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In my capacity as copy editor for Blast Magazine, one of the issues I come across on a regular basis is the poorly written, spoiler-filled movie review. Now, Blast has put out some decent material, but as a start-up with pretty strong roots in university talent (read: people who are writing for the clips, not the paycheck), some of the writers are new to writing for a publication, or even sometimes writing at all.

While this creates all kinds of fun for me (like teaching new writers about why they should learn AP style, why we use just a single space after periods, etc.), it also sets me up for some unplanned exposure to information that can really make a movie (or TV show) not as enjoyable as it should be when I finally make it to the theater. Sometimes it’s a writer’s first time crafting a review, and one of the most common traps that new writers fall into, especially those without much to actually say about the film, is to just write a synopsis of the plot, which is a real downer for the people reading it who want to be surprised by all the twists and turns.

So, it raises a bit of a conundrum, especially considering I’m Blast’s only copy editor. If I have to edit a piece that will unintentionally spoil a movie, TV show, book, etc., what recourse do I have, especially in the age of digital media and a news cycle that doesn’t sleep? Waiting until after I’ve seen it doesn’t always work, as I’m usually the last person to catch a film in theater before it goes into that waiting period to appear on DVD. Personally, I just bite the bullet, edit it, and try to teach the writer to be a little less revealing next time around — with an ever-changing staff, it doesn’t always last, but that’s just the nature of the job, I suppose.

So, what do you do when you have to copy edit spoiler-filled material? Do you grit your teeth and plow through? Do you make a colleague who doesn’t care, or who you don’t care for, edit it instead? Do you wait until you’ve seen it for yourself and let the glaring typos and grammatical errors sit there for all to see until you get around to it?

I’ve spent a good deal of time now at Espresso Love, a coffee shop in my home town of Edgartown, pretending to work on writing and editing. The reality is that I got all my copyediting for Blast out of the way this morning at Mocha Motts in Vineyard Haven, and I’ve spent the majority of my time here feeding the birds with crumbs from my muffin. The ice in my coffee has melted, and the pool of water that condensated on the plastic cup is almost all evaporated, and I’m writing this in hopes it’ll kickstart my brain into writing what I need to write about.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do once I finally graduate, and Ivona and I discussed it yesterday. We’re both feeling like this past winter, during which we got into such boring routines, is not how we envisioned these years of our lives and the first years of our marriage. Yes, we’re intensely happy together, but there’s more to life that we feel we’re missing out on.

So, with that in mind, I’m considering renewing my plans of spending a summer riding a bike around the country, camping out along the way. The plan is to go hashing as many places as we can along the way, and I can’t think of anything better to do to make me feel like I’m alive again. I think the last time I really felt that way was in France.

Anyway, whatever I decide to do next, I know it has to be a big change. Any suggestions?

So it’s no surprise that I haven’t been keeping up with this blog, and the truth is that I’ve been in a pretty major slump lately, in just about all aspects of my life. My cousin Isabelle put it nicely when she called it “transition depression” over lunch a few weeks ago. I’m “graduating” in 9 days, though I have to be back here in the fall to finish up the last of my courses. I had tried to take 27 credits this semester and it turned into a train wreck; I have a habit of taking off more than I can chew and then being all surprised when it doesn’t exactly pan out the way I want it to. Read the rest of this entry »

I took last year off from school and worked as a garbage man to help out the family. I drove a commercial garbage truck, which means I dealt with dumpsters and commercial trash (as opposed to residential, though I did do that once a week). I was up at 4 am or so every morning to don my blue Dickies and bright yellow shirts, stumble into Ivona’s sister’s Jeep that she let me borrow for the winter (man I miss that car, even though it was falling apart), and drive a couple towns over to start my route.

When people ask me about driving a garbage truck, I usually tell them it’s as bad as it sounds, only worse, and then I pause for a minute as if to think reflectively and tell them “well, once you got used to it, it wasn’t so bad.” Maybe I’m just a fake motherfucker, but I get sick of answering the same questions all the time, so I at least have fun trying to perfect the same responses, or make up ridiculous answers (“No man, I loved that job! I found so many cool things in the trash, and I never had to bring my own lunch, if you know what I mean!”). For the first week, I was miserable and convinced I would quit. During training I was riding around in a residential truck with a Brazilian kid named Ramon who drove like a psychopath and would pretend to be a stupid, uneducated foreigner when dealing with some of the customers (“Yes boss! Sorry boss! Next time better boss!”) while I tried to hold back laughter (he and I had actually gone to high school together and his English was pretty good).

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