Open Letter To All Editors & CopyEditors & Anyone Who Works With Names:
I'm not good with names.
[Edited to add: case in point... I forgot to add my own name to this, so Delphine was kind enough to edit and add it.]
I remember stories, but I get the character names mixed up and tend to merge together everyone who has same initials or alliteration or whose names remind me of anything else other than what the name is.
Then there's spelling... ll, y, ie, ee, ea... It feels like mission impossible.
So when I made the last Duets Anthology and it was all handmade (so not easily editable with a word processor)... I checked and double-checked the names. Letter by letter.
And... guess what?
I still got too many of them wrong.
[Including Delphine's... whose last name I will not try to type here because I will definitely get it wrong AGAIN. I managed to misspell it not one, but TWO ways.]
And that experience (among others) has me feeling like I do when I watch Olympic athletes do things that my body couldn't even dream of doing and I struggle to believe that we're the same species. How on earth do editors work with so many pieces and names and write it right all the time?
So this is my letter of awe and gratitude.
Amy
(whose given name is Amarilis, but has been Amy since childhood because the ways to misspell Amarilis are legendary and epic)
Link to Duets, if you care to check it out:
https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com/2024/01/03/duets-an-anthology/
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