've started re-reading the Georgia Nicolson books again, it saves me from having to sit in front of my computer the whole day fixing other people's articles and wondering why on Earth do I care in the first place, especially when I won't really be getting any credit for the drastic changes I make; oh no all the credit would go to the author. This horrible experience has made me realise that sub editors don't really get enough credit for doing what they do. Of course, newspaper sub editors don't really have to deal with awful writing, because, except for the interns who come in, most of the reporters write well. And when I say write well, I mean be able to string sentences together that make sense instantly. No one cares about creative crap, just write something people can understand! Sadly, I cannot say the same for writers of a student-run newspaper.
Speaking of which, last night I had the misfortune of reading an article written by someone who was trying to sound creative and fun, only the person failed horribly because he or she was like a piece of plain old cardboard trying to disguise his or herself as fancy wrapping paper (i.e. very obvious that the person is trying to sound fun and interesting), and in the end the person just ended up sounding stupid. It actually gave me an upset stomach.
I don't get it -- if people don't know how to write something, why can't they just refer to other articles and use them as a template for writing their own? I do it ALL THE TIME. Surely people can't be that stupid to not think of that?
And it's not copying, it's merely taking notes and practising through another person's work to create something of your own. Bill Gates did it, and look at where he is now. If everyone on the team did this I wouldn't have had that upset stomach last night. I would have had a happy, quiet stomach.
I don't mean to sound rude or imply that I have the best writing in the world (far from it. Lately I've been really hating the kind of articles I've written, so much so that I took some time to think about what other field I could venture into since writing couldn't really be called my 'best asset.' I couldn't think of anything else though), but I really don't know why some people don't strive to do better, nor have any shame in submitting half-hearted work.
I mean at theSun last time I used to get scolded by my editors for submitting my stories in late, the reason being that I was always looking for ways to improve it because I didn't want to submit something bad. And every time when a story of mine got published and it was heavily edited, I used to feel really embarrassed that I was given a byline for it, because I felt that I didn't deserve it. But still, what I did was I read the edited version and compared it with my own and learned from there.
I don't get why some people can't do this and end up repeating the same mistake again and again. In fact I don't get how some of them made it through their internships with writing like that.
This time I am putting my foot down though. I am just going to let badly-written articles through with only minor editing. Let them deal with the fussy lecturer-in-charge, because I've had it. I just want to pass the class (This is not as dramatic as it seems coming out from someone like me, because it is a pass/fail class).
Last night I told the hat guy that for the next issue I didn't want to be any sort of editor anymore, but just a normal reporter. He laughed and said "Don't you wish you were dumb and ignorant?"
My answer was no, but he had a point. If I were stupid then I didn't have to worry about other stupid people, because I wouldn't notice their stupidity as stupidity would be normal to me. It is all very Veronica Decides to Die-ish.
Not that I want to be stupid. God, no.
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