Time: Spring 2016, one hour before dinner reservation
Place: don’t remember exactly, a hotel with a gym
I am on an elliptical, alternately watching a Law & Order rerun on my personal screen and myself in the mirror, watching the Law & Order rerun. My workout timer ended four minutes earlier, and I am debating how much time I really need to shower given the critical importance of watching Stabler and Benson solve the case at hand. And then my phone rings. My inner debate rapidly shifts from showering logistics to whether to answer the phone or keep watching Stabler question an older woman who clearly doesn’t want to be in the witness room but who also is clearly in possession of critical information.
I answer the phone and the audio source switches. I watch Stabler’s mouth move as I hear “Sorry, I’m going to bungle this, but is this Anastasia Zadeik-Hipkins?”
I don’t recognize the woman on the other end, but whoever she is, she is right about the bungling. I hear my first name, then Z, D, and K strung together with a couple of vowel sounds, followed by Hipkins. I sigh, not because of the bungling—which I am used to—but because Detective Stabler is leaning on the scarred table in the witness room now, seemingly inches from the older woman’s face, and I really want to know what he is saying. What does she know?
“Yes, this is Anastasia.”
“Hi, Anastasia, this is Melissa? From UCSD Extension?”
“Yes?” I replied, also with a question mark.
“I’m calling because you registered for our Copyediting I class, but see you haven’t yet taken Grammar Lab, which is a prerequisite?” So much questioning.
“Yes,” I answer, watching myself in the mirror, eyes darting up and down to Stabler’s interrogation on my personal elliptical screen. “I saw that, but after reading the class description, I’m pretty sure I don’t need to take Grammar Lab. I’ve been writing professionally for years.” I can hear the pique in my voice. Wish it weren’t so. Feel bad. But Detective Stabler is shaking his head. His eyebrows are furrowed, his lips pressed tight. The older woman looks like she is about to crack. I need to get off the phone.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re right?” Melissa said. “But we require it?”
“I get that, but I graduated from college years ago, summa cum laude, and have been working—and writing—ever since. Isn’t there some kind of test I can take to show I don’t need Grammar Lab?” I ask. I am finding it difficult to keep my arms and legs moving at pace. I slow down, worried I might hurt myself.
“Oh gosh, I’m afraid not.” Melissa changes to a period. “Most people tell us afterward, they were really glad they took it.” Another period. She is certain now. There will be no backing down on Grammar Lab. Detective Stabler is leaving the interrogation room. Though I can’t hear it, I know they’re playing the Duh, Duh, Duh sound.
I stop ellipticalling. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll take Grammar Lab. Is there space?”
I am frustrated. I will not learn what the old woman knows.
Time: Summer 2016, late afternoon
Place: Honda service department waiting room
Local news is playing on the massive television mounted on the wall. There is a story on how Pokemon Go distraction presents dangers not only to the players, but also to unwitting bystanders. I am completing my Grammar Lab homework, realizing that Melissa? from UCSD Extension? was right. I needed this class. Let’s just say, the sentence diagramming I learned in sixth grade wasn’t enough. I have either forgotten what I learned about the use of commas with appositives, or I never learned it at all. The same goes for unreal conditionals and capitalization of cardinal directions. And forget about the construction of compound-complex sentences and proper identification of “will have been traveling” as an example of future perfect continuous.
I learn that graduating summa cum laude has nothing to do with grammar.
And I am grateful to Melissa.
Time: Summer 2021, late morning
Place: on a sailboat off the shore of Virgin Gorda
On a thrice-COVID-cancelled holiday, I am trying to channel Kathleen Turner in Jewel of the Nile, convinced that as a proud holder of a Copyediting Certificate from UCSD Extension (including Copyediting I,II, III, and Copyediting as a Business, on top of Grammar Lab), I can certainly edit my own manuscript. Surely, the warnings about not being able to see your own work objectively don’t apply to me. Inconsistent comma usage, misplaced modifiers, missing quotation marks, homonyms not caught by Word? I will see (and correct) them all!
But I am not Kathleen Turner and when I get the email from my publisher, Brooke, gently suggesting that I employ someone else to edit my book, I vacillate between certainty she is wrong to certainty my manuscript is shitty and everyone knows it but no one wants to tell me. So, I send it off to Janis, an editor a friend suggests, and it comes back with edits. Almost all of which have merit. Many of which I read right over multiple times. And then I send it to Brooke’s editor, Krissa, and she makes more edits. Valuable edits.
I learn that being a decent copyeditor has nothing to do with the ability to edit one’s own work.
And I am grateful to Brooke and Janis and Krissa.
Time: Today
Place: Sitting at my kitchen counter
I had to laugh at my own reaction to looking up the definition of the word hubris as research for this piece: “excessive pride or self-confidence.” I knew that, I thought, with a frightening and ironic lack of self-awareness. In fact, those are the exact words I would have used. Then I got to the next line, “(in Greek tragedy) excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.” Sounds about right, I thought, but just to be sure, I looked it up. Nemesis: “the inescapable agent of someone’s or something’s downfall.”
Yes, I thought. Duh, duh, duh.
And I am grateful to Merriam Webster.
Pride comes before the fall. Fortunately, there have been others—Melissa, Brooke, Janis, Krissa —who have forced me to confront my hubris and blind spots before I tumbled off a cliff, and my work is the better for it. So please take it from this older woman—this is critical information. Swallow your pride. Take the Grammar Lab. Hire the copyeditor. And be grateful for the people who make your work better.