Last night I saw “Spirit of the Marathon,” a documentary about five runners in the Chicago Marathon of 2005. Katherine Switzer, the first woman to officially enter and run the Boston Marathon in 1967, says, “You triumph over the adversity — that’s what the marathon is all about. And therefore you know there isn’t anything in life that you can’t triumph over after that.”

On Sunday, I will join 21,000 other runners to run my second marathon. I started running on January 4, 2007, the day I found out about the Team in Training marathon program. I did it because I knew it was completely impossible for an endomorphic, lazy, non-athletic, almost-40-year-old woman to run a marathon.

Guess I was wrong. Wish me luck. You can also see live results, if you want (Elizabeth Ziesenis, Race #14752).

This six-minute trailer from the movie is worth watching.

As a freelance copywriter, I find myself editing my work and my clients’ work almost every day. I have strict rules for the editing process that I almost always follow.

1. Always print things out.
   I stare at the computer screen for hours every day. Hours. Like 10? 14? It’s horrible. Thus, it’s tough to really see errors on the screen. I use the second side of recycled paper and use a custom print setting that I call “Cheap” for the hard copies, thus minimizing both ink and paper use. (The “Cheap” setting is fast draft version in gray scale.)
2. Edit in natural light.
   When I worked in an office, I’d leave the fluorescent lighting and sit at a picnic table outside, especially for big jobs. Or I’d go to the conference room with the big windows. Here in the office I have only natural light, but I like to take the editing outside because it’s a smidge dark in here.
3. Use a pen and a highlighter as I go through.
   If I just use a pen for edits, I can easily miss the reversal of a comma and a quotation mark, for example. I slash each change with a highlighter to make sure it stands out.
4. Track changes in MS Word.
   If I have extensive edits, I tend to view in Final mode instead of Final Showing Markup so it doesn’t get too ugly. But my clients should see what I’ve done unless it’s a first draft. If I forget, I usually run a compare documents merge and send the combined doc that shows all the changes.
5. Check off each and every change.
   I cannot tell you the frustration I’ve had with vendors who receive a list of changes and do 90 or 75 percent of them. It takes twice as long to make sure all the changes were implemented, and you never trust the vendor again, so it’s like that every time. I use a second highlighter to mark each change as I make it.
6. Save documents as different versions.
   I know I should use the versioning features of MS Word, but I generally just save the doc as something like Membership_brochure.bz.doc. My clients will usually come back with their own changes and add their initials, such as Membership_brochure.bz.rc.doc. This helps us figure out who did the last version.
7. Don’t save the last version as docname_final.doc.
   The last version is usually what is used, and I always find it a little unprofessional when I download a document called Membership_brochure_FINAL.pdf from a website.
8. Know the standard proofreading symbols.
   You should know the standard symbols that proofreaders use. Most of my clients know them, and it helps tremendously when they fax me a marked-up version.

When you quote someone for an article, do you need to clarify how the quote got to you? I see journalists writing attributions such as, “so-and-so said via email” or “according to his personal statement on the website.”

I posed this question to the world’s best team of journalism professors: Roy Moses, Keith Shelton and Dr. Richard Wells from my alma matter, the University of North Texas.

From Roy Moses (via email):

A good reporter wants his story (or hers) to be accurate and wants readers to have faith in their accuracy. Probably nothing surpasses the accuracy of a good reporter (note emphasis on the word good) taking notes from a one-on-one interview. All else — especially anything via the internet — can, and should, be suspect. …Too, a reporter wants readers to know he made a faithful effort to get first-person attribution, but for whatever reasons, he couldn’t. So, this is a sort of cop-out, in a way, or a CYA move as a last straw.

Dr. Wells agreed, also via email:

I believe that the readers have a right to know where info came from. There’s much difference in an interview done by the reporter/writer and other methods. Each has its nuance, and those nuances are not lost on the readers. Readers have some understanding, for instance, of the lack of truth found on the Internet. Also, readers understand that reporters can catch much from body language and facial expressions in person that are not the same via phone and e-mail. Reporters can, when detecting such subtleties, go off in different directions, for instance.

A third email from Keith Shelton noted that saying where you got the info is a good CYA.

I don’t think an accurate quote needs attribution that identifies how you got the quote. However, saying you received it by e-mail is somewhat of a cover in case it turns out not to have been from the source quoted. So I can see how you might justify using that. I see no need to say you got it by phone. That’s like saying telephone-assisted reporting in regard to computer-assisted reporting.

One of my favorite parts of my job as a freelance copywriter is writing articles for company newsletters, press releases, magazines, etc. I am in the process of writing an article about how people use wikis, and I just bid on a project to take a concept about wireless technology and create an article for the general public.

The funny thing about their responses is that they talk about the responsibility of a good journalist. These days, I am a writer with an Agenda. When I write an article for a client, it’s clearly to make the client look good somehow. I’m quite embarrassed about how far away I am from being a responsible, objective reporter who seeks out the truth and plays by the rules to get the story. I carefully choose my sources, artfully leave out or minimize opposing views, write quotes from the CEO of a company without ever having talked to her.

The good news is that in my quest to try to start leaving the house more often, I’m trying to pick up some stringer writing gigs for the San Diego Union-Tribune. And then I can practice being a good journalist again.

This morning I was lounging in bed thinking about finishing my marathon in less than five hours. I started doing the math: I finished a half marathon in 2:19:07. Double that is 4:40. Add a few minutes because it’s unlikely I can keep the same pace for 26.2 miles, so that’s 4:50, 4:55. But what about the water stations? What if I need a bathroom break???!!??

I went from calm to panicked in about 17 seconds. I’M NOT GOING TO MEET MY GOAL! The math doesn’t add up! What if I have to tie my shoe!!??!!

I was in a full-fledged dither.

dither:
1649, “to quake, tremble,” phonetic variant of M.E. didderen (c.1375), of uncertain origin. The sense of “vacillate, be anxious” is from 1819.

I spent a few minutes this morning with Pete, my marathoning buddy, who helped talk me down from my ledge. As my mind started to clear, I realized that his expertise was helping me to see things more clearly, calm down and realize everything would work out.

Strangely enough, I also realized that what Pete did for me is not unlike what I do for my clients. They come to me in dithers of their own with projects that need finishing, ideas that need flushing out, deadlines that seem impossible. And because I am an expert in my field, I can give them advice and counsel that will give them peace of mind. “I can have that business proposal edited by tomorrow COB,” I said to one budding entrepreneur at the end of her rope. And all of a sudden an impossible task seemed possible, and she was no longer freaking out. I regularly tell people, “You’re farther along than you think.” The reassurance helps us move forward.

Not all my clients come to me in a dither, but Pete’s assistance today helped me realize the ability that an expert has to make the impossible seem possible again. Either that or he slipped a tranquilizer into my decaf coffee. Either way, I’m grateful.

I’m also still kind of freaking out. Five days to race day….