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| Photo: John Swan |
Editing
Blending authors' contributions into a seamless whole, anglicisation, rewriting contributions that missed the point or were just plain bad. You can see the difference when it's done, so money well spent.
Case history - anglicising and updating a psychiatry handbook
The US editors missed the deadline and evidently lacked enthusiasm. The project manager had a deadline to meet and asked me to go through the text, suggest updates and write some of the new stuff. Fortunately, because I write Research Digest, I was pretty much up to speed on clinical developments and, splitting the work between us, we met the deadline.
The editors did a bit too but, late in the day, we hit copyright issues. I had to rewrite one chapter in two new versions - that is, rephrase everything to make it different from the original, twice. The first go was hard enough, but doing it again...
Case history - taking over half way through
This was an interesting project to develop a CD teaching programme for pharmacists combining a clinical and practical approach. The publisher came to me after two modules had been written. Problem one: they lacked the necessary focus and depth of information. Problem two: the client wanted to see the first one very soon. I rewrote that module in a couple of days, adding to it substantially, then did the next. Over the following months I wrote the remaining four from scratch and did some MCQs for each one. With some very welcome editorial input, the modules have gone through internal approval relatively smoothly.