Happily, the jinx doesn’t seem to have lasted too long, which is definitely a good thing. After a bit of a slow down at the end of last week and a weekend spent doing as little as possible, things seem to be back to where they were before I decided to blog-big about my projects and plans.
From now on I intend to only highlight imminent events on here, and to talk about everything else only once it’s safely behind me. Which is odd, because I really don’t believe in jinxes/superstition. As my brother delights in telling me, it’s unlucky to be superstitious.
So, the last couple of days have seen me finally bite the proverbial bullet and really get my head into CF Talk to get it swept off to the designers. They do a fantastic job, but do insist on having FINAL copy before going to work on it, as they’ve found to their cost in the past that if people are still chopping and changing while they work then a certain turn or phrase or clever image in the text that spurs them on to create a funky look for the page can disappear and leave the reader bemused as to where the page-layout idea came from and possibly whether the designers were smoking something while they worked.
And I know for a fact that Tin Racer is a no-smoking facility.
The trouble with having to provide them with final-final copy is that I’m terrible for making lots and lots of little tweaks to the text for the CF Talk copy. Often, the copy we receive is too long for the format and needs to be cut down, but I’m always anxious that while I may be cutting and re-jigging the article, I am never rewriting it. Because the whole idea of the magazine is that it is written by pwcf for pwcf, it’s really important to me to keep the original author’s voice on their work, and not edit it into one homogenous style throughout the mag.
What this means is that while I’m editing, I’m constantly making changes and adjustments to the articles to make sure I’m keeping the thrust of what’s been written, as well as the original voice, whilst shaping it into an article that will fit within the space constraints imposed by our format and style.
It’s not easy and it’s one of the jobs that I always find myself trying to delay. This time it’s been even tougher as I had a long spell out of the editor’s chair going through my recent rough patch, which meant that I had to come back to look at all the articles again, having completely lost the flow I was in before I had to down tools and sort myself out.
Happily, though (and I do enjoy seeing that word twice in the same blog entry), I have now managed to sign off on over 3/4 of the copy for the new issue and turn it over to the guys at Tin Racer. All I have left to do is all the little mop-up pieces which come last, like the Editorial for the issue, the contents page and the competition page.
It’s been a long time coming, but hopefully we’ll carry a bit of momentum into the next issue and get it out quite quickly this time round.
Obviously, I’m looking at taking a long weekend off all work-related bits and pieces this weekend to make the most of my 25th Birthday, for which I have so far studiously avoided planning anything. It’s a little sad, I have to say, to not be able to celebrate things properly, but I’m actually so glad to be here to see it and to be able to share it with all my family and friends, whether I get to see them or not, that it’s not got me down as much as one might expect it to.
I’ll be sure to chart progress of the other work I do manage to achieve this week on here once I’ve got there, but I’ll hold back from jumping the gun and shouting about my plans for the week for now. I’ve learned my lesson.