We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lana Dieterich. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lana below.

Hi Lana, thanks for joining us today. Do you take vacations? Why or why not?

I absolutely take vacations! It’s the best thing about being retired. In my retirement, however, I keep my hand in and accept both freelance editing jobs from The University of Texas at Austin, Bureau of Economic Geology, from which I retired. I also accept acting jobs from time to time. I have been going on Turner Classic Movie Cruises pretty much annually since 2015, and I lo0k forward to the next one in October. I’m currently mulling over a New York City trip to see some Broadway shows. I feel free to take off like that because of the relationship I have with the University. I tell my liaison a few weeks in advance when I’ll be out of pocket, and he stops sending me work during that time. I’m also free to take or leave acting gigs because I’ve pretty much put my agent on hiatus unless something special comes up that she thinks I might like to audition for. I’m unusual in my situation because I don’t depend on my “business” as a major source of capital and pretty much live on my retirement pension. Therefore, I’m not sure I’m qualified to give advice to others who depend on their businesses for their livelihood.

Lana, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I retired in 2013 from The University of Texas at Austin (UT), Bureau of Economic Geology, as an editor who read about oil and water resources mostly in Texas. I edited both articles for journals and reports of investigation by scientists that the Bureau periodically published. My specialty became editing non-English speakers’ writing, which was in demand at the Bureau, where many scientists are hired from a variety of foreign countries. (I have a Master’s degree from UT in Teaching English as a Second Language.} Almost immediately after my retirement, my former boss set up a deal wherein I could continue to edit for the Bureau, although only on a part-time basis so that I could continue to receive monthly checks from my retirement annuity. Editing has become a great supplement to my pension and allows me to maintain my ties with the media department while allowing me to follow what’s new in the world of oil, gas, and water resources in Texas. The same goes for acting. I continue to get small acting jobs from various sources, even though my agent no longer regularly sends me on auditions, mostly because I have become dependent on using a walker in my old age (I just turned 79). I just did a staged reading of a new play last week.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I had polio at the age of 6 months, so I had a rough go of it all my life. I have always walked with a limp, and several years ago, I began to experience postpolio syndrome, which is an irreversible weakening of the affected limb (left leg, in my case). I walked with a cane for a few years, and now I depend on a walker. The job that I had at the university for 30 years before I retired was on the Pickle Research Campus, and I commuted every day by riding my bike down to campus from my home in North Austin and then taking the shuttle to the Pickle campus. I have not been able to ride a bike since 2019, however. I nevertheless have not let my disability rule my life and made sure that I have always competed with able-bodied folks. I credit my family with constantly treating me as if I had never contracted polio, and I enthusiastically embraced my studies, employment, marriage, motherhood, and life! It has worked out, and whereas I’m the most encumbered I have ever been, I do my best to walk as much as I can every day and just keep on keeping on. The result is that the University continues to give me editing work and directors continue to call me to perform, even though I’m restricted to a walker or a wheelchair.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I have to say that I am the editor that I was meant to be because of the education I received at the hands of the nuns in the parochial schools that I attended in grades 1-12. They were sticklers for teaching the English language, and we were made to conjugate verbs in all tenses and modes and even decline nouns as if we were learning a foreign language. But most of all, we were made to diagram sentences, which I truly believe has made me into a first-class editor! I would venture to say that I know more about the English language than any editor I have yet to meet. I have also become a grammar nazi, and sometimes cannot respond to a meme that one of my friends has posted on Facebook because I see a careless typo that I simply cannot in good conscience “like.” Since learning spelling rules in first and second grades (i before e, except after c, or when sounding like a as in neighbor and weigh; always double the final consonant when adding a participial ending to preserve the original vowel sound of the root word; etc.), I have watched in horror as the language has changed. But as an editor, I know that my job is to keep the language as frozen as possible, even though I know that that job is a fruitless one. Such is the life of an editor.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: Lana Dieterich

Image Credits
Headshot by Kenny Gall