I'm an Ooligan groupie. I never went through the program, but I hang out with a lot of people who did, and sometimes even they seem to incorporate me into their memories. "Remember when...?"
Then again, I've heard the stories enough, maybe I do remember.
A couple of years ago, I was one of the winners of Ooligan's Editors' Choice Annual Short Story Contest. And with that I finally found myself smack in the middle of a real Ooligan moment.
After Ooligan acquires a manuscript, the author gets not one editor but a whole classroom of them. Because mine was just one short story, they worked with me online, and I delighted in reading the notes they inserted electronically into the lines. Most notes included more than one comment from more than one person, sometimes individual monologues, sometimes the transcript of a dialogue among the five editors assigned to my work. Those writers who are going to publish a full book with Ooligan usually get an in-person conversation with more than a dozen editors. That's an intense process most authors never go through. And it's just one of the things that makes Ooligan and its students and faculty something to remember.
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I've been told by a few of our authors that the "Ooligan experience" of a class edit is both terrifying and awesome. As part of my classes I got to work on the manuscript for Tattoo Machine by local tattoo artist Jeff Johnson (he came to us for edits, shopped the book, and landed a stellar deal with a large house). He seemed to have a good time with us. :) It's a process I'd love to go through someday--who knows, perhaps there is fierce competition for getting manuscripts worked on in Ooligan's editing classes!
I'm always fascinated by how, beyond the basic nuts and bolts of fixing grammar, being edited is such a unique experience; it varies incredibly with each editor. I love hearing from people who really dig in to the work and make me question my choices. It's probably true that learning to be a better editor has done more for my own writing than most of the writing classes I've taken.
And where's a copy of that winning short story? I'd like to read it. :)