Tuesday, March 08, 2005

the life of the copy editor

Last night, at my internship seminar, we took a field trip… to the library.

And I have all these flashbacks to second grade, going to the Science Center in St. Louis, with all those “room moms” keeping track of where I was and holding my hand too tight…

It’s not the same when eight upperclassmen cross a parking lot to Hekman Library. I didn’t even get a sack lunch.

But I did have a blast poking through the reference section, which was the point of our “trip.” Usually, my eyes blur the rows of encyclopedias together, and I always assume that there’s nothing fun there. Oh, what little faith. Our professor pointed out some weird books that get lost between the dictionaries and atlases, and I spent a good fifteen minutes leafing through the Encyclopedia of Assassinations. No kidding. There are some really bizarre stories in there, and at least three pages devoted to Rasputin.

I also looked through an English to Romanian dictionary—pretty cool—and a writers’ directory. The directory listed the addresses, careers, education history, and published works of practically every writer alive. Incredible. So I was looking through the listings to see how Anne Lamott, Donald Hall, and Max Lucado were doing. A lot of writers seem to live in England. I like that arrangement.

But the best ever was a book called The Elements of Style, which made me think of grammar. Instead it was a guide to every daily architectural detail (railings, windows, doors, walls, sinks…) from about the 1400s until now. Glossy pictures, diagrams, and (almost) as much fun as the Science Center.

Anyway, today I have spent about six hours wrapping up a project for my internship. It’s a good-sized book—over 250 pages—and I need to ship it out tomorrow. (I was desperately hoping to ship it today, but Mail Services closed an hour before I had the book ready. Rats.) It’s a relief to have the project done, even though I can’t mail it until tomorrow.

But now I have all this pent up energy from sitting for so long. I got rid of some of it by making pumpkin cookies—another blast from my past—but I’m still wired. Maybe I should stop eating them when they come out of the oven? A little too much sugar at once?—jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 03/08 at 08:32 PM
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