Einstein's Birthday Talk

As EVERYONE in the whole world knows. . . Monday, March 14 is Einstein’s birthday!

In honor of his 126th, I am giving a 20-minute talk and a book signing at Reiter’s Bookstore at 6:00. Since it’s right downtown, hopefully many of you can swing by after work – I mean there’s a whole, like, birthday party planned. Should be a rocking time – bring your friends. For those of you who came to the talk at Politics and Prose, I promise to talk about something different, and for those who didn’t make it, now’s your chance! But, most importantly, I’d just love to see some friendly faces in the audience. . . .

Reiter’s is at 2021 K Street NW, and I hope to see you there!

Good Editors

All my life I have complained about how much I really crave good editing. People who neither hack it up so that it’s looser, or doesn’t sound like your words; versus people who just sign off on your article since it does in fact have a beginning, middle, and an end and they can’t be bothered to do anything other than help structure it. The latter kind is actually what I’ve gotten a lot of lately – my book editor literally just shipped the whole first draft off to be copy-edited without giving me word one of information back.

So, the two things currently on my plate – and winding up – are an article for Nature and an article for Discover. And both of the editors have been good. Very good. They have suggestions, they explain them well, and the suggestions will truly improve the piece, and they want me to write it in my voice, they don’t just want to rewrite the whole thing, etc. But do you know what that means? It means I have to rewrite the damn thing. I have to actually put in the time to make it better. My GOD. They want me to work. I just don’t know how I feel about this.