Saturday, February 11, 2006

HeroicStories

I have a new writing job. I've become the Comments Editor at HeroicStories. People email in comments on the stories, and it's my job to chose which comments to run (which is most of them) and edit them until they say what the author would have said if they'd known how to write well. The trick is to make the English clear and correct, maintain house style (American spelling, give authors first name and state only, spell out numbers under ten unless they're ages) while still sounding like the original author, not like me. It's a lot harder than I expected. I don't get paid, but it's good training. Best of all, people write in to say how the newsletter made their day or inspired them to help someone.

In other news, my story "If At First You Don't Succeed…" won equal first place in rspublishing's "Short not Sweet" contest. It's not a huge amount of cash, but it feels great, and I have a nice certificate displayed on my web site.

Now I really must go and do some work on my friend Norma's new web site.