My play “The Size of Pike” opens this Friday at Moving Arts here in Los Angeles, where it runs through June 2nd. You can learn more about that, and get tickets, here. This is the point in the post where I subtly entreat you to please come see it.

And you might check out this piece that I was invited to write, which gives some of the backstory, as well as my take on how enchanting the outdoors truly are.

While I’m on the topic, the editor of that piece was Don Shirley, a longtime theatre critic and editor here in Los Angeles. I had no idea Don would be editing that, or even that I’d get an editor. What an enormous treat actually to be edited, and by an editor I respect! I read the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal every day, in print editions, and innumerable newspapers and magazines online, and I had given up hope that there were actually any editors left. (Most days, you wouldn’t know it.) Don emailed me with four questions and suggested changes, and I agreed to every one of them. Want to know why? Because they improved my piece. Here’s the definition of a good editor: someone who improves your piece. (And we know what a bad editor does.) He even took the time to go online and check something he wasn’t sure about at AMA Manual of Style, and to send me the link so I could check it out myself. I’m taking the time here to note all this because I’m grateful, and because I was further flattered to hear that he’d been reading this blog, so maybe he’ll see this.

Among other things, the play is about traditions and skills that are lost. Glad to know that copy editing is not one of them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Theatre, Thoughts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.