Sometimes I think a Royal Caribbean cruise would be preferable to some tasks. As a person who holds a master’s in English, with a lot of job experience in both writing and editing, one would think that a bit of cosmetic editing / ghost writing would be a breeze of an assignment, right?
Not always.
I was recently asked to edit a pair of sermons into a single message, eliminating duplicate information and references and making it a bit sharper. I was thrilled to get the assignment. It has, however, become quite intimidating to tackle.
The sermons, written specifically for oral delivery, must now be transformed into something that reads well, and there are more differences to such a transformation than one might expect. I’m wrestling with the text more than I expected and while the test is not unpleasant, it is intimidating, given the spiritual element of the messages.
Of course, I’m closing in on completing the task and it’s been quite instructive; but it has taken quite a bit more time than I first anticipated, and demanded far more of me than just my grammatical skills alone.
Tags: editing, Royal Caribbean, sermons