Your Best Manual Edit: Feel Virtuous. Save a Tree!
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
This article is excerpted from the winningest book in my HowToDoItFrugally Series of Books for Writers, #TheFrugalEditor, now in its third edition. It’s from one of my daring departures, a little one-page essay on editing or…mmm…maybe a diatribe on one of my pet projects as it relates to editing—in this case the environment.. My publisher and I came up with the rather sedate title of “The Frugal Editor’s Extra" for all twenty of them numbered sequentially. (This one is number two.) They get placed sporadically at the end of selected chapters. Come have some editing fun with me.
I know some of us cheat on our manual edits by using a computer or we didn’t realize how superior a manual edit is to one done on a screens. But really, a manual edit can’t be fudged. You may resort to the keyboard because you are working at saving the planet. So feel virtuous. And thrifty. So, do it by printing your manuscript on your own recycled paper and feel just as righteous—and almost as thrifty.
We’re not talking about the reams you buy labeled with the recycled logo, though I’m glad you do. We’re talking paper printed on only one side that comes across your desk or out of your computer’s printer. I finally trained my husband to save his once-used paper for me to recycle, too. Our paper gets one more (great!) life before it becomes fodder for our city’s recycle bin.
To do this, salvage paper as it’s produced in your office and rescue the good stuff from your junk mail. Arrange the new ream of leftovers you are accumulating so the printed sides are all facing the same way and tamp them a bit so the edges line up to prevent your printer from rejecting them. When in manual editing mode, carefully put these salvaged reams into your printer tray with the clean sides facing up or down, depending on your printer’s preferences.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers and also coauthored a book honoring the Earth by reaching across hemispheres to work with Aussie Magdalena Ball. It is Sublime Planet, featured in the Earth Day Issue of The Pasadena Weekly and recipient of Dr. Bob Rich’s Life Award (Literature for the Environment). “Endangered Species,” a poem in it, was the recipient of the Franklin Christoph prize and the book was honored by USA Book News. All proceeds go the World Wildlife Fund. It is part of Carolyn’s and Magdalena’s Celebration Series, each a gift of poetry suitable for different holidays.
“Every day is #Earth Day.”
“…no dictator can monopolize the sun. No autocrat can control the wind.”
~ Greenpeace
[and neither should they be used to threaten the planet with annihilation!”
~ Carolyn 🌞]
“…beautifully written and poignantly sad, as the reader considers
harsh climate issues happening now.”
~ Carolyn Wilhelm for Midwest Book Review
