Congrats to Janet Tay who has had her story, Callus, accepted by Oxford University Press for its World Stories collection of short stories called Cries from the Heart. The series is aimed at learners of English and is intended to give them a taste of writing from around the world in different Englishes.You can listen to an introduction to the story on the site and there's an interview with Janet here.
Here's where the storycame from :
12 comments:
Wah, Congratulations to Janet!
-Wonder if she's a Maria Callus fan :-))
- Poppadumdum
COngrats to Janet
Janet, congratulations!!!
Hearty congrats to Janet! Hope I'll be able to get hold of the story soon.
-- Preeta
Congratulations, Janet!
- Twan Eng
Thanks, Sharon for blogging about this and thanks to all who have left their kind words! I really appreciate it.
tahniah!!!
Janet - congrats! You put to rest the myth that editors are failed writers!
Thanks very much everyone! Chet, I certainly hope that isn't a popular myth because I haven't heard of it! And it's definitely a very misconceived notion because there have been so many good editors who were also authors in their time: T.S. Eliot, William Maxwell, Gordon Lish and probably many more of whom I am unaware.
I think many people don't realise that in order to be a good editor, you have to be a good writer as well--how else to suggest changes/rewrites/additions to a manuscript of a great author, for example? I think just because some great writers/editors choose not to publish their own books (Maxwell Perkins, Hemingway's editor, comes to mind, not sure if he's published anything of his own) doesn't mean they're not good writers themselves. It's simply a choice they've made, to dedicate themselves to the profession of editing.
Janet - I think the myth is perpetuated by aggrieved writers who felt their work was being torn apart, and sometimes almost completely rewritten, by so-called editors. Very early on in my working life, I came across such a person myself.
It's a bit silly thinking that. I mean, it's a job. It's very odd, I mean, they're there to help you make money from writing. They are responsible for helping you succeed. A writer's job is to comparable to, say, a diamond miner's. It's a writer's job to search for diamonds, but it's someone else's job to cut and polish it. Without that someone the diamond would not find as ready a market.
It's just that some people prefer searching, and some people perfer polishing.
Personally I think writers are failed editors, it's much harder to edit than to write.
Congrats Janet. Having worked first hand with Janet who edited Lovers and Strangers Revisited, she's a great editor, made some really good suggestions, caught a lot of oversights that I made (and I teach grammar and writing!), was willing to listen to where I was coming from, and we both were willing to compromise for the good of the story. We were working together, on the same side. Janet was a pleasure to work with, too! You are editing my next book, aren't you?
Post a Comment