a brief return to lunacy

Do you like it when people refer to the underemployed?

cadence

I'm still amazed by the fact that I can immediately recognize my own words, no matter how long ago I wrote them. For instance, a couple years ago, I was working with the TV on in the background and overheard a quote from a movie review I had written. The quote was being used in a commerical and, sure enough, there was my name on the screen. Just nine words, spoken by someone else over the air, and I knew exactly when I'd written them and why.

The opposite is also true: I can tell you exactly when words that are supposed to be my own aren't. Just this afternoon, I pulled up an old article for reference and realized right away that the first sentence had been rewritten sometime between the moment I filed the story with my editors and the time it was published.

I can't explain it. There's just something about your own cadence that you always recognize. It's something that breaks when someone else touches your story, even if it's only to add a single word.

Good editors know this. And when they have to make changes to your story, they do their best to match your rhythm. If they're great, they can get an edit past you without you even noticing.

Bad editors, on the other hand, are easy to spot because they try to rewrite your story to match their own rhythm.

i didn't disagree

In the darkness of the Ajanta caves, I snapped a picture of a 2000-year old painting and was immediately accosted by an angry attendant who, though I couldn't understand his Hindi, was no doubt about to throw me out because I had neglected to turn off my camera's flash.

I didn't disagree with his take on the situation -- the paintings were clearly fragile and I had clearly taken a photo with flash. But the thing is, I hadn't meant to. In fact, I had made it a point to turn the flash off when I entered the cave. But, I was also using a new camera and, most likely, had disabled some other function instead.

Seeing as it would have been pointless to try to explain this to the irate attendant, the best I could do was put my head down, let him escort me to the door, and wish dearly that I knew how to say I'm ashamed in Hindi.