Judie, who publishes the lovely Aunt Judie's Guide to Life for nieces and nephews both biological and honorary, has asked me to write for her 16-year-old niece about what I do for a living.

I am a copy editor for a New York City daily newspaper. This means that I am one of the very last people—practically the last, save for my boss—who looks at what goes into the next day's paper before the printing presses start whirring. (Actually, I do not know if printing presses really whirr, having never seen one. One of my goals, when I've been here a little longer, is to ask how I would go about getting a tour of the printing plant, which I think is about five or ten miles away from my paper's midtown Manhattan headquarters.)

As the Talking Heads song goes, "How did I get here?" I ask myself that every day. I love my job and I can't believe that I am working full-time for the seventh largest newspaper in the country. It's actually nowhere near where I would have wanted to be at this point in life when I was 16. Yet, if you'd told me when I was 16 that I would be here at 35, I know I still would have said, "Cool!" And meant it. Because I always have loved journalism. I just thought I was going to work in A&R for a record label, signing my favorite acts (and if I'd done so then—1985—would have made a fortune, as my faves were the Smithereens and They Might Be Giants).

I know it's wrong to do woulda, coulda, shoulda, but if I could go back and talk to my younger self, I would have told myself to choose a career doing what I did best—and pursue my passions in my off-time. That's not the same thing as choosing a boring career. What one does best is rarely boring. I read very well, and I eat very well. At my job, I can do both at my desk, to my heart's content—and get paid for it.

All right, so it's more than that. For one thing, the hours are whacked. (What is the current preferred, non-offensive term that teens are using for "whacked"? Please tell me and I will apply it.) I have a five-day work week, but my "weekend" falls on two weekdays. This is because the paper has to go out on Saturdays and Sundays, so only the most senior of the eight copy editors may have weekend days off.

Because the copy desk can't do anything until the day's stories are in, the copy desk's hours begin at 3 p.m., except on Saturday when things get rolling at noon.

Each day, there are three editions of the paper. The first one is known as the "bulldog." I have no idea why. Because the stories change from one edition to the next—and the copy desk is operational for about nine-and-a-half-hours—copy editors' shifts are staggered so that the desk always has enough people on hand.

My own start times vary from 1 to 5 p.m., depending on the day, for a seven-and-a-half-hour shift. The 5 p.m. start time is my "late night"—everybody on the desk has one—because the copy chief needs one copy editor to stay to work on additions or changes for the third and final edition.

The office looks pretty much like any newsroom. If you've seen "All the President's Men," you have a good idea: one big room, set off by waist- or chest-high partitions between departments, so you can look out over the whole floor and see who's at their spots. (Here is an example, from The Sacramento Bee that is nearly identical to my employer's setup.)

There is no privacy. While you might think that would be annoying, and it can be—like when the people in the department next to mine get into one of their loud sports discussions (no offense, guys, but I'm tryin' to concentrate here)—it can also be fun. I can hear the editors call out to one another or to the reporters, I can hear the discussions over what's going to be in the "wood" (the front-page headline, so called because it used to be laid out in wooden type), and so on. A big story comes in and people start buzzing. It's exciting—yet, as a copy editor, I don't have to leave my chair. I only have to wait until the story comes to me.

There's often a story waiting for me when I arrive, in the form of a "chit" left for me by my boss, the copy chief. The chit is a piece of paper on which is written the name of a story (the "slug") and a code number by which the story may be found in the computer (in case the slug's illegible or wrong). It also tells me how long the story's supposed to be (measured in column inches), how long the headline should be (measured in picas), how big the letters of the headline should be (measured in points), and how many lines (or "decks") the headline should be. And it's written in shorthand. It might say "2l 20p u/l x9" and I have to translate that in my head as, "A two-line headline in 20-point type, upper- and lower-case lettering, across 9 picas."

Once I have the chit, I open up the story on my computer and spellcheck it. I've always hated spellcheck, because it's so easily abused, but it is necessary in this kind of job, as a first step before doing a good old-fashioned read of the story.

Unfortunately for me, spellcheck knows I hate it, and it has gotten me into trouble. As you may have noticed, the "Ignore All" and "Change All" buttons in spellcheck are perilously close together. One day I pushed the wrong button, and the next day my boss received an angry letter from one of our editors. It seemed there was a person quoted in the story whose last name was Stoll. Spellcheck made it Stool.

Thankfully, I was still pretty new on the job, but it was embarrassing, and I felt terrible for my boss. In most jobs, if you mess up, people can trace it fairly easily to you. In my job, my editor was the recipient of an angry reaction that I myself deserved. Needless to say, it taught me to be more careful.

After spellchecking, I trim the story to specifications. If the story's from the news wires, I'm the first person at the paper who edits it. Those stories are easy to trim because they're written in the traditional "inverted pyramid" style, where the most important information is up top, so I can just cut from the bottom. But I still have to read the story all the way through before cutting it, both to correct spelling and grammar errors (many of which will still be there after spellcheck) and to see if there's anything in the middle that could be cut more easily than what's at the end.

With in-house stories, cutting's a little trickier. Although all but one reporter (who shall remain nameless) understand that the copy editor's job is to trim down their work, I still have to do everything I can to retain the writer's individual voice, especially if the writer's a columnist (as opposed to a news reporter).

Finally comes the headline. This is by far the hardest part of the job, but also the most rewarding—especially since I have the blessing of working for the only daily newspaper in America that some people buy just for the headlines.

The headline, first and foremost, has to reflect the lead paragraph of the story. If a reader sees a headline and then, beginning to read the story, finds that it's unrelated, the reader will quickly lose interest.

As long as that requirement's fulfilled, then—providing the story's not tragic (or, at least, not tragic to people within our distribution area)—I can have fun. It's an exciting challenge to come up with something that both explains the story and makes a groan-inducing pun.

On an average day, I have to run as fast as I can just to stay in place—copyediting the stories and coming up with headline that are witty and succint, if not laugh-out-loud funny. The first priority is to write good headline that fits the specs. That can be very difficult in cases where one is writing a 130-point banner headline, with room for only two or three short words. That's why some of my most popular headlines at work were not necessarily hilarious, but told the story in a tiny space. For example, I once earned praise from the "duty editor" (the highest-ranking editor on duty) for a very short and simple 130-point banner headline for a story about moviemaking in NYC: "CITY FLICKERS."

The good days, when the puns emerge, usually come in streaks. Like recently when I wrote, for a story on how the "Lord of the Rings" film was back on top at the box office—"RETURN OF THE KA-CHING—and the next day wrote, for a story on the police union's Times Square billboard calling for higher pay:"Cops push for wages of sign."

Photo captions can also be opportunities for puns, as they consist of a mini-headline—a "kicker"—followed by a description of the photo. I'm very proud of my kicker for a photo of a dour Nelson Mandela next to a beaming Beyoncé: "AGE BEFORE BOOTY."

One chit follows another, with an ebb and flow depending on the rate at which the reporters and editors can push through the day's stories. The pace of work is most rapid for the first five hours of my shift, when we're racing to get the first edition done. In addition, for the duration of my shift, I can't leave my desk for longer than five or ten minutes at a time. It feels a bit like kindergarten in that way (it also feels like kindergarten when I come in after my weekend to find someone's taken my chair), but I understand that's how it's done. I'm paid to be on call. So I bring lunch and dinner with me to work and nosh whenever I feel like it. No one bothers me about it, which is nice.

Once the first edition's been put to bed, I have relative quiet for the last two and a half hours of my shift. However, I have to be careful not to get too zoned out from websurfing, because there are always a few more stories coming through for the later editions. Plus, I have to look at the page proofs, which I enjoy. These are the actual pages that have been laid out for the first edition. Since the headlines have already been written, I only have to get out the red pen, mark the errors, and then go into the computer to correct them so they'll be right in the later editions.

Sometimes I find more substantial things to correct in the proofs. Last night, the headline for a story on a proof said, "Hero dies in blaze: Old man alerted tenants." The story went on to describe this "sickly elderly man who walked with a cane." He was 60 years old.

I thought of my mom, who's in her early 60s but too young for full Social Security, and wondered how she would feel if someone called her "elderly." Then I pointed the story out to the weekend copy chief, noting that Baby Boomers who are 60 might take umbrage at that word and at "old." He agreed and the words were removed, with the subheadline changed to a simpler, "Alerted building tenants."

At the end of the day, I get to go home, and here is what any person working full-time will tell you is the mark of a very desirable job: I don't have to take my work home with me. In fact, I can't. It's impossible. What freedom! I can go out with friends if it's my early night (or if they're up for staying out late) and I can blog, and if I'm not blogging too late in the night, I can get up in time the next day to meet a friend for lunch or go shopping—all without having to think about "that big project that's due at work." There's nothing at work to think about. The day's paper is out, and tomorrow's a new day.

The only way I can describe this kind of freedom to a 16-year-old is, imagine if you never had any homework for the rest of your life. You may think that's what the adult world is like, but for many people, it's not. With almost every white-collar profession—and quite a number of blue-collar ones—at some point, you're called upon to write a report or give a presentation, or confer with co-workers to come up with a group solution to a problem, and you're expected to think about these things in your off time. Likewise, if you haven't finished a project at work, you may have to come in on a day off, or come in early, to work on it. Copy editing is an ideal job for a creative person, because, at the end of the day, you still have both the time and the brainpower to create.