I realize I have been away for a week.
It has been the week from hell, and I have yet to navigate out of it.
I managed to beat yet another deadline, which involved slogging through what was beyond any doubt the most over-the-top, horrendously executed copy edit job in my miserable life.
I can say this now because both my editor and my editor's assistant concurred with my assessment of the "laying on of hands" by this rock-pulverizer with a red pencil.
I should have taken photographs of some of the pages and comments I made, but it was all I could do to sit on my hands and not hurl the 400-plus-page manuscript across the room.
Let me say this: No.
Easily 95 percent of the medical-dictionary-trained copy editor's ideas will never taste wet ink on paper.
Look: I apologize, dear hardworking copy editor.
But no.
Not but-comma-no.
Just no.
I will share one triumphant moment with you: I came to a page... somewhere near the middle-thirdish (No, that is not a fucking word and I am fully aware of it, so you do not need to point it out. If I didn't want to put it on the page, it would not be there) of the manuscript and I put this on it:
Oh! A page without a Post-It Note on it! Let me fix that!
(written on a Post-It Note).
How do I get out of this hell?
