Dear Trekonomics readers, supporters and followers,

EDITING AND MODELING

Hello friends! 

Let me tell you a story. Don’t worry, it’s a short one. This is the tale of how I got my first set of edits from the fine people at Girl Friday Productions and the weird emotional process that goes with it. 

I’m no stranger to having my writing criticized, but this is the first time I’m doing so by a professional who is paid to do just that and not a friend or acquaintance doing me a favour. As you can imagine, when I first got the email from my editor with two attachments; one a letter explaining the broader lines of suggested changes and the other an annoted version of my manuscript with comments for each recommendation, I was intimidated. It took me a day to build up the courage to open the letter and go through its content. 

My editor did an amazing job first by spotting some changes I already wanted to make (expect a glossary) but also by couching other criticism in a positive context. There is nothing in his letter that should be perceived as negative. Yet, despite all of this, some of the content triggered my self doubt. It took yet another day and another reading of the letter before I stopped feeling like a fraud and accepted that every writer must go through this, especially those who, like me, are on the first steps of their journey. 

Here’s the good news however; now that’s I’ve gotten over myself and I have a more collected point of view of the modifications and changes that are suggested to me, I’m really excited. 

I like The Life Engineer. I love the world and characters that populate it and I want to play around in that universe some more and everything my editor has given me to work on will make this book better. I’ve already received glowing reviews and criticism from people who have read my book about robots and these improvements will make this an even better read. I might even graduate from being happy with myself to being proud of my work. 

Best of all; I love how much I’m learning. 

In modelling news; I’ve cast the second large piece of the main body of the Koalemos prop I’m building. I’m sorry to report that it’s not a perfect cast. The good news is that the uneven results are easy if tedious to fix and the portions that worried me most came out looking perfect. So I have to patch a few holes and sand some surfaces. Big deal. Assuming all goes well I’ll be painting the main body this coming weekend. 

Between the editing and modelling I’ll hardly have time to do anything else and frankly, that’s how I like it. 

JF

There are a lot of imperfections to fix on this. A lot of putty and sanding.

However the bottom vents came out looking sharp and neat.