never name a pizza joint stan's

I realize I have been away for a week.

It has been the week from hell, and I have yet to navigate out of it.

I managed to beat yet another deadline, which involved slogging through what was beyond any doubt the most over-the-top, horrendously executed copy edit job in my miserable life.

I can say this now because both my editor and my editor's assistant concurred with my assessment of the "laying on of hands" by this rock-pulverizer with a red pencil.

I should have taken photographs of some of the pages and comments I made, but it was all I could do to sit on my hands and not hurl the 400-plus-page manuscript across the room.

Let me say this: No.

Easily 95 percent of the medical-dictionary-trained copy editor's ideas will never taste wet ink on paper.

Look: I apologize, dear hardworking copy editor.

But no.

Not but-comma-no.

Just no.

I will share one triumphant moment with you: I came to a page... somewhere near the middle-thirdish (No, that is not a fucking word and I am fully aware of it, so you do not need to point it out. If I didn't want to put it on the page, it would not be there) of the manuscript and I put this on it:

Oh! A page without a Post-It Note on it! Let me fix that!

(written on a Post-It Note).

How do I get out of this hell?

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