Editing Christmas

This year I will be celebrating my 23rd Christmas. It is amazing how the meaning of Christmas changed for me from childhood to a young adult. It feels like you edit what Christmas is to you as you become more mature.

When I was a child Christmas meant new toys, delicious foods, and party games. As I grow older, Christmas started to mean family gatherings and seeing my relatives who live far. As I came to know more about Christ, Christmas became something really special because I realized how it is a celebration of the birth of the Man who died for us.

This holiday have different meanings for different people. Whatever this means to you, you just have to remember to respect other people's reason for celebrating. I learned that it is better to greet other people by saying Happy Holidays instead of saying Merry Christmas to make sure that you don’t offend anyone.

Editing poverty

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". -Chinese Proverb

Most of us probably experienced being asked for change or cigarette while we are out smoking or walking. When you go out of the streets, it might not be a surprise to see different faces of poverty. Some are obvious, and some are not.

A lot of us might think that when we give out change we help lessen poverty. It may actually help, but that help may not last long. We should start editing the way we help people. There are other ways of helping the people who are experiencing poverty. We can choose to assist them with our short term participation like giving out goods during Christmas or other holidays; however, we can create greater impact when participate in projects that promote sustainable development.

Sustainable development compared to one-time outreach programs, involve creating projects that will help people who experiencing poverty stand on their own feet after you or your organization's intervention. The types of projects may include building schools, developing livelihood projects, microfinancing, etc. I think that if we focus more effort in implementing these types of outreach program the effects may not be readily seen, but we will go further because we can help them not to become dependent of other people's assistance.

It is not wrong to participate in short-term outreach programs because it still helps address immediate concerns of people experiencing poverty. If we come to think of it, Maslow's hierarchy of needs shows that before we can move further towards self-actualization, we need to first address our physical needs. It would still be a big help if people put efforts in addressing these needs. However, it will be greater help if we can assist people in poverty find ways to earn for themselves, stand on their own, and live with dignity.

Changing the way we work

What is your ideal office? If you ask this question at the time when internet was not yet invented, you'll probably get answers like a big office room with a big reclining chair, own fridge and coffee station. 

Technological advancements changed the way people work.

Nowadays, a lot of people would probably say, an ideal office is a home office. There will be less possibilities of hearing someone say that they’d rather be somewhere than in their office because there are already options to have the work done outside the company offices.

Technology change the way people communicate and conduct business. Projects can now be done with just the use of electronic communication.

There are workplaces that take advantage of working remotely. The companies can save money by having fewer workspaces but still meeting their work needs.  Employees can also benefit from not having a specific workplace. They can multi-task and do personal chores while getting their work done. They can also freely choose to work where they can think clearly.

Here is a video that shows how a modern workforce conducts business. 

Editing builds multiple meanings.

Editing has the power to create different meanings of the same event. Below is a video that can give us an idea on what happens when reality TV footages get edited.





This made me realize that writers and editors should really be careful when choosing what to include in a material. They have to ensure that the story is told the way it happened and not the way they wanted it to happen. Though it is hard to be completely unbiased, everyone should aim to retell a story as close as it is to reality.

Parodies: Positive editing or negative editing?

I enjoy watching parodies from different YouTube channels. Most of them are really funny that I go on for a few minutes just watching parodies. 

Parodies involve a lot of editing. Unlike copyediting and substance editing, editing parodies should have other motives for changing the content of another person’s writing, film or song but still use a lot of the elements used in the original work. The changes are made in the content to either make fun or critic someone’s original work. Though YouTube has a lot of videos that are just trying to be funny, there are also some that bring both comic effect and substance.

I think parodies are both positive and negative.

Pros

• It helps publicize the original song, film or book. Whenever I watch parodies, it makes me want to watch the original and check out its content.
• It encourages thinking. There are parodies that go beyond just being funny. There are those that criticize the original works and prove a lot of good points.

Cons

• The owners of the original works might feel disrespected. We know that writers, film producers, and songwriters put a lot of effort in their work. Some of them might feel bad if their work is used just for fun, like the makers of the film Downfall who banned the YouTube parodies of the film.
• It may show cons of buying some products and might encourage people not to buy.

Overall, I think the effects of parodies still depend on the contents of the parodies. I have here two parodies from YouTube. One is just trying to be funny and the other one proves a point.

This is a parody, which criticizes how iPad is just a bigger version of iPod Touch and nothing more. I think for some people, it might make them think twice about buying an iPad if they already own an iPod touch.

This is a parody that just turned the Bruno Mars' song Just The Way You Are to something really hilarious. 

Write with your heart. Edit with your head.

Sean Connery said, “you write your first draft with your heart and you re-write with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think.”

We always need to generate new ideas for the different things that we do and there is no strict rule on how to do this. At times we edit in our minds before we even start writing or executing our ideas. Developing an outline for a written project or creating a sketch for visual arts projects saves us from wasting our time doing and redoing things. However, there are times when we think too much that we come to a point where we are already censoring our creativity.

Let's take photography as an example. In photography class, we learned how important it is to use the correct camera settings and identify what setting would let us create good pictures. Sometimes we lose the opportunity to capture photographs of interesting things because we already preempt our own thoughts that it won't look good because we lack a certain camera feature or we don't know how to do something. Since we failed to take a picture because of over thinking about what is technically expected to fail, we didn’t have an actual product to evaluate or edit.

Sometimes we have to trust ourselves in order to make things happen. Don’t expect everything to look good when you first write, draw or create it; don’t always avoid doing something because it looks bad in your mind. The famous philosopher Albert Camus said, “all great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.”

Here is a video from Langara College that challenges us to push our creativity, and shows us the value of evaluating our work after we’ve executed our ideas.

Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries from Langara College on Vimeo.

What's in a name?

Do you ever wonder about business names and ask why did they come up with that name? In my opinion, business names should capture the nature of the business and the image that they want to communicate to their target audience. 

I was out last Saturday when I noticed the name of the gym in front of Northgate mall. It says Snap Fitness 24/7. The lights inside the gym were closed and it looked like no one was there. 24/7? Aren't they supposed to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week? 

It looks funny to me, but it can be confusing to others.

Choosing a business name is like editing a headline. The name should be catchy yet descriptive. The business name is one of the factors that could either make or break the business; it is usually the first thing that will bring people to your business. Aside from creating a catchy and nice business name, the owners should make sure they deliver what their name or tagline promised. If they can't deliver that promise, maybe they shouldn't put it in their business name after all. 

Practice won't make you perfect.

Practice makes perfect, but no one is perfect. These, I think, are two contradicting quotes, which encourage practice and continuous learning from mistakes.

Our instructor in most of our Technical Communication courses told us that there is no good writing, only good rewriting. It is true that when we write we are very prone to make mistakes because we share our thoughts, and we open it for other people's criticism. 

I know it feels scary because I really don't know how people would take my writing. I can't also control the way people would criticize my writing, so I usually just expect harsh comments. However, I also learned that I shouldn't really be scared to write because the more I practice, the more I will know what my mistakes are. It is normal to feel bad sometimes, but we shouldn't just end there. We should take each editing session or activity as an opportunity to learn and correct our mistakes. We shouldn't just correct the mistakes and comments in order to satisfy the reader or editor for that one piece of writing. We should understand the comments and corrections, and apply it to our next writing.

Practice may not make us perfect, but at least it will make us better.

Think in English to write in English

To speak or write in English, I have to train myself to think in English. 

What thinking in English are you talking about, Danica?

Yes, there is such a thing as thinking in English, especially for immigrants like me.

Only having English as my second language sometimes becomes a challenge for me in writing and speech. Before speaking or writing, I form my thoughts using my mother tongue. Then, in my mind, I translate it to English before writing or saying my opinion. Honestly, this takes more time. 

So what do I to make me think or respond faster? Eat more salt for iodine? No.

I still think in Filipino. What I learned in several projects we’ve done in class is that as a writer, I have to learn the culture of the people I write for. I also have to process the information in English, so I could quickly respond. 

Thinking in the language we are writing in is more than just being quick in responding during conversations or writing. This applies even if it is not for the English audience. It helps us get our ideas across and prevents us from offending our audience just because we didn’t think that a word we used is offensive in their culture.

Thinking in a different language doesn’t mean we have to change our beliefs. For me, it is more of being extra careful with what words I use, what topics I write about, and how I structure my ideas.

How do we develop ourselves to think in a different language? Use the language more. Listen, read, and speak that language. Practice.

I still have to learn a lot about the Canadian Culture. How about you? Have you tried thinking in a different language or culture?

Who do we write for?

I think it is normal to find days when all our ideas just flow out of our mind and we just freely transform it into a piece of writing. Writing is a way of expressing one's thoughts and emotions. We can write about the things that we want in the way that we want it. 

When we do this, we express ourselves, but are we communicating? Maybe. 

How do we know if we are communicating? Let's try searching for the phrase "models of communication process" in Google. You will notice that all models terminate in a so-called Audience or Destination. It just shows that whatever we write about, we should always remember to ask ourselves, "Who is my audience?” A complete communication process starts with a sender and should always have a connection to a receiver, audience or destination. 

It is good that we can express ourselves in writing but we should always aim for others to find use in what write. 

Editing can save and bring money to your business.

I saw this sign during one of my trips to a grocery store. I stopped to think whether it made sense for the business to post it or not. Most likely, it was just a mistake; however, can you imagine how many people saw this sign?

Errors are made. It may be true that it is not the end of the world when you make a mistake; however, errors can cost you a lot of money. Imagine if there were 150 people who changed their mind about buying the product just because they saw the sign, that will be a few dollars of sales lost.  If you think that a loss of few dollars won’t greatly affect a company, think of a business handling a billion-dollar contract making an error on the terms of the contract. It would definitely cost a lot of money to have a contract corrected or they can even lose the contract because of an error.

It is important to always proofread business documents.Editing brings a lot of benefits to businesses. An error-free business document

• Signifies credibility.
• Increases the chances of having happy customers.
• Saves the business some money on addressing this type of issues.  

Whatever type of document you are working on, you should never forget to edit. And that was my two cents.