How I’m Editing Old Posts

tyunglebower ♦ March 5, 2012 ♦ Leave a comment

I was in a play once, called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged. You may have heard of it, but if you haven’t it’s a comic presentation of all of Shakespeare’s works in less than two hours. The vehicle for this feat is the “Reduced Shakespeare Company”. The show was a bit of a play within a play. The cast was performing as the RSC, who in turn were performing, (badly) as various Shakespearean characters. As members of the company, we were known by our real names on stage. So in that case, I played “Ty Unglebower”.

The quotations around my name are intentional. They indicate that who I was in the play was of course not a 100% accurate representation of who I actually am. (It wasn’t supposed to be a horror after all. Hi-yo!) Rather, facets of my real personality that best complimented the tone of the production were highlighted. Aspects of me on steroids, as it were. The result was “Ty Unglebower”. Me, but not me.

This provides a nice paralell for how I am editing my Too XYZ posts for inclusion in TyUnglebower.com.

I mentioned previously that not all of Too XYZ’s posts were going to make the transition. Those that have made it require editing. That work accounts for most of what I have been doing with this site in the last week. And since it represents a major part of what you will find here, readers are entitled to a bit of explanation as to how I am proceeding.

My intent is not to whitewash anything from my written past. You must understand this. TyUnglebower.com is a place for people to see my thought processes. A place to get to know me. Which means they also should have access to previous writings, even if views expressed therein have changed. We know people better today when we can view where they were yesterday.

So the Too XYZ posts are still Too XYZ posts. But they now need to play a version of themselves that is more applicable to TyUnglebower.com. To that end I have gone over their copy with a fine toothed comb to catch and correct any grammatical or typographical errors I may have missed upon first publication. (Believe me, I have found plenty.) I always took pride in my writings, but during the Too XYZ era, and especially the first year, many times a post was passionately conceived, written, edited, published and advertised in quite short order. Things were missed. I am more deliberate now, and I wanted that deliberation to be reflected here.

This also means on occasion I cleaned up a very awkward sentence. I couldn’t always tell if the awkwardness was due to a poorly framed sentence, or by typing out the wrong thing in the first place. In either case, I have done some housekeeping in such places.

Some changes are more cosmetic. For much of its life, Too XYZ lacked a consistent  style guide. I usually follow AP when I write, but things not covered by AP, I was somewhat all over the board with. Especially in regards to italics, bold face, and other such items. I’ve created a more consistent policy with such devices for TyUnglebower.com, and some of the Too XYZ posts have been edited to reflect that.

In a handful of places, when I thought it was too murky, I have left an author’s note to clear up confusion when the post started off in a way I deemed too “in-universe”, or too much tied to Too XYZ in the beginning, but otherwise expressed a legitimate, universal concept.

In only a few cases, I have either deleted entire posts, or critically altered the content of same, in order to remove references to unpleasant individuals who at the time were friends of mine, but proved to be more than a little like Janus. I saw no reason to include either their memory, nor their exchanges with me in this new endeavor.

A serious writer can always find room for improvement in his writings. Especially after the benefit of time. Yet it was not my policy to rewrite posts for the sake of them “sounding” better. Any post, including this one, can always be rewritten. Yet I have refrained from doing so beyond the perimeters I have described above. Hopefully this is understandable and acceptable to you, dear reader.