Some people who are supposed to proofread my work did not just proofread my work but completely changed the language! That is no longer my piece you will be reading guys! No longer!!

Furious would be an understatement to what I am experiencing at the moment. There are people who do not have the right to be editors (no, I'm not referring to the chief) if they do not know when to stop with the editing. If they cannot recognize the divide between grammar and writing style. If they obviously aren't well read enough (maybe because they only read textbooks their whole godforsaken lives) to know that there are certain ways of phrasing things that aren't necessarily wrong, even when they sound odd to some lacking editors.

Oooh. I expected more from this one. She's such a smart kid, that editor, smart in Accounting, and in Economics and probably in every other discipline she's attempted to venture into. And she's supposed to come from a school that prides itself in creating students that have a good handle of the English language.

Gawd. To think that piece was workshoped and re-workshoped and received well without having to go through this editor's editions.

You know, really, I would have been okay about changing one or two words, correcting wrong prepositions. But changing my sentece structure is too much! Sure I write somewhat kilometric sentences that are hard to follow, but I can say with much confidence after having written and been critiqued in that way for years that I can write them properly. If I choose to write my sentences long, does the editor have the right to shorten them and claim that such an act falls under the task of correcting grammar? Not so!

The length of my sentences are part of the pacing of my paragraphs; part and parcel of the building up of the aura and emotion of the scene. If they are long, then it must be with an intention, say, to suspend time in the narrative. It. is. my. style. With further experience I will learn other styles, but for now that is how I write and to alter that alters the identity of the piece, and of the author with it.

Tell me, is it correcting grammar to change the word "havoc", which I distinctly picked out from a basket of words that included what replaced it: "wreck"? Please, havoc and wreck may have similarities, and in context wreck may be the most appropriate word for it, but if I chose havoc then it was for a reason, and if you demand to know that reason, it is to develop character. My word choice for that narrative was such that it creates an image of the persona. If the persona chose havoc over wreck, then it hints at something about him, minutely but still! It was all part of my scheme!

My edited work is distasteful to me now. The lines stop and go like a toy car, and it does not suite the supposed mood of the piece in the least. I am sourly disappointed. I don't think I can even stomach finishing reading my edited narrative. I do not want to know what else has been made out of order.

If there is any consolation I can dig out from this ditch of a situation, it is that if anything, I will know what precautions to take when it is my turn to be given the editor's task. I will try my hardest not to make such intrusionary mistakes.