Land on Demand Editing Indexing Proofreading

For GVB and Moi

2012-01-24T23:09:00.001-05:00

This song has helped me immensely through today. I think I've listened to it 30 times via the following link. Don't think I've ever made it through a minute watching the video, although I like the one with her playing it in an LA park with Bon Iver, in which you can watch her and a band. Check it out if you're so inclined.

Rough few days, folks. Don't know what's up here lately.
And I don't even like to dance.
Love this, though.

PS: It's not hard to trace the line from there back to the song below. And, yes, if you're keeping score at home, singing in the following video would be Maureen Tucker (lower right), drummer in perhaps (ahem) the most influential rock band in history as well as future Walmart assistant manager, future Tea Party advocate, and future partial inspiration for a Haiku Monday entry:

New Feature (sorta): Quotes Wrap-Up

2012-01-23T08:26:00.000-05:00

I used to post the occasionalquote I liked from what crossed my work desk. I'm still going to do so, butcompile them rather than present them individually — kind of a mix tape fromthe bunker.

Nothing in particular connects these tidbits, except that theyattracted my attention enough at the time to stop what I was doing and write"blog" in the margin.

===

“

O’Shaughnessyclaims that even ordinary, everyday seeing of a fork, say, involves seeing thefork as a fork, although he notes that Wittgenstein himself may not have beenprepared to go that far.

—JonathanEllis and Daniel Guevara

Ourdisease is one of wanting to explain.

—LudwigWittgenstein

Onesuccessful approach to changing cultural norms is to encourage family planningand delayed marriage through the actions of sympathetic soap opera characters.

—JackNelson-Pallmeyer

There is nothing so wise as a circle.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

“But Ed’s quite a talker,” hesays. “He can talk a dog off a meat wagon.”

—Tom Dunlop

One person might say, “When I look in your eyes,time stands still,” implying a mesmerizing connection between the two people.Another person might rephrase the message and say, “Your face could stop aclock.”

—Barry Brewster and Eileen Dowse

TheU.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the StateDepartment has in its foreign service.

—NicholasKristof

Believe that there is light atthe end of the tunnel. Believe that you might be that light for someone else.

—Kobi Yamada

”

Some Advice for Authors

2012-01-20T06:08:00.000-05:00

Four things that do not make you a better author:

1. Roman numerals. I don't think your readers will consider that your book is more worthy or that you are more scholarly if your part and chapter numbers are rendered in letters.

2. Citations in a book that doesn't need them. Don't use your exhaustive library of photocopied articles from scores or hundreds of different sources amassed over the last thirty years to impress your readers. Most of them -- unless you're writing a scholarly/academic volume or in a topic area where such documentation is the norm -- want to understand your thoughts on the subject, not look at the spines on your bookshelf. The point of most books is to educate your audience, not please your peers. [Note: This section updated based on Paisan's insightful comments, in which he brings up a most salient point that I neglected to address in the initial posting.]

3. Heavily formatted manuscripts. In my experience, a direct inverse correlation exists -- 95 percent of the time -- between the quality of your writing and the number of different fonts, colors, images, extra spaces, and instances of centered text present within the file. Very few heavily formatted manuscripts are also well written. When it leaves my desk, not only will your book read differently, but all of the time you've spent formatting it will be for naught. I change everything that's not Times 12-point double-spaced to make it so -- unless you've tried to jam so much text in a table that I have to make it smaller to make sense of it and make it appear on my screen in a usable fashion. Yes, believe it or not, I can make more sense of a manuscript that looks like it came from Microsoft Word as opposed to a nine-year-old playing in Microsoft Paint.

4. Ellipses. When you're quoting from someone else, trust that your readers are smart enough to know that another person's entire thought process did not begin and end with the few words you've cited. Also, don't introduce quotes with ellipses, as if you're building anticipation for the reader. A simple comma works.

Two things that might not make you a better author, but they'll make every editorial or production professional looking at your work praise you:

1. Leave the design to the designers. Treat your computer like a typewriter with memory, except don't hit the Enter key at the end of every line.

2. Understand that the people working on your book after you are trying to make you look better to your readers. Editors, proofreaders, indexers, designers . . . none of these folks' names appear on the cover of your book. We are not in this for the glory or the royalties or the book tours or being known as published authors. We are not trying to insult you by making changes. Trust me, we'd all love to see perfect manuscripts that don't need a mark on them or any intervention other than putting the book into print. I'd rather be paid the same rate for easier work. Who wouldn't? But if we change something or suggest a change, it's not to gratify ourselves; it's to make your work better. We've done this before, folks. Listen to your editors. This might be the eighth book you've written. Fine. It might be the three hundredth book I've edited, not to mention the next in the thousands of books your publisher has printed. Think about it.

One other note: Pick the appropriate tense and stick with it. Unless you're a really good writer, don't attempt to write a book about past events in the present tense. Very few authors can pull this off successfully in English, although I understand it's easier in German. I just finished an absolutely delightful book in which the author managed to write quite nicely in the historical present tense. It's about as rare as a complete day off.

You can file this advice under "Trying to Turn a Foul Mood into Something Productive." I hope I've succeeded.

A Not Infrequent Albeit Frightening Thought in the Bunker

2012-01-19T01:41:00.001-05:00

What do you do when you have no confidence thatauthors have the capability to answer your queries or follow through onrequests for information, such as completing bibliographic entries correctly orunpacking confusing passages?

I might eventually expand on this point, but for now thequestion stands on its own.

The issue, though, is a common one.

An Oldie but Goodie: Proofreading and MLK Day

2012-01-16T09:33:00.001-05:00

Quick story:

I went to college in Atlanta (and stayed for another 17 years), and my first job out of college was proofreading airline timetables and lottery tickets at a printing plant. In 1981 or 1982, MLK Day was not yet a federal holiday, but Georgia had made it a state holiday. The powers-that-be at the plant considered shutting down the plant and offices for the holiday, but the pressmen and compositors -- a pretty redneck bunch, quite frankly -- didn't exactly like the idea. By any means.

So, in fairness to the competing cultures at the plant, it was put to a vote: do we give folks a day off for MLK Day or Confederate Memorial Day? Yes, you read that right.

Thus it ended up that this nice Jewish boy from New York City, whose forebears didn't see US shores until the late 19th century, received a day off with pay for Confederate Memorial Day. Democracy in action.

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, and My Favorite Proofreading Quote

2012-01-13T10:11:00.000-05:00

Nope. I never saw the movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas. This story concerns your humblecorrespondent and a particular book, beginning back in the days before book reading madethe shift in my life from entertainment to commerce.

As an undergraduate, or maybe just after, I liberated ahardback copy of Gertrude Stein’s TheMaking of Americans from my college library. I don’t think the library oranyone there misses it.

[Blogger confession: I will admit to liberating more than afew books from this library, a couple of small volumes from an Ivy Leaguelibrary in middle New York state almost 36 years ago, and an unknown number ofpaperbacks and blank cassette tapes from Staten Island Mall back in 1974.That’s about as far as my teenage waywardness went.]

I cannot remember when or why or what I read about The Making of Americans that made meseek it out. The possibility exists that I found it while wandering around thestacks avoiding work . . . something that I am doing even as I type.

This posting isn’t about the book so much, except to say thatI’m going to try to commit myself to read it. All 925 oversized pages of it.Here’s an entirely random excerpt from page 7:

Henry Dehning was a grown man and for his day a richone when his father died away and left them. Truly he had made everything forhimself very different; but it is not as a young man making himself rich thatwe are now to feel him, he is for us an old grown man telling it all over tohis children.

And from page 907:

Very many who were being living are not being livinghave come to be a dead one. Not every one has come to be one being an old one.Not every one has come to be one being almost an old one. Not every one hascome to be a dead one. Some have come to be an old one and have come to be adead one. Some have come to be almost an old one and have come to be a deadone. Some have not come to be a dead one, they are being living. Some have cometo be a dead one.

Someare not believing that any other one can really be only doing the thing thatthe other one is doing. Some are not believing that some one can be coming tobe doing every other thing than anything some other one would naturally bedoing then. Some then come to be old ones. Some then come to be almost oldones. Any one then comes to be one who is going to be almost any old one. Anyone is one not being a dead one. Any one is one coming to be an old one. Anyone is one being a dead one. Any one is one being such a one. Any one is onecoming to be almost an old one.

Much of the last few hundred pages reads like the secondexcerpt, and I could pluck out examples far denser than this. Whether it’s good or readable is almost beside the point. Consider the stamina and thought and attention to detail, however bizarre, thatwent into composing this piece. I’m thinking that if someone can write it, Ican read it. If I received this from a publisher I would have to read it.

I was trying to figure how long I would give myself on theLandonDemand schedule to read this if it came in over the transom: I settled onfive days. Then again, if it was done as in the old days — where this textwould have been read against a typewritten copy of the original — I might havegone crazy. Cold read, yes. Against a typewritten copy, and one perhaps markedup at that? Gertrude, pass the hash pipe.

Anyway, for Christmas, our younger son wanted books. That’sall he said. So he received a wide range, mostly classics in one genre oranother. I also found online — and while it’s his, I’m going to borrow it for afew years (like my college library, he won’t miss it) — a newer paperbackedition of The Making of Americans. Thehardback, I fear, is buried in the permafrost of the dungeon, and I hope itturns up whenever spring cleaning hits. Yes, Aunty, the dungeon is as it waslast year.

This edition includes a wide mixture of reviews, noneexactly positive. My favorite reads, “The first stunningly original disaster ofmodernism.” I live in a NASCAR town; I guess I’m just looking for areliable wreck.

But the edition I purchased also includes a foreword and anintroduction that give the book some context. I’m much more familiarwith this type of academic discourse than I am with early-twentieth-centurymodernist American literature. I’ve read the foreword, which is mostly aboutthe linguistics of the work, and read only the beginning and end of theintroduction, because I don’t want to know too much about the book beforeendeavoring to tackle it. The end of the introduction is really what thisposting is all about.

For all my stating that I never read new books for pleasure— and I don’t — why in the world would I want to read what has been referred toas “one of the great unread novels of all time”?

I give you the end of the introduction, which brought a tearto my eye.

Thepresent text is a facsimile reprint of the original edition. Aside from theaddition of a table of contents—combining the chapter titles of the 1925edition with, in brackets, the 1934 abridged version’s headings for sectionsoriginally left untitled—the text is identical with the one that Stein andToklas proofread during the summer of 1925; hence it is literallyauthoritative. Typographical errors that escaped their attention—and in a textof this complexity there were bound to be a good many—have not been corrected.(A typical typo is “stregnth,” which has been corrected in the quotation frompage 165 cited on page xxiii of the introduction.) In addition, there are anumber of passages that appear in the manuscript and typescript but not in theprinted version. A fully corrected and edited text would be immensely desirablebut is not feasible at present. . . . Inthe meantime, one must proofread while one reads, taking comfort in anobservation Stein attributed to Alice Toklas in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas: “I always say that you cannottell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust itevery day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-readit. It then does something to you that only reading it can never do” (emphasis added).

My intent is not to proofread my way through this book, dear readers, nor to catch all those things that Stein and Toklas missed. My intent is to pay homage to an incredible effort on a writer's part. I now have the added motivation of giving thanks that someone out there — even a dead one — has enlivened an aspect of my life that has remained unchanged for almost forty years.

I love you, Alice B. Toklas. And god knows, it ain't for your looks.

The Difference between Copyediting and Proofreading

2012-01-09T05:36:00.000-05:00

A publisher I’ve worked with a little bit in the scholarly field has aninteresting acquisitions and distribution method that I won’t get into here,but the manuscripts the publisher accepts are often not in great shape. As faras I can tell, the publisher — let’s call it FN Books — agrees to print thebook, then sends it out to an editor for whatever is necessary to make the bookpublishable. That includes formatting the Word document to precise standards,because the Word document is going to serve as the image for theprinted volume. I’ve seen some blog postings about this press from the authors’perspective, and the reports are about 50/50. One of the issues is that someuniversities won’t consider books that FN Books publishes when assessingprofessors for promotions, tenure, and so on. It’s not a vanity press, but thebusiness model is unique, and to describe it would give away the company’sidentity . . . for those who are familiar with the field. If you’re just dyingto know the company, you can email me. I’ve only worked for one authorpublishing with FN, and I don’t think my experience was that bad — mostlybecause the work was interesting and the author was friendly and entertaining.But I just finished writing an email to the production editor requesting to betaken off of its recommended vendors list.

Two problems:

1. Lot of tire-kicking. I don’t mind some of that fromindividual authors, but a press that sends me three or four people over a fewmonths with faulty instructions and little knowledge is more trouble than it’sworth. The authors don’t know what they’re looking for, and the back-and-forthis nonproductive for all concerned.

2. The aforementioned faulty instructions. I don’tblame the authors. I blame the press.

The typical query from the author is for a “bidon proofreading a manuscript.” As I’ve said before and I’ll sayagain, manuscripts are for copyediting, and that’s what mostauthors have in mind when they say “proofread a manuscript.” The authors wantsomeone to perform quality control: grammar, spelling, sentence structure,consistency. . . . I could rattle off another half-dozen things that authorswill say “yes” to if I ask them what exactly they want me to do. I explain thatwhat they want is copyediting.

I told the story a few years ago of a screw-up on my part that led tothree hours of midnight panic and a run of semi-hostile phone calls and emailswith the author. I point to that as about the only situation I can think ofwhere I actually should have proofread a manuscript. The author isseverely dyslexic, but a very good writer, and he wanted not a word or commachanged. I did a standard copyedit. He was looking for the most basic of errorsthat you’d expect from a seriously dyslexic writer working on a book, and heflipped out when he saw what I did (in retrospect, I didn’t understand theauthor’s desires. Mea culpa). Hence the emails, the calls, and two hours of mebacktracking 95 percent of the changes in the Word document. All’s okay betweenthe author and me now. I hope.

The issue is that FN Books gives its authors the instruction that, tohave the book published, someone needs to “proofread the manuscript.” FN thensends the authors off into the ether with a list of recommended editors.

Forthwith, I give you the opening paragraph of a sample chapter that anauthor sent me a few weeks back, looking for a bid on the work and requesting asample edit. I feel bad reproducing this excerpt on the blog for fear ofembarrassing the author, but I also feel that this text will never be publishedin the following form. If it is, then shame on everyone concerned.

Strap in, folks.

To beginwith Western countries that had a gloomy history with Africa thoughtapproaching the post-colonial continent with cautious but also was tactful,international institution in this case used by the former as a mediator orrather they became an ideal platform for powerful countries to pursue theirglobal agendas. Power always instrumentalisedand maintained through discursive practice. A practice that proclaimed theblessings of a new era is globalisation under neo liberal market policies,global governance, and multilateralism and new paradigms were set in thoroughout the world using these non-economic base. Some joined some did not others watchedbut those who joined succumbed to governmentality hence the subjectivity.

After picking my jaw off the dungeon floor, I wrote the author. You canfile this correspondence under “Not really wanting the job, so putting in aridiculous bid for it, knowing that even if the author paid my son’s collegetuition for a few years, it probably still wouldn’t be worth the headache”[fledgling editors, take note. And you can use the copy below without creditingme]:

While I’ve worked on a number of academicbooks about African resources, societies, and economies (mostly through XXXPress; also through YYY and ZZZ), they have all come to me after having beenthrough the usual publishing and in-house editorial channels. That is, thebooks are basically readable and understandable when they come to me. And mostof my work is done for academic publishers, so an academic presentation doesn’tphase me.

The chapter you’ve attached would require an entire rewrite to becomprehensible to an English-speaking (-reading) audience. While I’ve worked onnumerous occasions with authors for whom English is not their primary language,usually I can make a pretty good stab at discerning what they’re discussing.I’m afraid that the chapter attached doesn’t lend itself to such easyinterpretation. Working on this book would entail not only a complete rewrite,but likely much in the way of author/editor contact.

My bid for the editing would be $40 per manuscript page, and let’s define astandardized manuscript page as 265 words, which includes all notes andbibliographies. I would ask for eight weeks turnaround.

Proofreading would be done at an entirely separate stage -- after the book hasbeen edited and formatted according to LN’s directions. Three dollars per pagewould be the rate there, but understand that it would involve no rewriting, butonly reading for typographical errors.

Formatting: I would do that at the same time as the editing, at no additionalcharge.

Forty dollars per manuscript page. That’sroughly ten times my base rate for editing. And itstill wouldn’t have been enough. Guaranteed.

The author didn’t blink, and I admire the hell out of that:

Thank you for your reply. Yet I still needto see your quality of editing by obliging to my request as per my email. Whenit comes to rewriting, I will not agree to it and my work had been readaccepted to by English speaking community before. So if you wish, I canconsider you doing my work, but only if I can see your editing first.

Wow. Sounds like the author might not have minded the $40/page bid.Fledgling editors, take note again: When you’re dealing with an authoroverseas, sometimes it helps that the dollar sucks.

My response:

I don’t see how the present manuscript canbe published without almost an entire rewrite. If that’s not an option, thenI’ll have to pass on the job.

Thanks.

Craziness averted. It’s also called setting boundaries. (Homies,is this the most useful LoD post in history, or what?)

Now, would you believe that while this episode was taking place, Ireceived an email from my dear brother, who — wait for the punch line, folks —is a proofreader working a few different jobs in NYC?

[Brief interlude: What the hell was going on in the Land familythat it created two proofreaders? Well, Mom was a special ed. teacher, but notuntil I was twelve years old — and my brother is five years my senior. Dad wasa car dealer who came up just shy of finishing college, although he graduatedhigh school at age sixteen with (he claims) the highest IQ or grades orsomething as of that time at the school (PS 1 on Staten Island, if you’rekeeping score at home). The argument for a genetic element to proofreading israther strong, but I’d rather not know what genes are involved, or what otherdamage they cause. I can think of a few things.]

Anyway, this from my brother:

I had to resort to the outstanding websiteto be able to quote a rate to someone whom a coworker put me in touch with. Thepotential client, my coworker told me, was named XXX and needed someone toproofread a manuscript.

I called said Mr. XXX, who informed me thathe had prepared with 2 coauthors a 130-page manuscript concerning [asemiscientific topic]. He asked me what my rate would be. Resorting to the LODwebsite, I told Mr XXX that the usual rate for this type of work was $1.50 perpage, but since this was a rate charged to large universities I would onlycharge him $1.25 per page.

Mr. XXX told me to meet him at his place on40th Street between [two of the tonier East Side avenues]. For some reason Ienvisioned a five-floor walk-up, a poorly lit one-bedroom apartment, amanuscript given to me off a table in a dinette where there was aTupperware container full of some awful-smelling food.

Of course, Mr. XXX is Dr. XXX. His officewas on the second floor of a condominium near the corner of XXX Avenue. Hisoffice was complete with chandeliers and fountains. I sat in this office forabout 8 seconds and realized I probably should have charged $2.00 per page;this feeling was reinforced when he told me he needed quick 48-hour turnaround.

Moral of the story: I could never surviveon the open proofreading market and must periodically thank Allah that I havetwo sponsors willing to pay an hourly wage. . . .

From a dropping jaw to a sinking stomach. My brother, bless hisheart . . . Shoulda called me first. Then again, I think the last time mybrother picked up the phone and called me was in the summer of 1974. We getalong great. Always have. (Well, except for the time he tried to drown me.) Buthe should have charged three or four times what he did.

So, here’s the deal:

As an author, do you want me to make your manuscript read asnicely as possible while keeping your voice? Fix spelling, grammar, sentencestructure, stylistic consistency (numbers, titles, and so forth)? Do that kindof stuff at manuscript stage — while it’s still a Word document? Copyediting.

Or would you rather I take your typeset pages and do a finalquality-control check on them for design, layout, treatment of heads, footers,contents, chapter titles, and — of course — reading every single character ofthe book? Proofreading. Naturally, if something lookeddrastically wrong, I’d query it — but the proofreader’s job is not to rewritecopy nor do the kind of consistency making expected from the copyeditor.

If you’re a publisher, and you don’t know the difference betweencopyediting and proofreading, or you don’t know how to tell your authorsaccurately what they need — and you seem puzzled when I callwondering about expectations, and you explain that everything has always seemedclear before — please forget about me.

Haiku Monday: New Beginnings

2012-01-02T09:32:00.001-05:00

[text, image, and photo expunged, but in honor of the blog homies, comments remain.]

Buh-BYE, 2011

2011-12-28T22:07:00.000-05:00

What a year.

No year-end review this time. I'm going to let a fading memory take its course.

I'll spend the next few days wrapping up two loose work ends and then prepare for next year. Moi mentioned the word "resolve." I could use some. "Discipline" has never been a strong suit. Maybe I can win the semantic war.

Because of scheduling issues, January 2012 is already an avalanche in waiting. December 2011 was delays and time away and holidays and such.

The year 2012 I'll start out on a new leaf or leaves. I have a bunch of thoughts in my head. Resolve, resolve. And I'll have two four-hour car rides on the 30th and the 1st to get some thinking done. Sons are back to college next week. And winter will settle in at chez czar, with the czarina on 24-hour call for her theatre tour booking duties. Scheduling an educational touring group in central Appalachia during January through March isn't one of the easier hands to be dealt, and keeping or revising that schedule with snow dates . . . in many backwoods counties where roads are iffy . . . that's wintertime anxiety around here.

Anyway, this is a sign-off for the year. Everyone out there, have a great time on New Year's Eve and thereafter, wherever life places you. And if you don't hear from me at HM or on your different blogs so much in 2012, it's not because anything's wrong. Actually, it's probably just the opposite.

But I do hope to be posting more here, and more on topic.

For now, it's . . .

Too Much to Do

2011-12-24T04:54:00.000-05:00

Christmas Eve day, and miles to go.

New Dorp Lane, Staten Island, NY;
except for the cars,
the view hasn't changed in at least 50 years.

Shopping is basically done, although I have to brave the grocery store sometime this morning for tomorrow's feast. Per popular acclamation at chez czar, we're giving the czarina the day off from heavy cooking and doing a far simpler low country boil just for the family. It's the kind of thing we typically only make when there's twenty or so people around, so I'm going to halve the recipe. We'll throw some newspapers on the table and make believe it's summertime. And no dishes to wash.

***

Many interesting projects lately, and I wish I was wrapping up one of them this morning instead of what I'm working on: an index that seems not to want to go away. I've started placing the PDF and the Word doc side by side on the screen rather than looking at paper. Every second counts. Maybe I'll become the Frederick Taylor of the editorial world. Now if I could just keep my fingers out of my mouth while editing or proofreading and keep that red pen close to the paper.

***

When our younger son came home from college last week, I asked him if he'd signed up for any shifts at a local drive-thru he'd been working at for some years. He said no, but I knew that he needed some holiday funds (and I had become used to the intern labor), so I asked him if he wanted to do some word processing for me. I had about nine hundred pages of manuscripts that needed editorial changes keyed in. He did an OK job, but his reactions to the work were interesting. On job one, he pondered, "There wouldn't be so much to do if authors just followed the right style to begin with." On job two, he asked, "How hard is it for them to get the reference style right?" Out of the mouths of nineteen-year-old babes . . .

***

When Colleen (former intern) returns for winter/spring semester, I'll be talking to her about paid work for keying in changes. In the right circumstances, it saves me enough time and is worth the money to have someone input corrections to a Word document. We were speaking about this as a family last week, and we chuckled that, unfortunately, the czarina is not the person to help me in this area -- for a number of reasons. As I put it quite simply to the czarina's laughter, "You won't do what I want you to do when I want you to do it." Working for me is probably only slightly worse than being married to me.

***

The two books that my younger son slaved through were both rather interesting. One was a first-person account of a South Vietnamese army/government official's experiences from the mid-1940s until his escape in the early 1980s after imprisonment by the new regime, although the author began in the Viet Minh. The author knew John Paul Vann and Daniel Ellsberg and people like that from the mid-1950s on. Having come to consciousness during the height of the Vietnam War, I found the information on French and US involvement in SE Asia, and especially the internal Vietnamese happenings, fascinating.

[Great note on this book. As the coauthor, who is my primary contact, told me, "The [Vietnamese] author is 88 and not in great health. We're hoping he holds on until the book is published." So sweet. The book has been in various stages of writing for 24 years. The coauthor, who is concerned about his colleague's age and health, is 85.]

The second book was about the Fed's operations during the credit crisis of 2008. The editor was almost apologetic when sending the book out. "It's about economics, and many copyeditors don't like books with a lot of numbers." After explaining that I used to be the lead editor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, he was relieved and I suspect a little surprised. I suspect, also, that I'll now have an inside track on copyediting any books dealing with banking or economics coming from this press. Fine by me. They pay fast.

What I didn't mention was that I'd probably still be at that job if my boss wasn't one of the most despicable human beings I've ever met in my life. Her name was . . . oh, it's Christmas. Never mind.

***

I've had a few other things going on, it seems, but I have to finish this index NOW. Then to the store(s), then wrapping presents, then back to work on an intense little proofing job that must go out on Monday. At least it's not indexing.

***

The photo above comes from my hometown. Staten Island is part of New York City yet a world of its own. When the czarina was first there in 1985 and we went down New Dorp Lane, she said, "This reminds me of small towns in the South," the point being, "I had no idea that the evil urban Northeast full of you Yankees and Jews was actually like the rest of the world." Staten Island, when it's not acting more like Alabama, can be a very nice place.

***

Happy holidays, folks. Glad you're out there.

Haiku Monday: Spin

2011-12-18T15:15:00.001-05:00

Hosted this week at Fleur's Place.

----

My entry

with visuals.

Faster and faster
'Til enlightenment springs forth:
Whirl, dervishes, whirl!

Wintertime Jewtop
Reminds, "They tried to kill us,
We won. Now let's eat."

A Most Unlikely Result -- Intern '11, 1

2011-12-11T09:37:00.001-05:00

An intern from a local college worked with me during this last school semester — a coed, as the vernacular goes,or went. This intern, we’ll call her “Colleen,” wanted tofind out about the world of editing, and she’d receive two hours of collegecredit for doing so: 10 to 14 hours per week for about 12 weeks, soaking up the heady Land on Demand corporate atmosphere.

Colleen is the third intern who’s worked with me over thelast six or so years. What’s made this hosting-of-intern slightly different is that Nicole is between my sons’ ages. Spending this amount of timeover the last few months with someone in college — while my two are as well —was interesting. I think I was well prepared.

I'll discuss the internship in more detail later. Colleen and I both were required to write summaries of the experience tocomplete the process (and I needed to provide a number/letter grade), so maybeI’ll mine those writings for some future postings. My contribution was more of a strengths-and-weaknesses assessment.

Another intent of a perhaps future arc (ugh) on the internship would be to tryto move back to where this blog mostly started: discussions of work-desk issues. Way too much miscellania these days.

Before the internship was over, I asked Colleen to write a blog posting on her experience,which follows:

===

I havedone the impossible (improbable at the very least) and completed an Englishmajor in two years. On top of all my regular work, I chose to register for aninternship to experience the life of an editor. Along the way I have gained ahuge respect for copyeditors and proofreaders. Someday I hope to call the workmine.

Thissemester just happened to also be the time when I am working on my seniorproject, a mini-thesis, if you will. Working as an editorial intern for roughly14 hours a week added to my 18-credit-hour class load has definitely taught mehow to organize my time. I will say that the organization skills for my projecthave been spurred forward by my work with Bob. I’ve been exposed to countlessstyles of writing and formatting, and have found strengths and flaws in all ofthem. I would like to think that these observations have shown through in myown writing, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I were stuck in my own ways as awriter—I am an 82-year-old woman stuck in a 21-year-old body, fifty cats andall.

It wouldbe nice to be able to apply everything that I have learned to each of myassignments for class, but who am I kidding? Switching from MLA to Chicago is a challenge in itself, let alone having the added stressof Bob follow my work with his own. In the beginning, I assumed that I wouldget faster the more comfortable I became with the work of an editor. I standcorrected. . . . He has me always double-checking my work, and I’m right most of thetime, but sometimes I remain lodged in my old ways. I will say that one of myproudest moments was when Bob commented, “I passed the ‘Colleen inspection.’”Yes. I have an inspection named after me.

Cominginto this internship I knew that I wanted to do something along the same linesthat Bob does, but I wasn’t quite sure yet. My first week here, I was proofingthe index for a religious book. The entire index was made of biblicalreferences and had to be re-alphabetized by hand, not with the automaticword-by-word alphabetization that Word does. Considering that the index wasprobably close to forty pages at this point, I thought I’d hate working herethe moment the stack of papers plopped onto my table. As I got into the work,the time flew by and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was enjoyingmyself. Later on in the semester, I worked on a few different indexes andenjoyed each one better than the last. Call me crazy, but I think I found mydestiny: indexing.

I’vealways had an eye for mistakes or confusing wording, and have enjoyed helpingother people with their writing, so I chose this career path as the obviousoption. While I dabble in creative writing and poetry, I really enjoy editingand indexing; I want my career to be my passion. Bob has shown me that it ispossible and that I can enjoy what I do with my life. This lesson negates allelse that I have learned this semester—not on my internship evaluation, ofcourse.

In my finalweek of interning with Bob, I hope to keep learning and experiencing the lifeof an editor. Or indexer in my case.

Haiku Monday: Time

2011-12-05T21:46:00.001-05:00

Hosted this week at the magnificent Karl's Korner.

Deadlines, mortgages:

Accordion-like squeezes,

But like trolley cars . . .

Tomorrow — flexing

Like a whore — and tomorrow.

Shakespeared; lad insane.

===

I don't usually do videos or any visuals for Haiku Monday or post the haiku here, but I found this -- an interesting, unbroadcast live version of a song from one of my favorite albums -- so I figured I might as well post the video. Sorry you had to sit through the haiku.

In school, we just called him "Eye Chart"

2011-12-01T03:37:00.001-05:00

Orobator,Agbonkhianmeghe, 147

Haiku Monday: New Host

2011-11-25T21:41:00.001-05:00

If you're looking for Haiku Monday for November 28, the host is last week's winner Serendipity, and the hosting is here. Topic is energy/energized.

Have fun.

I'm Really Not Trying to Turn This into Facebook or Twitter

2011-11-23T20:38:00.001-05:00

But I'm drinking a Coke from a white and silver can. That's just wrong.

Happy Thanksgiving all.

UPDATE, December 1:

Coke to Drop Snow-White Holiday Can

Updates on Some Old Stories

2011-11-21T03:24:00.001-05:00

Back on September 26, I wrote the following:

Do you think the fun ends there? Looking down the road, I am scheduled to receive the book for proofreading on October 17. The book will need to be read/marked up and FedEx'd back to the publisher. And when do you think the book is due back with them? October 19? October 18?

Stop it, you're killing me.

October 17.

Well, I guess the joke was on me, because I wrote the publisher around November 17 to find out about this and another job scheduled to come in at the same time. Both were under time constraints and went to press without proofreading -- at least not proofreading by me.

Gulp.

Not much I can do about that. But hearing about it from the publisher would have been nice, without having to track it down.

Here's the thing: I actually waited a month before contacting the publisher, because I've waited that long on earlier projects with this company . . . but the jobs always eventually showed up.

Any other publishers, I call the day after I'm supposed to receive something, and they are apologetic, not just for the lateness, but the lack of notice.

I suppose I can be thankful that not everyone does the lack-of-communication thing. Sometimes small projects from independent authors or occasional publishers can run late, but companies that are full-time in the publishing business are usually pretty good about keeping freelancers informed.

Usually.

====

A young woman who worked with me as an intern some years back accepted a job last week as production editor with a large religious publishing house, of all things. Yes, English majors, jobs do exist. She also had an MA, though, which she earned after her time in the LandonDemand bunker. Production editor . . . that's sometimes the title of a person who hires freelancers. Hmm. How provident.

Another intern is working with me now, and I am thinking of having her do a guest editorial for the blog. Maybe what she thought editing was going to be about vs. what it actually is, or whether editing still holds any attraction for her after being exposed to three to four months of it. Any ideas?

Sunday Morning Coming Up/Down

2011-11-20T11:33:00.001-05:00

From the joys of the work-at-home department: It's 11:30am Sunday, and 20 yards from where I'm now sitting, my neighbor is tearing up his driveway. With his two young daughters. Not a quiet process.

So, everyone else . . . please enjoy this. If I've posted it before, well, it deserves a second hearing.

A Real Stop-the-Presses Moment in Academia

2011-11-19T19:25:00.001-05:00

No need to know the topic; you can fill in your own blank.

"The theme stemmed from the idea that decadence could serve as an exciting inspiration for examining [insert anything here] in a broader context."

"I'll Be Watching You."

2011-11-18T19:26:00.001-05:00

Beth Cavener Stichter
American, born 1972
The Inquisitors, 2004
Stoneware, porcelain slip, and wood
61 × 78 × 25 inches overall
(154.9 × 198.1 × 63.5 cm)

Two Words That I'm Beginning to Hate

2011-11-18T19:15:00.001-05:00

Capacious
Quotidian

I can't read a book these days without seeing them. Nothing, though, could ever rival the Abraham Maslow loathing of the 1980s and 1990s. Lord.

Newsworthy Comments from a Co-Vendor

2011-11-18T15:55:00.001-05:00

It's frustrating as hell to expect something at a certain time, open a hole for it, arrange your life and work around it, and have it not show. It impacts cash flow. What are we to do: sell other orders, and once knee deep in that, drop it?

State of the Morning

2011-11-17T05:42:00.001-05:00

December 2011 is in a few weeks, and I'm stunned. I'm not going to do a preliminary year in review; I'm not even sure I've got the stomach for the real thing when time comes. While I'd really like to turn the page on this year, there's always the possibility that next year could be even stranger. One nice thing, though, about incipient senility is that I've probably forgotten half the stuff that's made this year feel like I've been tossed in a clothes dryer for 11 months, taking the ride with a few good-sized rocks, for proper weathering.

I feel like I've aged a lot since the photo at the bottom of this page. I certainly look it. I guess that photo was taken a little more than two years ago. If I were to shave off the snow-white beard I now have, that would probably help, but that would mean walking around looking (even more) like a bum most days of the week, as keeping clean-shaven is way down on the list of priorities.

Anyway, I was checking Feedjit and came across It's Been Jessified. Thanks to Jess, whoever she is, for at least starting off my day right today. She listed this blog among a few editing blogs she recommends. For each of the other blogs, she has some statement about the blog's purpose. Not for this one. Instead, her comment attached to the link for my blog reads, "I have just spent all my free time today reading the entirety of this blog." She stopped posting back in 2010 sometime, but at the time I guess the educational or entertainment value of this blog was enough to hold her attention, or at least I didn't receive a ticking package in the mail.

Heaven knows I waste too much time on the Internet reading comments and opinions and musings from perspectives that I loathe, although I don't spend all day at it.

Anyway, I'm elbows deep in wrapping up a huge, complex proofreading project. At least the topic is sort of interesting. The book should be beautiful when published, and if history is any indication, I'll receive a comp copy. Thanks, New Haven.

Bibliography Entry of the Day

2011-11-12T07:21:00.001-05:00

Work--What? How? Why? Philadelphia, 1893.

Quotes from the Workdesk

2011-11-05T15:41:00.000-04:00

Narikela-pāka: Books come in three levels ofaccessibility—the grape style, easily available to anyone; the banana style,where you have to peel off the outer layer; and the coconut style, where thereader has to work hard to crack open the text in order to reach the soft innersubstance.

By killing their husbands, Śiva reducedthese women to widows who cannot wear earrings.

[Bibliographic entry] Lalita, G. Tĕlugulo cāṭu-kavitvam. Vijayavada: Kwality Publishers, 1981.

Is This the Future of Punctuation?

2011-10-26T00:37:00.002-04:00

Well, is it . . . punk? [click here]

Haiku Monday: Ghost

2011-10-23T17:29:00.000-04:00

Apologies to those of you without a hankering for haiku, but this week's judge, Aunty, has mandated that visuals will apply in a tiebreaker situation, so I'm kinda duty-bound to post a visual and the accompanying entry. If you're so inclined to throw in a haiku this week, please do visit this neighborhood at porkrind central.

Beckon, brick spirits!

Perfect spacetimes well from walls;

Spectral signs remind.

Guest Posting 1: Magazine Editing

2011-10-11T19:51:00.000-04:00

I have encouraged friends of mine who read this blog and those who don't to send me their publishing horror stories, and I'd print them as guest postings. Sort of a gift of therapy for my embattled peers laboring in the ditches.

Forthwith, a posting from one of my nonreaders.

Enjoy. Or at least commiserate.

---

I edit a lifestyle magazine that covers life, work, and recreation -- about a half dozen little villages/communities.

All editorial was due to me by October 7 for copy editing/review, in order to make deadline for a November 1 publication date.

I woke up this morning to an email from a writer saying she sent her piece to the two folks she interviewed to check facts. I ALWAYS discourage writers from doing this. We are not an advertorial magazine and it’s my job to check facts, dates, spellings, etc. You know the score . . .

Anyway, she says to me that George was fine with it but Ringo basically rewrote it with more information and sent to her. Since she “liked” his version better, she decided to send it to me and hopes that’s okay.

My response:

Please don’t allow the interview subject(s) to guide your writing. IF we agree to send them a piece to review, it is to proof for factual information only, not word use, writing style, or what to include or leave out. You are responsible for those decisions, not Ringo, because you are the one being paid, not him. The only other person who can mess with your work is your editor, the person who guides the angle of the article and the content of the magazine’s editorial. In this case, me. And I’ve always been happy with your work. I’ve never had to bump anything back to you because it was incomplete or poorly written. Word limits mean just that: there is a limit to what we can write on any given subject, and you as the writer and I as the editor have to make choices about that. This topic could be a BOOK, I’m sure, but that’s not what we’re doing here.

I cannot tell from the piece you just sent me which work is yours and which is Ringo’s, so I can’t make any decisions about how to handle this. If you believe that some of his additional information is imperative to the piece, then by all means amend YOUR original article and send it along, using your own words to interpret Ringo’s, just like you would do if he had said this to you in an interview. If you don’t have time to do that by mid-today, then send me your original piece, as written.

---

My pal closed the missive to me with a number of expletives. Can you blame?

Feel free to send me your stories. The blog needs different perspectives.

Especially you managing editors out there. I'd love a post on what a pain it is to deal with freelancers. I'll even allow stories about myself . . . as long as they end up with the necessary spin that will not scare off potential clients. I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid.

brief moment of haiku

2011-10-04T02:13:00.000-04:00

The topic this week in Haiku Monday was fog. My favorite entry, and perhaps one of my favorite haiku of these many months:

The postman is here
to kill us all: bark, bark, bark,
bark, bark, bark, bark, bark.

Courtesy of Roxie.

This Stuff Writes Itself

2011-09-26T19:50:00.000-04:00

The previous post dealt with timing on deliveries of jobs from a particular client with a history of somewhat late communications on changing deadlines, not to mention the occasional expectation that I should drop everything I'm doing and read its stuff. I received the following note today from the same client:

Hi Bob, I don't know if you know about the ST job since it's not one we are using the Web for. It's on a very fast track. According to the schedule, you should have copyedited it and had it back to us yesterday.

So given this parameter, when do you think we could have it back? As always send us a clean copy and one with track changes.

Dear readers, I've been freelancing one way or the other since 1986 -- a quarter of a century, roughly half my life. This memo is without precedent. Never before have I been late on a job that, not only had I not received it, but the client never even made me aware of it.

I finally became privy to the original production schedule, which called for me to receive the book for editing on Saturday, September 24, and to return it on Sunday, September 25.

Do you think the fun ends there? Looking down the road, I am scheduled to receive the book for proofreading on October 17. The book will need to be read/marked up and FedEx'd back to the publisher. And when do you think the book is due back with them? October 19? October 18?

Stop it, you're killing me.

October 17.

PS: In all fairness, I do love this client, whom I made aware of the previous post. S/he got a kick out of it. I think.

Making It Worthwhile: A Client with a Sense of Humor

2011-09-24T20:52:00.000-04:00

In response to a message in which I requested some vigilance about informing me of changes in schedule:

See if this helps: all text from us, henceforth and forever after, will be late by a factor of 29 percent, except when it's late by 153 percent. Late text does not mean final text. It just means what we're submitting is late but there's still more to come. Which will be even later. There is, naturally, an inverse proportion of the percent of lateness to the amount of time the various vendors who come afterwards have to complete their job. The later we are, the less time you have. It's the way the word world works -- sadly. However, work being done in a rush by our vendors earns the vendor battle pay, which is really pretty much what you'd normally get, but you can brag about it to the literary set at the Dunk 'n' Dine. Except that you won't actually have money to spend at the Dunk 'n' Dine because your battle pay was late. Had you not been in battle, perhaps you would have seen that memo. When you finish editing our copy, you get what the poor SOB got when he finished stuffing envelopes -- more envelopes. And more copy. Yes, it's a vicious mother****ing cycle, but it beats (we hope) saying, "You want fries with that?" Maybe.

Feel better?Am logging off for the night and will be back in the morning to be late some more.And by the way, thank you always and with considerable gratitude for putting up with our messy, late ways. Which I'm late in saying.

Testing 1-2-3: THE ONLY KNOWN VIDEO OF FRED NEIL

2011-09-21T10:25:00.000-04:00

For Haiku Monday, Google/YouTube was adamant about not letting me embed a video. Trying again here.

And for display purposes, I offer you four extremely rare minutes of a very rare type of performer -- one heralded and revered within the industry and who sought no fame whatsoever, eventually disappearing from public view.

Most people are not familiar with Fred Neil, and I won't go into his history. But everyone is familiar with one of his songs: "Everybody's Talkin'," which Nilsson recorded for the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack, and royalties of which probably covered most of Fred's expenses until his death in the early 2000s.

The song here was prominently featured to nice effect in an episode of The Sopranos.

I only learned of Fred Neil and his reputation through a little book I read repeatedly in my early teens: Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia. Also from that book, I first found out about the Velvet Underground. That's a whole 'nother obsession.

Anyway, my words are merely keeping you from seeing the following, which is legitimately rare and precious footage. Some angel posted it on YouTube at the end of July 2011. I get chills every time I watch it, because this man has been a part of my life since the early 1970s -- whether reading about him, then searching used record stores in pursuit of his four albums, or ultimately bringing him to the attention of others. To actually see him in performance after all this time is bizarre and beautiful.

9/24 UPDATE: A Fred Neil documentary is on the way that appears to include more footage from the concert below. Too good to be true.

Watch trailer here.

Haiku Monday / DANCE: The Winner

2011-09-20T03:02:00.000-04:00

First, thanks to all who participated and to our voyeurs.Some folks just like to watch, and some have time constraints. Allunderstandable.

DeepBlue -- theonly one to link to a visual -- called me out for being fussy. I’ll own up tothat. Personally I like the idea of the firm haiku rules, at least every sooften anyway. It certainly has made the writing side tougher, and the judging perhapseasier. Moi said we need to makethis whole gig more difficult because the competition’s become so good. I thinkthe proper combination of theme and strict haiku observance makes thisenterprise as challenging as drunk haikuing or haikuing on a ledge. We reallydon’t know what mind-altering substances people have been on up until nowanyway, and with Moi submittingentries from 40,000 feet, no one’s getting any higher than that.

Speaking of DeepBlue,I’m glad he did link to his blog. Neat video, and I especially liked the music.Anytime you get more than two people working in a kitchen -- even at home -- abit of a dance is involved. Nice to see when it all works for harmony andbeauty.

First, the omissions.

Personnel:

Chickory! A true goddessof all things arts. Nada on dance and poetry?

And someone who for me has in a short amount of time come torepresent an essential element of Haiku Monday, as much for himself as thepeople he’s brought along: Princess!Nothing? Really? We need you here.

Boxer . . . czar’sfont of mystery and supporter of far-flung rants. I can certainly understand otherwiseconsumed. I don’t even know what I’m doing here right now.

Topics:

Frankly, even in my dance ignorance (ignordance?), I thoughtthese topic possibilities were obvious, and maybe even too obvious. For acombination of dance and season, how about Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring? Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker?How many of you are doing the facepalm dance right about now? Frankly, Ithought DeepBlue was somehow evokingthe Nutcracker until I saw the video.

Metaphors:

We had a few; I expected more. Even though I’ve stated onprevious Haiku Mondays and in some related correspondence that I’m perpetually obliviousto metaphors -- and I am -- I tried thinking of idiomatic expressions andrelating them to seasons:

* dancing around a topic, and bringing a chill to arelationship?

* the heat of the bolero?

———

Many folks went for the fall theme, to nice effect. Somebeautiful phrases emerged. It’s charming how, with the restraint of this haikuformat, even simple strings of words assume a different air:

Curmudgeon’s “theaspen retire,” which swings and sways on its own (unfortunately, the 2nd linehad 8 syllables)

the resignation inherent in foam 1’s “sighs . . . the rake in hand.”

Fleur, Fleur, Fleur: Ina class by herself. Who else could toss off “Autumn’s mosh pit”?

———

foam 2 and karl hit similar funny notes about theact of dancing, and humor’s always good in the czarist universe.

I really like the way foam’slast line echoes the words themselves: “dog days hoedown stomp” = BUMP bumpBUMP bump BUMP. That’s a stomp to me.

The humor of Karl’sverse is endearing. I’m wanting more punctuation there, not as an editor, butas a reader. I’m also wondering how the season and theme relate. Thejuxtaposition of crisp breeze and warm hand was one of my favorite moments thisweek. Maybe there are some fall dance memories in Karl’s past? “Oh sorry, your toe” is another classic.

———

I’ve already paid some homage to DeepBlue. “Fine Spoons’ arabesque” is great; “arabesque” by itself isa poetic word. As Count Basie was known for, sometimes you can just play onenote, but if it’s the right note at the right time, you’re a genius. As DeepBlue acknowledged on his own account, the rules weresecondary. Still a great verse.

———

RafaDe enters themetaphorical realm, it seems. Another excellent line: “Writhe in flames ofblasphemy.” One of the other haikuers mentioned some rule about not using the themeword in the verse; I’m not holding that against RafaDe, as I didn’t mention it. But I am missing the seasonalreference here. If I’m overlooking it, it wouldn’t be the first time. (Late thought:season of the witch?)

———

Interesting that Moiand Uncle went back to junior highand high school, respectively, for entries. Both place the reader in a specifictime and place . . . crucial.

My musical library and Moi’sonly barely intersect, but I figured that something must be up with the Limburgerreference; I didn’t think it was meant to refer solely to the smell of a southwesternjunior high gymnasium, thick with sweat and socks and hormones. And I wasn’tdisappointed: took a minute amount of research, but the reference is to a 1979B-52’s lyric — which is smack dab in Moi’swheelhouse. Did I get that right, Moi?

Uncle 1, on thesenior prom. Uncle, you cad.

———

Uncle 2: Again,placing us not only in a specific season and time and place but in a crucialfew seconds in time . . . bringing us up to the moment slowly . . . thenclimax! . . . the resolution and the celebration. As far as using the word “dance,”see RafaDe above.

Uncle 3 and Aunty rewrite: Sure it’s sappy. But itcould just have easily gone blue:

Last dance, hold her tight;
does she feel my heart beating?

[Fill in here your own snide 5-syllable comment about lust-inspiredthrobbing organs.]

Okay, Uncle, pickAunty up off the floor and offer hera fan and something cool to drink.

———

Aunty: I do love yourverse, but as was pointed out some weeks back, some phrases are too goodto split across lines. With “Ancient choreography” — a beautiful combo — comingin at seven syllables, why split it? Same goes for “chill night air.” May I beso bold (I feel like Uncle cuttingin at the prom):

Owl swoops, mice skitter:

Ancient choreography —

Night-chilled matachin.*

*Matachin = Spanish ritualized sword-dance or battle dance (Ihad to look it up).

If you like the edits, keep me in mind for that book you’recertainly writing. Maybe I’ll make an exception and grant you special Auntianrates. :-)

———

CoreyJo, whosename alone is poetry, presents a beautiful take on the fall theme begun above.The clinging and falling evokes some dances whose names escape me. (I wish Iknew more.)

———

Not too late, Pam,not at all. I really like the way you stop the reader with that comma immediatelyafter the first syllable, as well with as the word “waltz,” which is anattention grabber and seems to impose a hard stop anyway (and is a good word toremember for Scrabble). The many little words on line two could be seen aswasted syllables, but they serve very effectively to slow . . . time . . . down,in anticipation of the tempo accelerating on the last line. Quite nicely done.

———

So . . . where has this late-night dance led us? Anothergreat week of entries, and as usual, I’ve strutted and shuffled on too long. What’sthe bottom line on this pas de deux of the judged and the judge?

Uncle.

Fourth an' goal to go;
two seconds left on game clock—
Dive play! End zone dance.

Uncle, your prize, courtesy of the czar, is youget to lord it over Aunty for aweek. Our prize, kind sir, is to see youdeclare the theme and be the judge for next week. Presumably Aunty will let you rent her space for aspell.

Thanks, everybody, for a grand time as always. I'm going to do-si-do back to work.

Haiku Monday: 9/19/2011

2011-09-16T05:05:00.007-04:00

I couldn't find a few things I wanted for the videos below -- and the word lends itself to much more than is represented here. If you're on a PC, right click to open links in a new tab or window:

Prologue

John Renbourn

The French Mistake

What a Pair (pardon the sound)

Rules, as Aunty wrote 'em:

First, of course, is the proper [syllabic] scheme of 5-7-5. Next is the use of Kigo, essentially a seasonal reference. Thirdly, the subkect matter is subjective but oughta have a universal ring to it--the best Haiku (accordin' to the Masters) oughta have an "aha!" moment where the reader/ listener recognizes the moment conveyed. An' a final consideration is a "cutting" --a division of the poem into two independent parts, but each enhances the other.

On visuals: I've changed my tune from the original posting a few hours ago (Aunty, take note). Of course, feel free to post visuals on your blog, but for them to be considered in the context of the haiku contest, please provide a link to them in the comments section along with your haiku. If it's a short YouTube clip or something from Google images or a photo you've uploaded to a Flickr account, whatever. That saves me the time of going back and forth to your delightful blogs and getting consumed with nonhaiku content, which I invariably do.

As I said, I've selected a topic about which I am ignorant, so visuals could help me understand your verse. Links to your blog, though, will not work in your favor, so don't even go there.

Not for nothing am I the czar -- more than a trace of Russian totalitarianism courses through my veins.

But I'm not entirely evil: Post as many haiku as you please, all open for judging. Window for entries closes at 11:59pm, Pacific Daylight Time. That's a minute before 3am Tuesday on the U.S. east coast, and god only knows when sometime next week for our dear friend(s) in Australia.

Have at it, funsters. The theme for Haiku Monday is DANCE.

A Personal Interlude: My First Few Cars

2011-09-11T11:44:00.005-04:00

My dedicated reader, Moi -- who has a delightful blog and who juggles more talents, skills, and interests than I could dream up in five lifetimes -- is a fast-car freak. I sent her an article that I thought would interest her, and it prompted a quick email exchange.

Moi had mentioned her lust for the present series of Jaguar E-class vehicles. I relay here a slightly modified email response of mine.

---

Growing up, when I barely cared about such things, I always thought Jaguars were the most elegant cars on the road. Their standard sedans would have done me just fine. Something like this:

As far as I'm concerned, most sedans since -- from the Lexus on down -- tried to match this look.

Here's a display of the first few cars I received from my dad, the Chevy/Olds dealer. Unlike most other car dealers' kids -- who had nice cars -- I always got the stuff Dad absolutely couldn't sell, even on the used car lot, or that he might have been too uninspired to unload on the wholesale market at Jerome Avenue in the South Bronx, at the time (and perhaps still) one of America's worst neighborhoods. But I could never beat the price, and until I got out of college and wanted actively to wean myself from the corporate/parental teat, they always came with gas credit cards.

My first car appears below, which I had for the last three months of high school and then until I went off to college. Seven miles a gallon. Car weighed 5700 pounds. If the driver's door accidentally closed on your leg, your next stop was the prosthesis store:

Next stop: Summer after freshman year. I was very surprised to receive a foreign car, as my father naturally thought that they were manifestations of the antichrist:

I had the Audi for about a week. Dad asked me what I thought. I was pretty pleased, but I mentioned in passing that the radio didn't work that well. Dad's response? "OK, give it back. We'll take care of that."

He sure did:

So I drove around the Pinto in the height of the exploding-gas-tank scare; Dad didn't care. I'll always remember this car because one time when I was on the FDR Drive in Manhattan, driving at a pretty good clip, I went into a dip and came out of it in mid-air, seemingly shifting half a lane to the right in the process. Good thing it was late at night and no one was in the lane next to me.

And the vehicle for which I was famous, the body of which was festooned with duct tape to cover the rust (remember, at this point I am the potential heir to a GM dealership that had been in business for 50-something years): I give you the affectionately monikered "Ghetto Cruiser," which lasted me for about four or five years:

The quality of cars courtesy of my father finally improved when I had a wife and kids who were riding around in them.

A gas credit card billed to someone else's account sure sounds good now, though.

Something about This Rang My Bell

2011-09-05T10:36:00.003-04:00

Quote from the work desk. Longtime followers of this blog -- hell, my life -- know that the matter of religion has disturbed/fascinated me since before the bar mitzvah that I was committed to for all the wrong reasons. How many functioning atheists of Jewish descent see the Abbey of Gethsemani as the ideal retreat?

Hang in there with this. It starts off a little rocky, but there's a payoff:

No theory is truly falsifiable or rationally justified, because there is no ultimate commonly agreed standard of rationality or set of premises to adjudicate on whether a theory has been falsified. This would let theology off the hook, had Bartley not gone on to formulate his own nonjustificational approach, dubbed “pancritical rationalism.” The pancritical rationalist refuses to commit to any position and holds everything open to criticism—not just any theory that he adopts, but also the criteria for rationality and the premises from which he starts.

I believe that Bartley goes rather too far. Yes, our beliefs, including our most cherished theological beliefs, should be open to criticism, but that ought not to preclude our being committed to them—otherwise, intellectual and moral paralysis set in. Commitment ought not to constitute a retreat so much as a launching pad for further inquiry. As Michael Polanyi puts it in Personal Knowledge, “The principal purpose of this book is to achieve a frame of mind in which I may hold firmly to what I believe to be true, even though I know that it may conceivably be false.”

So, there you go. Maybe "agnostic" is a better term. I've read books about Polanyi, not that I could understand a word of them. Sounds like this quote is from a preface anyway. I probably couldn't get past the roman numerals.

Ain't It the Truth

2011-08-18T21:46:00.000-04:00

Muphry's Law

Deleted post

2011-07-18T20:01:00.000-04:00

Yes, a post used to be here. Why did I delete it? Purely mercenary reasons. No offense intended to Eggy, Aunty, or Moi for deleting your most welcome comments.

Ready to Punch an Author in the Face

2011-07-08T19:37:00.009-04:00

And I can't say it's the first time.

I'm indexing yet another rehash of a dissertation. I'm not complaining. Work is work. And theological dissertations aren't going away anytime soon.

This author has taken to putting not just [sic], but [sic!] in the middle of extracts for relatively meaningless items . . . the occasional subject/verb disagreement (easy enough to silently fix) or use of masculine pronouns when a gender-neutral approach may have been preferred. The one that sent me over the edge was a [sic!] for misuse of "who" instead of "whom."

The overall effect is one of Gotcha! But who really cares? The author is just making himself look very petty.

There are better ways to handle this. First, the author could put a simple note in the preface: "Extracts include gender-exclusive language as they appeared in the original." Simple enough, no overt value judgment. Some of the works cited are old enough that such use of male pronouns was standard practice.

The other thing is that in these days of greater attention being paid to such matters, some authors or publishers mandate alternating gender pronouns. In the case of anecdotal material, we don't know if perhaps the work cited had a female pronoun on the previous page. Quite possibly, this author is taking material out of context and making a big deal out of nothing.

What really grinds my guts is that this work is itself full of typos. Misspellings, authors' names treated inconsistently, verb tenses wrong, works in the footnotes that don't appear in the bibliography. It's a wreck. We're dealing with a serious glass-houses issue.

For some publishers, I'd note the more egregious problems. And I like working with this publisher. Friendly, pays on time, grants a little extra time if I need it, actually sent me a gift card to a bookstore a few Christmases ago. I've told the managing editor any number of times that the publisher's books would really benefit from professional proofreading. I think this publisher shares the expenses of publication with the author, though, and proofreading payments would mostly fall to the author. As it's been explained to me, folks who are reprinting their dissertations don't have a lot of extra money lying around.

Understood. But unless the thing goes into reprints (unlikely if you saw this title), the author has one chance to make that book as good as it can be. And I guarantee, if this author's experience is anything like most other authors' and editors' experience (present company included), as soon as the damn thing shows up on his doorstep, he's going to open to a page with a glaring error. But in this case it'll be that one, and another one, and another one, and another one.

Five years from now, is the author going to wish he scrounged up an extra $650 to have this pretty significant tome proofread, so it wouldn't embarrass him every time someone cracked open the cover?

Thirty-five years later, am I still regretting spending $75 of birthday money on albums instead of an autographed copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass that I saw in an Ann Street bookstore on the way to J&R Music World, when J&R was just a hole in the ground in the shadow of the World Trade Center, selling records for $3.99 a pop?

Philip Wylie, in Finnley Wren, wrote, "Why should I be sobered by anything akin to regret?"

Don't get me started.

PS: Some folks might think I'm the one being petty here. "If you see mistakes in a book you're indexing, shouldn't you point them out to the publisher?" Yes and no. I often do this, when the mistakes are occasional. When the mistakes are rampant, when it appears that the author himself or herself didn't care to put enough effort into the work, I'm less likely to do so.

"But if you were a doctor and you noticed something wrong with one of your patients, but that wasn't what brought the patient in to see you, wouldn't you point it out or treat it?"

Well, if I was a doctor, I'd be dealing with life-and-death situations, and that's a whole 'nother story. How about this:

I'm working at a car wash (much more appropriate to my level of expertise). You come in and tell me you want the outside of your car washed, and you want it back in an hour. I do a fine job of washing your car, and I notice that the inside looks like hell. Do I do the inside, knowing that (a) stopping to do so will make me miss your deadline and (b) I won't get paid for it? Or do I tell you that, for an extra fee, I can also take care of your interior?

Surprised? Insulted?

2011-06-29T15:36:00.001-04:00

Just received an email from a client that decided to go with a different type of page numbering system. Instead of numbering each book sequentially from 1 to the end, the publisher has decided to number within each chapter. Thus, 1.1-end, 2.1-end. Kind of a tail-wagging-the-dog issue here, but the publisher has a reason for doing so.

Email reads:

Hi Bob,

I know we ran the idea of changing the page numbering system by you, and we wanted to let you know we have decided to use the approach described in the e-mail below. A week or so ago Jane asked me to ask you if your indexing/copyediting software could handle this type of numbering system, but we put contacting you about this on hold until the final decision was made to change the page numbering system. Now that the decision has been made, can your indexing/copyediting software handle this?

Let us know.

Thanks!

Longtime readers know where this one is going. Cue the snarky email response in 3, 2, 1:

Not sure what you mean by "software."

If you ever run into an indexer who touts his or her software, I'd run in the other direction.

And I guess I use the same copyediting software that your authors use writing software. Your authors let all the software do the mental work of writing and researching and editing and keeping review panels happy, right?

:-)

bl

Haiku Monday: The Long and Short of It

2011-06-28T04:58:00.003-04:00

Good Tuesday or later, folks.

We ended up with a nice bit of variety, although it was interesting how many haiku focused on food and beverage. Maybe that’s just a sign of where everyone’s head is. When I first thought of the theme, the denotation of the word that intrigued me was selling short -- profiting through loss, betting on a move to the downside. If I had to offer up a haiku this week, I’d have tried to do something with that. But as the definitions showed, many possibilities were available, and judging from the quality of the entries, I’m glad I was on the sidelines this week.

I do intend to keep this short, by the way. Every entry was quality. As I saw them come in, I thought, There’s a winner, there’s a winner. But when one in particular showed up, I knew where the blue ribbon was going, and subsequent entries didn’t move me off that dime.

The entries:

Karl 1: Gets a prize for working “glyexab” into the verse. There’s poetry in word verification.

Fishy 1–3: “Short bus” is always a metaphor and a euphemism that’s well worth mining. The “short ribs” entry made me wish I was invited to the party.

Karl 2: The long and short of the haiku process made me want to dance the hokey-pokey. Liked the rhythm.

Moi: Glad you found your knight in shining armor. I wish I’d have been there when you were thirteen. Alas, I was ensconced in a boys’ school, years away from thinking any female would ever even cough in my direction. (I’m still amazed when they do.) Eh, I’d have ended up on the trash heap, too. Moi at thirteen. Any of us at thirteen. The mind reels.

Chickory: In full disclosure and true to my profession, I should have given credit where it’s due and noted that the definitions were from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition). There, that feels better. Somewhere back in my blog archives, I have an entry about whether “50 Cent” in an index should be alphabetized under “Fifty” or “Fiddy.” I get, obviously, the Randy Nouvel Homme reference, and I guess Gaga is “born this way.” I don’t know where the Fiddy comes in. When I saw “go, go, go shorty,” I thought a little further back -- to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Glad you’re over the plague. We need you plugging away in the many art realms.

Troll 1: Thanks for giving me a chance to ask my son to translate. I think it sounds better in the original.

Kym 1: Being short might be hard, but I think your stature will result in a longer life. I have always thought that life expectancy was related more to height than gender. Women are shorter; live longer. To wit, Muggsy Bogues has already outlasted Manute Bol. The human body’s not designed for excessive height. There’s a reason you hear “little old man,” and you don’t see a lot of six-foot-three nonagenarians stumbling around.

Troll 2: Thanks again for another gift: a visit to the Thomas Hobbes Liquor Emporium. Only at Haiku Monday.

Kym 2: Nice play on “short.” And I am a Waffle House devotee. Lived for 10 years in Avondale Estates, GA, home of the first and the 1,000th WH. From spending literally hundreds (it may even be thousands) of hours patronizing this fine institution, I can attest that the lives of most of the cooks seem scattered, smothered, and covered indeed. And I have the greatest of admiration for those folks. It takes an amazing mind to do that job correctly -- one that I do not possess.

Foam: Good thing about pints and pint-sized folks. If there’s too many of the former, the descent is much quicker, and likely not as painful.

Fleur: We need to get you out more. Or less. We could rename this one “Fleur and the Angry Inch.” How did you ascertain his exact height? Were you toting your Mickey Rooney cardboard cutout for comparison?

Fishy 4: Nice job on the timely and topical. Blago is that dumb. And corrupt. And arrogant.

Uncle 1–2: In my part of the world, two types of wimmen wear short shorts: Girls who are too young for me to be looking at, and women who damn near take up an aisle by themselves at the Walmart. Both are unfortunate in their own way.

Aunty 1–3: I don’t think I set up any rules this time around, nor did I dangle a prize, now that I think of it. Thanks for getting these in. All are great. Shameless pandering is a time-tested way to a man’s heart (see also Fishy 2, “Short ribs”). I love “six short pants and a PUSH!” And between “myopia” this week and “presbyopia” last week, I’m having a hard time seeing straight. All most clever.

And now, having made a short story long, I’ll bring this review up short with a haiku summation:

Wide-ranging short verse.

To Kymical Reactions

Go this week’s honors . . .

for the Waffle House homage.

As I said, no prize forthcoming from here. You don’t need one. As the father of two sons whom I adore, I can say -- as you already know -- your gift awaits you. Sounds like you’re already enjoying it.

Had a great time, folks. Thanks to Troll et al. for entrusting me with this institution for a week. Back to meet a deadline on which I’ve left myself woefully short on time.

czar

Haiku Monday: Short

2011-06-24T00:07:00.003-04:00

Take it any way you want.

Haiku on "short" in 5-7-5 format.

Post in comments field below.

Main Entry: short
Pronunciation:*sh*rt
Function:adjective
Etymology:Middle English, from Old English sceort; akin to Old High German scurz short, Old Norse skortr lack
Date:before 12th century

1 a : having little length b : not tall or high : LOW
2 a : not extended in time : BRIEF *a short vacation* b : not retentive *a short memory* c : EXPEDITIOUS, QUICK *made short work of the problem* d : seeming to pass quickly *made great progress in just a few short years*
3 a of a speech sound : having a relatively short duration b : being the member of a pair of similarly spelled vowel or vowel-containing sounds that is descended from a vowel that was short in duration but is no longer so and that does not necessarily have duration as its chief distinguishing feature *short i in sin* c of a syllable in prosody (1) : of relatively brief duration (2) : UNSTRESSED
4 : limited in distance *a short trip*
5 a : not coming up to a measure or requirement : INSUFFICIENT *in short supply* b : not reaching far enough *the throw to first was short* c : enduring privation d : insufficiently supplied *short of cash* *short on brains*
6 a : ABRUPT, CURT *I'm sorry I was short with you* b : quickly provoked *a short temper*
7 : CHOPPY 2
8 : payable at an early date *a short loan*
9 a : containing or cooked with shortening; also : FLAKY *short pastry* b of metal : brittle under certain conditions
10 a : not lengthy or drawn out *a short speech* b : made briefer : ABBREVIATED
11 a : not having goods or property that one has sold in anticipation of a fall in prices b : consisting of, relating to, or engaging in the sale of securities or commodities that the seller does not possess or has not contracted for at the time of the sale *short sale* *a short seller*
12 : near the end of a tour of duty
–short£ish \*sh*r-tish\ adjective
–short£ness \*sh*rt-n*s\ noun
–in short order : with dispatch : QUICKLY

***

Main Entry: short
Function:noun
Date:circa 1586

1 : the sum and substance : UPSHOT
2 a : a short syllable b : a short sound or signal
3 plural    a : a by-product of wheat milling that includes the germ, fine bran, and some flour b : refuse, clippings, or trimmings discarded in various manufacturing processes
4 a : knee-length or less than knee-length trousers — usually used in plural b plural   : short drawers c : a size in clothing for short men
5 a : one who operates on the short side of the market b plural   : short-term bonds
6 plural   : DEFICIENCIES
7 : SHORT CIRCUIT
8 : SHORTSTOP
9 a : SHORT SUBJECT b : a brief story or article (as in a newspaper)
–for short : as an abbreviation *named Katherine or Kate for short*
–in short : by way of summary : BRIEFLY

***

Main Entry: short
Function:transitive verb
Date:1904

1 : SHORT-CIRCUIT
2 : SHORTCHANGE, CHEAT
3 : to sell (a security) short in expectation of a fall in prices

Need Your Wisdom, Blog Homies: And/Or

2011-06-21T19:05:00.000-04:00

An editor I work with once made a pretty solid argument that, in most cases, the "and/or" construction is clunky, useless, and repetitive. Most of the time, "or" implies "and," and that "and/or" should generally not appear.

I can never remember his argument as well as he stated it, but I'd like to hear the opinions of people I trust.

What do you think? Get rid of "and/or"? Why? Or why not?

Form and Formlessness

2011-06-18T23:49:00.006-04:00

Revelation time.

Most poetry I am exposed to these days does nothing for me, not that I come across much of it. Generally it’s what appears in the New Yorker, or what Garrison Keillor reads in his daily poetry minutes on NPR—although now that I think of it, I think the local NPR affiliate has done away with Keillor’s segment.

New Yorker’s poetry often leaves me with two takeaway notions.

1. If I submitted this poem instead of the person whose name I recognize at the end of the verse, it would have gone straight into the trash.

2. This poem is nothing but middling prose with line breaks.

But I came across a New Yorker poem a few weeks back titled “Facebook Sonnet.” I loved it. I’m sure I’m violating eight or seven commandments right now—especially for someone in the publishing industry—but here it is:

Welcome to the endless high-school

Reunion. Welcome to past friends

And lovers, however kind or cruel.

Let’s undervalue and unmend

The present. Why can’t we pretend

Every stage of life is the same?

Let’s exhume, resume and extend

Childhood. Let’s all play the games

That occupy the young. Let fame

And shame intertwine. Let one’s search

For God become public domain.

Let church.com become our church.

Let’s sign up, sign in, and confess
Here at the altar of loneliness.

—Sherman Alexie

And it struck me: I like structure. Free verse, not so much. And that explains my enjoyment, too, of Haiku Monday. If it were Free Verse Friday, I’m not sure what would be worse: writing entries or reading those from other people.

So, I prefer form. Poetry within certain parameters, which offers a certain obvious challenge.

Then, revelation two: Why people don’t like certain types of jazz.

Just guessing, but maybe it's the seeming lack of structure. My wife, for example, can listen to Kenny Burrell or Bill Evans or Jimmy Smith or Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, but Coltrane’s A Love Supreme? Nope. “My Favorite Things”? Long enough while he’s holding the melody, but not past it. Ornette Coleman? I wouldn’t even try.

Ornette Coleman at Bonnaroo 2007 (i was there)

I was talking to Tere about this and she said, “But I like abstract art—visual art.”

I responded, “Yeah, but there’s an end to it. You don’t have to go beyond the canvas. You know where it begins and ends. Unlike a Coltrane song, which you never know how long it’s going to go on, or when it will return to the theme. There’s an uncertainty there that leaves you uncomfortable.”

Well, to be fair, I would admit to some share of shrieking and bleating in Coltrane and Coleman that aren't for everyone . . . not that there's anything wrong with that.

For me, I don’t mind the aural discomfort. But the structureless void, and occasional blathering, of much free verse? Prose and hard returns. Blah.

So, that’s my one thought for 2011.

Response?

———

PS: I am not on Facebook.
PPS: Haiku Monday at Chez Fleur. The theme is memory.

Shameless Plug for a Great Small Press

2011-06-16T03:07:00.002-04:00

Vineyard Stories is a wonderful press that produces beautifully written and often visually stunning books on a variety of topics. While much of the subject matter seems at first glance like local interest, the books' links to Martha's Vineyard belie their universal appeal. Shipbuilding, local farming, fishing, memoirs, politics/culture, the passage of time, and more -- Vineyard Stories offers an excellent product. And unlike many of the more academic books I work on, you could proudly give these books as gifts and actually feel comfortable showing up to those people's houses at a later date.

I'm proud of my association with Jan Pogue and Vineyard Stories. Check 'em out.

http://vineyardstories.com/index2.php

Perhaps It's Bad Blogging Form

2011-06-15T15:41:00.000-04:00

But through feedjit I see that I have what I presume is one person who regularly checks in from the Russian Federation. I'd love to know who you are and what brought you here and what brings you back. If you don't feel comfortable leaving a comment -- even anonymously -- feel free to email me at the address in the righthand column.

But most important, the last thing I want to do is scare you away. I know that I've stopped patronizing restaurants in the past as soon as I was pegged as a regular and my orders became predictable. Some people strive for such recognition. I'd often rather just be one of the crowd. Don't point out that you know I'm there.

And I think I've mentioned it in the past. I am of half-Russian heritage. Even linked with a somewhat notorious figure in Russian history. For all I know, it's a long-lost cousin keeping tabs on me.

So . . . my Russian friend, or my expat buddy. What's up?

Hmm. Not the First Conclusion I'd Have Come To

2011-05-31T11:50:00.000-04:00

“

Significantly, the fish also symbolized Gehry’s conflicted sense of Jewishness. Gehry first highlighted the Jewish dimensions of the fish in 1984 when he declared: “When I was a kid I used to go to the market with my grandmother on Thursdays. We’d go to the Jewish market, we’d buy a live carp, we’d take it home to her house in Toronto, we’d put it in the bathtub and I would play with this goddamn fish for a day until the next day she’d kill it and make gefilte fish. I think maybe that has something to with [my interest in fish forms].” At one level, therefore, the fish was a symbol of familial togetherness.

”

Haiku Monday: Clichés

2011-05-29T13:51:00.001-04:00

Lines meet dots — just not

Inside the box. Folks recall

Clichés, not sources.

Haiku Monday this week at Chez Moi.

For Your Consideration: The Em Dash

2011-05-27T21:01:00.000-04:00

http://www.slate.com/id/2295413/

The link above is making the rounds among editorial types. Personally, I have a feeling this contributor's writing would be tedious under any circumstances. When you've made your point intellectually and graphically within the first three paragraphs, and then proceed to drive the point into the ground and break it off, you've gone on far too long for me.

As with all kinds of writing, judicious use of whatever tools are at the writer's disposal is crucial. That statement refers not only to dashes but to words themselves.

Wednesday's Prodigious Passive Prize Goes to . . .

2011-05-18T12:25:00.000-04:00

"On the one hand, it may be argued that the determination of the minor islands to be left under Japanese sovereignty required by the Potsdam Proclamation had been made by the treaty."

Today's index entry

2011-05-11T20:33:00.000-04:00

Mornin, Bob, 98–99

Apropos of nothing

2011-04-29T09:01:00.001-04:00

Needing to kill 25 minutes before heading up to the theater where my wife works, and I don't feel like diving into something work-related for that amount of time. Some short notes.

> The Feedjit gadget always fascinates. A little traffic coming to this blog lately from someone who searched the text of a fortune cookie I received some weeks back. My blog posting ended up with an update about how the two fortune cookies opened came true, and in relation to each other. Now a link to that blog posting is on someone's Facebook page, and a few people have come here following that link. Since I'm not on Facebook, I have no idea whose page this is on or why. Maybe someone has a Facebook page devoted to different fortune cookie messages? I think of the old Alan King bit/book title, Help! I'm being held prisoner in a Chinese bakery! which is what his father used to say whenever he opened a fortune cookie. I suspect that was often. As the old joke goes,

The Jewish calendar is now year 5771. The Chinese calendar is year 4708. So what did Jews do for 1063 years without Chinese food?

> Working lately for a number of individual authors, and hoping the word continues to spread, for a number of reasons. One of the authors is part of a small publishing group that appears to handle the work of only a handful of authors, but has its own periodical as well. Very interesting. Naturally, I hope that the present author is enamored enough of my work to disseminate my name among her fellow writers.

> I've lured a dear longtime friend into the compulsion that is Haiku Monday. Welcome, Fleur.

> My older son is in London today (not center city) while the royal nuptials are taking place. I simply consider it a good development that the lad has been out of the United States since January 5 and I've had no calls from embassies or COINTELPRO, and that (knock on wood) he still has his passport. The future queen is a fabulous babe, and the future king looks well on his way to having less hair than I do.

> I've been added to the list of a rather well-known university press as a proofreader. No work just yet, but hopefully some will come soon, at which time I'll add the press to the ever-fluctuating client list. Which press? Well, Prince William -- keeping on the royals theme -- was just made Duke of Cambridge. Well, it ain't that one, but the other one.

> Other son will be matriculating at University of Virginia this fall; parents and offspring are most pleased, although dealing with a university that size is already proving a new experience. The incoming freshman class at UVA is bigger than his brother's college and both their high schools combined.

> Getting an index on Jewish architecture after Auschwitz. 440-page book, probably oversized. I think they've left me about 10 pages for the index. All I can hope for is plenty of pages with pictures.

> Finishing up some work over the next few days for my Kuwaiti professor pal. I'm proofreading a book I'd copyedited a couple of months ago, which doesn't happen often. As I told my wife yesterday, every once in a while I'll forget that and think to myself while proofing the pages, Gee, I like the way this copyeditor worked. I'd have done it the same way. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

haiku monday: chicken

2011-04-24T10:18:00.000-04:00

Go to chickory.blogspot.com for details. Most excellent prize available this week.

Quote of the Day

2011-04-13T09:44:00.002-04:00

From a book on the study of happiness:

“Data” is not the plural of “anecdote."

Back to the Roots

2011-04-07T06:26:00.000-04:00

Where this blog began . . . and from where it's been distracted of late. Travails in the editing world. Some quick notes on a recent project. Then it's back to work finishing a job for my old employer, which, after my moaning about it for years, still cannot manage to print out a decent set of page proofs.

--

Working on a project that’s taking days longer than it should. Problems, about which the publisher did not inform me:

British punctuation and spelling throughout — all must be fixed; but can’t do globally because of quoted material and extracts.

Foreign editor of a multiple-foreign-author book, meaning that the same non-US idiomatic phrases appear in every author’s pieces: “Hypermarket,” rather than supermarket. "Right across": Took me awhile to figure this one out. It means “throughout.”

Hundreds of footnotes needing to be composed from a poorly written and horribly inconsistent bibliography. The footnotes were along the lines of Smith 2010, which doesn’t work as a footnote for this publisher. Publisher requires either author, date style in the text, or traditional notes, but since many of the footnotes weren’t really quoted material and incorporated more discursive stuff, author date wouldn’t have worked.

Some chapters included many notes that didn’t match up with biblio information, resulting in queries.

Heads typed in all caps, requiring rekeying.

Ridiculous overuse of scare quotes: a spending “spree.” And italics for emphasis.

Because the changes are being tracked, must be very careful that open quotes being replaced don’t end up facing in the wrong direction -- and because of the UK-US shift in punctuation, a ton of quote marks require replacement.

I could go on.

And what's the book about? At this point, it doesn't even matter.

Is the Internet a Great Place or What?

2011-04-04T16:10:00.000-04:00

الصفحة التي كنت عليها تحاول إرسالك إلى http://boblandedits.blogspot.com/.

إذا كنت لا ترغب في زيارة تلك الصفحة، يمكنك العودة إلى الصفحة السابقة.

Copyediting and Proofreading Harry Potter

2011-03-25T10:48:00.002-04:00

No. Not me. The only interest I have in Harry Potter is that I'm glad it interested a generation in books, and a few members of my family are mighty interested in the books and movies.

We also have a British first edition of one of the books that I think was purchased in Germany in 2000 when one of the series came out. Interesting thing, from what I understand, is that one of the chapters ends differently than the US edition, and there might even be some chapter titles that are different, or a couple of chapters in different order. Huh? Well, whatever.

Anyway, I've linked below to a story about the woman who proofread the first few in the series and copyedited the last few. It's only mildly interesting, but I figure that a mention of Harry Potter might draw a little blog traffic. Shameless whore? Present.

Harry Potter haiku anyone? I'd be at a loss . . . except to use it to riff on publishing and money and myth -- and my wife wishing she could have seen Daniel Radcliffe in Equus.

http://www.sj-r.com/top-stories/x911070733/Riverton-woman-says-copy-editing-Harry-Potter-books-was-top-secret-job

Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln, How Was the Play?

2011-03-23T07:56:00.000-04:00

Email received this morning from a publisher:

======

Hi Bob:

I know you have several projects in your hands right now, but I’ve run into a problem and I’m contacting all my indexers to see if anyone can help!

I received an index from a new indexer yesterday (my three “regulars” are busy), right on schedule, but it’s not acceptable. I now have a book that is going to be overdue, without an index. The book is 288 pages, with 8 pages of that reserved for the index. The biggest problem with the rejected index is that the indexer does not have a grasp of the theological content, and many of the entries just don’t make sense, the contributors to the volume are not referenced properly, some of the page ranges are too wide, and poor decisions are made about what to break down and how to phrase things.

It may be possible to salvage some of the work—I could forward the rejected index to you—or maybe that just makes more work than not.

In any case, if there is any way you could help out with this index or if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Haiku Monday [Sleep]: The Report

2011-03-22T04:00:00.002-04:00

Haiku Monday: The Winner

Toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son.

—Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681)

The translation I originally heard for this statement was “Life is a dream, and dreaming, a dream.” I know barely enough Spanish to know that’s not a literal translation, but it’s close enough and it’s the one I’ve stuck with. And it sounds better in Spanish anyway.

Anyway.

My methodology.

I read nothing and, as you’ve now seen, made no comments while the posting was taking place. Promptly at midnight I printed two copies of all the haiku/comments. I put one copy aside, and then gave the other copy to my 18-year-old son, instructing him to black out all names and avatars. I was committed to treating this contest as much as possible with the haiku masters being anonymous.

I did read up a little on haiku, most of which echoed what Troll’s already explained elsewhere. I did not take the elements of classical Japanese haiku into account for their own sake; that is, if you incorporated classical haiku elements you were not awarded for it, nor were you penalized for their absence. And a little research shows that American haiku has branched off into pretty much a different form regardless. And that’s what we’re here for: some good ol’ Amurkun haiku. But in the case of Kireji particularly, I think it helps make for some good poetry.

And that’s what we’re dealing with: poetry, but you have a not very good English major doing the hosting. Furthermore, as your host and judge, you have an editor who’s had to suffer professionally through some of the most painful tripe ever written in the name of verse. Imagine the worst—the absolute worst—greeting-card/Burma Shave doggerel you’ve ever read. Then set up rhyming patterns that are broken out of laziness rather than intent. Then entirely screw up the meter. That’s most of the poetry I’ve been paid to endure.

Then there was the book of womanist theology/poetry I edited, in which the author spent the first 100 pages discussing herself and her qualifications for writing the book before getting to the content . . . kind of like I’m doing here. About page xliii of the preface (quoting my brother-from-another-mother Steve, “I crap you negative”), the author thanks a professor “who recognized me as a poet before I named myself Poet.” God save me from such insufferability. Haiku thankfully doesn’t allow much space for that. Nor would this crowd foist it on me.

About the topic. I’m generally sleep deprived. I slept most of the summer when I was fifteen years old, and sometimes I feel like I’ve been paying for it ever since. When Moi gave me an update toward the end of the day on Monday about what was going on in the comments section, I responded:

No sleep for the czar.
National Poetry Day . . .
Winks: Gang aft agley.

Yes, haikusters, yesterday was National Poetry Day, as declared by the United Nations. March 21, every year. And I didn’t even know it until one of my friends who declined to participate pointed it out to me.

And now it’s the middle of the night, or getting there, and still miles to go.

Enough background.

The criteria.

After the syllable count, what did I look for, numbered but in no particular order?

1. Turns of phrase or use of language that made me think, Wow.

2. Stark images of beauty. Or depravity. Or horror. Or glory. Two or more in seventeen syllables garnered extra points.

3. Economy of language. We’re all limited to the syllables. Within that, though, did the piece juggle more than one concept? Did it work on different levels? How much word power went into one intensely honed and crafted little nugget within a nugget?

4. Humor. Always a positive. Barring that, soul-crushing despair works, too. Or hope. But some emotional content.

5. An interesting take.

6. The proper combination of intrigue and comprehensibility. Did the haiku have an element of mystery, but could a reader who didn’t know what the topic was still figure out the topic, or at least come close? If you wrote about sleep or something related to it, but you’re the only one who knew it, that’s a little too much inside baseball. And I’ll admit, I’m kinda literal and frankly not too bright. Metaphor goes right past me. We’ll come out of a play or a movie, and my wife will say, “I thought the play was about such and so,” and I’m like, “Damn, I pretty much thought it was about the plot.” So, subtlety to the point of obscurity doesn’t work well for me.

Analysis.

This section is for you Nate Silver fans. Participants submitted, by my count, 29 haiku on topic. Of those, I had to kick out seven for violations of the only established rule: 5-7-5. There were some nice turns of phrase in those discarded lines, but unfortunately, they couldn’t count toward the contest.

I tried to categorize the topics. Some I counted in more than one category. These are very much subject to interpretation/change.

Dreams, 8

Sleep as metaphor, 5

Sleep, physical aspects of, 4

Sleep, absence of, 4 (very interesting)

Waking, 4

Other, 3

Sleep, as escape, 2

Sleep, spirituality and, 1

The results.

This is the hard part, as there was good in every single entry.

Joe D G, an old pal of mine who’s always had more than a finger in the spiritual realm, started us off on a nice note, grounding us in the eternal verities. The juxtaposition of presuming sleep yet being in a state of thorough awareness is jarring and makes me want to linger on this verse. The pairing of loss and gain also intrigues.

A newer pal of mine, spiritual after another fashion -- and one who straddles the line between friend and family member -- Drew hits me right where I live, as I’ve always viewed sleep as a pleasure of the flesh. And “the second best thing,” I am presuming he means while lying down.

Karen ranked high with her observation. And it’s absolutely true. Hurricanes also hit at night, it seems. I liked the mystery of the 2nd line ending with the number, and the last line devoted entirely to time.

Last week’s winner Foam had the first phrase that really grabbed me: “Forty winks gone sour.” A great lead, pushing me into the rest of the piece. “Contorted yawn” -- aren’t they all? Her first haiku (excuse me for turning editor here) I thought was promising until the last syllable of the second line. We’ve had 11 syllables of noise. The word “noise” there seemed unnecessary. Some type of ‘60s Batman graphic might have been good there: “buzzing whining chainsaw ZAP!” Ooof? Thunk?

Master Troll’s first effort: I must admit that this one failed me. Probably my ample ignorance showing. I don’t know Troll that well, but I know enough to know that he’s trying to achieve something here that’s just out of my grasp . . . like a name I can’t remember or a song I can’t recall. If he lets on what the secret is, I’m sure I’ll think, Of course! But until then . . . He acknowledged he needed to come up with something better. And of course, the master did.

The dead poet salute from Troll was great. I like the “stop” at the end of the first line sans punctuation, so there’s a visual stop but no stop at all. “Frosted” is a great touch. The capitalization of “Promise Keeper” in the first line makes me think of the group by that name, which throws me off a little, because I expect the next two lines to somehow evoke more imagery along that train of thought, but I’m not seeing it.

To me, “Lizard” is the best of Troll’s trilogy. It’s understandable yet mysterious. I’m not sure if this is some waking dream of his own, or maybe Troll fell asleep with the TV on and awoke in the middle of a nature show. Either way, the lines, to me, reflect that odd sense of confusion and certainty that accompanies coming out of a dream. Did that happen? Am I awake? Something is vivid, and five seconds later is gone. We shed memories of our dreams like a lizard sheds its skin. Or like the Onion headline read a few years ago, “Cast-off Paris Hilton Skin Found in Central Park.” Oh, never mind. Nice work, Troll. And nice alliteration with “learn lizards lunch” and “shedding skin sometimes.”

Moi: The first one has me entirely confused, like Troll’s first. I am likely just a simpleton. This seems to be the tale of a longing lover, or not. I’m not sure who is sleeping here, if the narrator is desiring sleep or commanding it. There seems to be a lot of activity going on for something delayed or maybe interrupted. Many mixed signals here. But as always, keep in mind that I am an idiot.

I think the second of the trilogy combines two beautiful thoughts: “Sprung from winter’s cold / cruel womb,” and “newborn shoots bloom a / tribute to the sun.” Great phrasing, great application of the topic. What knocks it down a notch for me is the “a” dangling at the end of line 2. The internal rhyme on the line is nice, though (womb . . . bloom), and I think even transposing the last two words would have worked better, also leaving you with the interesting phrase “a bloom / tribute” and a strong emphasis at the end of every line.

The third haiku, Moi, is one of four in the lot that I ranked with the highest scores across the board. “Psycho sous chef dreams”: “Flash of kitchen knives / sunk deep into fattened flesh.” Are these dreams about a psycho sous chef? Dreams by a psycho sous chef? With just enough of a hint of Jeffrey Dahmer here, I wonder if you’ve been watching far too many cooking shows. I especially like the rhythm of these lines.

I think K9’s 2nd and 3rd lines are outstanding. The phrase “defenseless hemispheres” is perhaps my favorite of the entire contest. Indeed the brain at sleep is defenseless. I’ve always puzzled at people who are afraid to relay their dreams to others. Most of us have no control over what goes on in our dream state. Our hemispheres are indeed defenseless for that time. “Birdsong alarm,” also nice. The first line throws me, though. “A little like death” . . . I think of the French phrase la petit mort (the little death), which is a euphemism for orgasm. But I guess la petit mort leaves us somewhat defenseless as well. K9, while you’re not a winner this week, just for “defenseless hemispheres,” I’ll be happy to send you the phonies or the fraggers book. Both are good. You can email me your address, and I’ll send one along. My email is landondemand@bvunet.net.

Boxer: Dogs do indeed dream; of that I have no doubt. I enjoyed the pun on “rest”: “Spring sun awakens the rest.” And plants and birds certainly rejoice upon awakening as few other beings do, whether by song or by stretching to the sun, or by opening themselves to the warmth and glow. Beauty awakening all around.

Derek is a pal of mine who I knew would step up and deliver. Numbers one and three nailed it. The Scots couple murdering more than sleep -- wonderful. Sheep dreaming of electric shepherds as they run through blades of grass. What does it say that two of the top-ranking haiku deal with sharp instruments? Is it me? Is it you and Moi? I don’t know. Is there some Jungian thing about knives? Derek’s middle haiku was a tame, pleasant interlude.

KafkaFishy brought us the best word: “Insectuous.” Brilliant. We have a lot of literary haiku this week; don’t know if that’s the norm. Fishy’s second, third, and fourth ones are impressionistic, evocative . . . but like Troll’s Z, I feel like they are just out of reach for me. I love the sounds of “rose apple sedation” and “deep clover dreaming,” but the meanings are elusive, or maybe illusive. Again, it’s probably just me. Perhaps they are dream images. I also like the double interpretation of “Gypsy dreams of God.” Is this a Gypsy dream, whatever that might be, or is it a gypsy dreaming? But going back to number one: Metamorphosis! was bunched with a few others right at the top of my rankings.

Karl also got into my head: “I’m up, not at all . . . on autopilot.” Yes indeed. The juxtaposition in the first line is great. “Here I am, but I am not.”

Fleur, another dear old friend, received very late notice and tossed this off in a manner of minutes. And I rank it at the absolute top of the 2nd tier, just out of the running for the top slot. “On the pillow, a shadow / of my face remains.” Although I’m fighting off Shroud of Turin images, I like this very much. She also mentions weep / sleep / pillow. Unfortunately when I wake up with a moist pillow, it’s usually drool, but that’s more than you need to know.

Yes, Kym, I think we all can relate to being so tired that even our dreams bring sleep. Very nice image, kind of uroborotic, if that’s a word. A frustration for me has been dreaming of actually working on the manuscript that I left when I went to bed. I wake up feeling like I’ve been working, yet no more work has been done. Quite frustrating. But dreaming of sleep is almost like the Doublemint commercials. Going back to what Drew said, it’s like a second helping of pleasures of the flesh.

Of the disqualified haiku, I won’t call you out by name, but some phrases certainly got my attention. Wish I could have included them:

* according to the / circadian rhythm / siesta at two [love the thought]

* uncertainty is fading / now I can get some [amazing how removal of stress induces sleep]

* rest awaits in the grave [yes, I’m counting on it, too]

* so begins the flowery revival [beautiful]

* fifty-one and fighting [is that three of us?]

If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a prize.

Well, all of you do. And like just about every other week, the choice is impossible, but it has to be made. As I mentioned, with the help of my son, the haiku were completely anonymous this week. I read and graded and ranked them and did all that, and only afterward did I look at my second sheet to reveal the names and other comments. And frankly, I thought some of the pieces were actually written by other folks. I couldn’t tell who was who.

Four haiku were at the top of my list. Two actually came from one person -- Derek -- which is quite impressive, given the competition. (But if you know Derek, it’s not at all surprising.) Fishy’s insectuous dream horror shared in the three-way tie for second.

But the one that grabbed me, that I laughed out loud upon reading, whose rhythm hit the marks from start to finish, and whose wordplay works on a few different levels:

Flash of kitchen knives
sunk deep into fattened flesh.
Psycho sous chef dreams.

Moi, Stepping-Stones is yours, presuming you were serious. Congratulations. It was a very tough week in which to win.

Thanks to all for allowing me the honor of hosting and judging. I’m going to try to get . . . some . . . sleep.

Haiku Monday (3/21 edition): The Topic Is Sleep

2011-03-18T15:54:00.009-04:00

For those of you who've come here for the latest installment in LandonDemand's travails in the publishing world, please excuse -- or revel in -- this temporary interlude.

It's Haiku Monday!

Former participants know the drill, and here it is for the newcomers. Go to the comments section for this post and submit your haiku. This week's topic is sleep. Any take whatsoever on that word is acceptable. The only requirement is that your haiku meet the mandatory 5-7-5 syllable structure. No matter how delightful, if I have to count past that on my fingers on any given line, that's an immediate disqualification.

We editors can be sticklers for style.

Now, those of you who actually know something about what really make up good haiku, have at it, and set an example for the rest of us. I'll try to read up a little on haiku in the meantime and remember what I can from Troll's ongoing teachings, but I can't guarantee that a classically formed and perfect haiku will beat out something that just really grabs my attention.

We editors can be arbitrary.

The competition is intense; there's never a clunker in the bunch. Submit more than one if you're inspired. Deadline is Monday, 3/21/2011, 11:59pm, EDT.

Winner does come away with prizes. Of course, the absolute most coveted prize is the privilege of displaying the Haiku Monday winners' badge, prominently shown in the right-hand column of this blog. (I am an extremely humbled former winner of this honor.) You can display the badge on your own blog or, presumably, your Facebook page, your mailbox, your forehead, or anywhere else you'd like to draw attention to your accomplishment.

The second most coveted prize I am demonstrating here: the option of hosting and judging the following week's contest (not mandatory).

The final prize (not available in all states; supplies are limited) is a gift from the judge or another contributor. This week's gift is a book from the LandonDemand client library. Among the fascinating tomes you could win are

Real Phonies: Cultures of Authenticity in Post-World War II America
Fragging: Why US Soldiers Assaulted Their Officers in Vietnam
Dual Disasters: Humanitarian Aid After the 2004 Tsunami
Stepping-Stones: A Journey Through the Ice Age Caves of the Dordogne
Contentious Liberties: American Abolitionists in Post-Emancipation Jamaica, 1834-1866
Envisioning Nature, Science, and Religion
Einstein, Polanyi and the Laws of Nature
Cowboy Park: Steer-Roping Contests on the Border

In keeping with this week's theme, I can guarantee that many of these books will indeed induce sleep.

I've got many more. Depending on the winner's area of interest, I'll try to unearth something you'd actually want to read or can give to someone as a gift. Trust me, no offense taken. I read every one of the above titles because I was paid to -- although some had the side benefit of being interesting and well-written.

As will your haiku.

Winner announced sometime Tuesday, 3/22/2011. Best of luck. And if you're new to Haiku Monday or this blog, feel free to participate. Everyone is welcome.

So, haiku away. If you're not already there, the topic is sleep.

PS: For an example of a previous contest, please visit http://trollstroll.blogspot.com/2011/02/haiku-monday-water.html

Fortune Cookies: 0 for 2

2011-03-12T21:08:00.001-05:00

"A dark-haired woman will soon be giving you a gift."

"You have a charming way with words and should write a book."

I suspect one's not gonna happen, and there's no way the other's ever gonna happen.

UPDATE: Within a week of receiving these fortune cookies, a dark-haired woman gave me a gift because of my "charming way with words." And that is no joke.

Today's Quote

2011-03-03T20:41:00.000-05:00

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."

Bertrand Russell

As I Was Saying

2011-01-27T11:44:00.000-05:00

Well, after a most different and difficult start to the year blog-wise, it's back to the trenches.

Received a call a few days back from a prospective author, referred my way from one of my publishers. This publisher primarily prints books for motivational speakers, often of a religious bent -- mostly, but not always, tending toward Christian fundamentalist/evangelical.

Author and I are going through the usual drills: size of manuscript, format, turnaround time, rates. Author mentioned earlier in the conversation that she has her PhD and she thinks the manuscript is already in pretty good shape (double red flag). Now she asks what other services I provide, because she works with some Christian associations that might have a need for what I do.

I explain -- copyediting, proofreading, indexing -- and then say that I work for a number of denominational/scholarly presses: "Westminster, the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation; Orbis, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers; Crossroad, mostly Catholic topics; Paulist, the Jesuits. I've also worked for the Episcopal publishing house. . . ."

"OK. But have you worked for any Christian associations?"

"Associations? Well, these are all publishing houses."

"Yes, but I'm referring to Christian organizations."

"Umm, do you not consider Catholics Christians? Presbyterians? Episcopalians?"

"Well, I'm just in the looking-around stage, so I'll be looking at other editors, too. I've got your information. Thanks."

Bigots. Anyone who thinks Mitt Romney has a chance in hell of being president doesn't know enough people like this author, and doesn't realize how many of them there are, and that they vote like crazy. And you can take that any way you want.

Jessica Thompson: A Remembrance

2011-01-23T08:20:00.011-05:00

With a heavy heart, I revisit these words from a blog posting just a few days ago.

With Demand I truly feel like I’m part of a company and a community, and I’m not talking about getting the warm fuzzies over corporate America and a shameless march toward the almighty profit. I’m much more talking about the relationships I have with some of my fellow copy chiefs and a small handful of the editors in my charge.

After the minor fecal storm that my year in review created, I’d planned on treating Demand once again with the anonymity typically afforded to my other clients. I was likely going to do that anyway.

In retrospect, however, the above paragraph inadvertently made the posting into something meaningful.

One of my fellow copy chiefs died yesterday.

Jessica Thompson, whom I knew only through the series of tubes, died in an accident at her home in Cambodia. She’d gone there last fall for a bit of adventure: a six-month copyediting gig at the Cambodia Daily.

I only knew Jessica through a bunch of email exchanges--mostly of the snarky, informal kind that circulate among a group of friends--and then some side emails that spun off from that. Such is workplace friendship in the virtual world.

Jess came across as a lively, curious, intelligent, very funny woman. I’m stunned to think I’ll never have the pleasure of meeting her in real life. I believe in my last side email to her, I’d told her that if in her worldwide travels she ever found herself driving up I-81 through Appalachia, we were only two miles off the interstate and there’d always be a place for her here.

She spent some time writing for the Times of India, from the perspective of a young, female American in New Delhi. When we first started working together, I checked out some of her posts. Here’s an excellent example that generated a lot of comments. More are available by searching “Jessica Thompson” “Times of India”:

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/chandnichowktochicago/entry/eve-teasers-back-the-off

Her bio on that page reads, “Jessica Thompson is an American journalist living and working in New Delhi as an editor for Times Internet. She is not from Chicago, but says she is sometimes because more people know where it is. She is actually from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jessica lived in New Delhi for four years in the 1980s as the child of a Foreign Service Officer, and returned last October to pursue her dream of escaping the American media collapse.”

The news is still coming in on what happened to Jessica. I think I can speak for all the copy chiefs by saying we miss her already.

Shout Out to DSSers

2011-01-19T23:38:00.033-05:00

Thanks so much to all of you who have read and commented about this blog on your website. It's really quite fascinating to see what people will say behind the veil of anonymity that they likely wouldn't have the guts to put their real names to in an email or a response to this blog.

Real names. I've put myself out there. Would any of you care to do the same? No, because you think you'd be jeopardizing the position you have with the company you all seem to loathe, but which still absolutely fascinates you for some reason. If it's just a gig, why do some of you people have hundreds of posts on DSS? And some of you don't even work there anymore? Amazing.

I'm getting great amusement about the thrashing over the Michael Steele quote at the top of the blog post, which was pretty obviously intended to point up the cultural illiteracy of the gentleman who headed up the Republican Party over the last few years. From what I've seen at DSS, subtlety isn't a strong suit over there. I can draw a few conclusions from the inability of a number of you to grasp the intent of the post. None are complimentary.

Interesting that "Patrick," another courageous soul, hasn't taken down the forum topic and the thread he started, even though he claims his SOP is not to allow mentions of real names on his site. Not sure what his fascination or motivation is here. I guess he's driving traffic while he can, not that I blame him.

Some of you should really learn to read. I've searched this page for "Moi" as a first-person reference. Moi is a friend of mine, whose blog I link to and who sends in comments on some of my posts. "Refers to himself as 'Moi'?" Where?

I don't claim to be a writer. Never have, nor would I want to be one. It's very hard work to do well, and it's not for everybody. Not all writers are editors, and not all editors are writers. The best of both admit they need the other -- another point that many DSSers seem to miss. Editors, when they are writing, obviously need another editor. If you want to see some nice writing, I'd invite any of you to check out Moi's blog and hunt around a while.

Yes, Adam V. Lally, I can see you're from Atlanta, or at least near there. It shows up in the Feedjit gadget. As do the hometowns of most of the other people who've checked in here. St. Charles, Mo., Englewood, Ohio, Syracuse, N.Y., Austin, Topeka, Phoenix, Tucson (hope you're not too hung up on grammar), Huntington, Rego Park, N.Y., Lake Forest, Calif., Mankato, Minn. . . . It's a regular travelogue.

Anyway, hope you're having fun. The longer everything stays up and active, the less I'm convinced that Patrick's all that concerned with anonymity after all.

Year in Review 2010

2011-01-18T00:52:00.013-05:00

As former Republican Party chair Michael Steele said, quoting his favorite book War and Peace, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Well, actually it was neither. Just love the above anecdote.

The problem with writing a year in review is actually remembering the year. As a freelancer, sometimes the days float together. Weekends aren’t different from weekdays. The deadlines are short, and the seasons aren’t real defined. Another FedEx shipment comes in, another UPS drop-off; the lines on my work calendar change, but not much else. So one year slips into the next.

My sons turned 21 and 18 this year, and I turned 50. I guess those are some milestones.

For my fiftieth birthday, I went to a place I’d read about a number of times in the course of my employment: The Abbey at Gethsemani, www.monks.org. This is the real deal, I imagine. Other Trappist monasteries around the country seem to have given themselves over to being convention centers. The Thomas Merton Institute, which I think is near Gethsemani, does some of that stuff, but the Abbey itself is silent, peaceful, beautiful, mesmerizing. I’ll never think of birds chirping in the same way again. Five days there, and I’d do it again tomorrow. In certain frames of mind, I’d sign up for the long haul. I’d probably have to get over that whole Catholic/Jewish/agnostic thing, but frankly I suspect that the longtimers there have some pretty good questions of their own. I spoke with the Retreat Master for a while, Father Carlos -- a very worldly monk who had been a parish priest in the Philippines, and the order still ships him around the world for various duties, so it’s not like he’s lived the cloistered life. We were discussing what passes for where I am spiritually and psychically, and he said, “Organized religion will ruin you.” Straight from the horse’s mouth.

But if it weren’t for organized religion, I’d have a lot less work. As always, the players come and go, and even within that, the amount of work I might get from any given publisher varies greatly from year to year. For that reason, as a freelancer I don’t turn down work and will usually find a way to put in a plug for myself if a new contact comes my way through a third party. More on interesting referrals to come.

I found out toward the end of last year that the managing editor at one of my main clients is retiring later this month. This news makes freelancers very nervous. The managing editor (or sometimes the production editor) is the person in a publishing house who farms out work to freelancers. I’ve had one or two managing editors over time whom I’ve wanted to take out life insurance policies on, in case anything ever happened to them. Catherine comes close to being one of them. She’s a very tough customer, but we’ve managed to craft out a pretty friendly relationship over the years. I remember one time when I gave her a hard time for her handwriting. She informed me she had polio as a child. I’ve felt stupider, but not often.

So, Catherine is leaving at the end of this month, and I’m hopeful that she is training her replacement well. I told Catherine last month that she should only say four words to the new hire: “Bob Land [name of another freelancer here].” Catherine said she’ll make sure the new person understands who the good vendors are. The good thing is that one of the two people whom the search narrowed down to had no previous publishing experience. That’s a plus. The fear is that a new managing editor comes in with her/his own list of favorites. Big fear.

The year 2010 started out with not much on the books, and I panicked. I went back through my lists of invoices for the past few years and started identifying clients who hadn’t contacted me recently. As one of Moi’s posters once said, “I wish it was that easy.” Sometimes it is. I ended up rehabilitating three or four companies I hadn’t heard from in a couple of years. One of them ended up leading to another publisher that now uses me to edit one of its journals (4x/year) and has used me for one proofing job (I’ll contact them for more). The original company itself has probably contacted me for four editing jobs since reestablishing relations. Another publisher, for whom I used to proof a good bit, is now back into the regular groove of sending me work. I don’t know why some publishers all of a sudden forget a freelancer is there. If it was a problem with my work, why upon contacting them would they say, “Oh, you’re available? We’ll have something for you this week.” It happens too frequently to say it can’t happen.

Interesting contact/client: Usually I don’t mention people by name, but I might as well here, just ’cause it’s kind of fun. I indexed a book this year for one of the Rolling Stones. It wasn’t Keef’s book, but still cool. Chuck Leavell was the keyboardist for the Allman Brothers after Duane Allman passed, Sea Level (his own band), Clapton’s Unplugged band, and scores of others, and he also has been the Stones’ keyboardist and de facto musical director since the early 1980s. By “musical director,” I mean he makes up the playlists and all that when they’re on tour. He’s also an environmentalist and tree farmer and plantation owner in central Georgia. I had indexed his autobiography a few years ago, Between Rock and a Home Place.

He’s written a new book, Growing a Better America, and when it came time for the index, he contacted Mercer U. Press and asked for the name of the indexer on the last book. Thus it happened that I started exchanging phone calls and emails with one of the Rolling Stones. Great guy, extremely friendly. My wife, Tere, of similar Alabama-Georgia roots as Chuck, was excited. When he called one time, Tere said, “Is his name actually on your caller ID?” Yep, there it is.

As I was sending him my invoice, I indicated that I’d be happy to barter some future editorial services on his next book in exchange for some Stones tickets next time they tour. We’ll see. But that’s my interesting author story for the year.

Fun books. In my particular niche of the publishing world, not too many come through. My idea of fun is loose leading. But the good thing about working for university presses is there’s no telling what will come across the desk sometimes. A fun book this year was Doonesbury and the Art of G. B. Trudeau, from Yale UP. If you’re a Doonesbury fan or a fan of illustration and graphic design in general, this book is a winner -- or even if you’re looking for a gift idea. Lot of nifty stuff in there about the mechanics of putting the strip together, as well as illustrations of a great deal of collateral that Trudeau has developed over the years, such as for local festivals, advertisements, and so on. And while Trudeau himself came out with a book last year that was strictly a Doonesbury retrospective, and that’s not what this one tries to do, the book still gives an arc of the strip over time. Since I stopped reading Doonesbury about a million years ago, seeing where he’s gone with it was interesting. And it’s always fun being reminded of “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”

One of these years, I’ll go back through my invoices to determine how much of my work comes from proofing, editing, and indexing. I’m always complaining about indexing on the blog, because good news rarely makes the front page. So many of the books I index are rather a chore, because I don’t have a good grasp of the content. I just indexed a book (2011 news) for the sister of a woman I worked with 20-something years ago -- freelancers, take note: don’t change email addresses and such too frequently that people can’t find you (and I suppose a blog or website helps as well) -- and University of North Carolina is the press. I’d love to have them as a client, but I’ll wait awhile to bug them. I probably already did, years ago. Anyway, UNC has a lengthy document of indexing instructions, some of which is quite helpful. Even though they instruct indexers to begin all entries with capital letters (grrr), they provide one very good piece of advice for the indexer that I would do well to apply to all future work: don’t put so much detail in the index entry that the reader finds nothing else when going to the page. Excellent advice, yet I fear that it’s exactly that kind of detail that at least one of my clients and certainly authors groove on. We’ll see if I can incorporate the concept without angering folks.

One of my freelance cohorts tried to get me to do an index for an ebook, a step I’m presently avoiding.

Other technological developments: One of my publishers wanted me to mark up a PDF for proofreading instead of returning hard copy with corrections on it. After offering my perspective on that task, the publisher backed off. We’ll see where that goes.

Copyediting is still copyediting. I’m doing a little more coding and applying of style sheets than before, which is fine. Doesn’t take much time (applying style sheets is almost fun), and it’s certainly a benefit for the publishers.

To wrap up the year, on December 31, one of my very good clients (essentially a vanity press) said that 2011 was the year she was selling the business. After a short email exchange, she basically offered the business to me. At another point in my life, I might consider being a publisher, but not now . . . I don’t think. After so many years of avoiding working with published authors, the idea of spending my days working with unpublished ones while still trying to pay the bills (two kids in college next year) seems not too enticing. But one never knows.

Oh, almost forgot about my much-reviled client.

If you’ve spent any time in the last year or so around freelance writing websites, or spent any time in the last few months reading the business/tech pages of the national news organs, you’ve probably heard about Demand (Media) Studios. I’m not going to go into all the ins and outs of the company and its history or its business model here. All that information is readily available with some searches, and if you’re not already familiar with the company, this little report won’t mean much to you.

Long story short: “It’s the death of journalism.” It’s not journalism. “They’re paying writers pennies when they used to make dollars.” They’re paying my son a pretty good wage for a 21-year-old, and he can work anytime day or night anywhere in the world, and he’s not saying “fries with that?” “They just put out the most bottom-feeding, feeble crap that’s available on the Internet.” They put out some very simplistic content and a whole lot of intelligent content that’s just not as much fun for columnists to write about. “They’re a sweatshop.” Depends on the work you’re doing and your approach to it. People who are making a few dollars an hour are doing so because of their approach to the task. “They’re driving down wages for all writers.” I hope I’d never hear that comment from any free marketeers. They are paying a rather decent hourly wage for the work they require, presuming one can work efficiently.

The story of my hiring is available elsewhere on this blog. I went out to a meeting with the company in September 2009 and found out that people up to the EVP level had read my blog postings. I essentially shamed them into hiring me, because they hadn’t been hiring editors with book experience beforehand.

What do I do for the company? Still a little copyediting, but mostly I supervise the work of other copyeditors, presently about 85 of them. That means I review their work every month or two and write rather detailed critiques of a number of articles they’ve edited, giving them guidance on how better to work with the writers to meet the company’s guidelines. I also help man the Help Desk, where writers query staffers and copy chiefs (that’s me and about ten or so other folks) to get clarification on requests that copyeditors are making of them.

What I can say is this: I’ve run into a hell of a lot of good editors working for this company. Some aren’t so good, but that’s going to happen when you have so many copyeditors doing the work. And the ones who really aren’t good are shown the door, sometimes in rather quick fashion. But I now work with a lot of very fine people who bring a lot of good experience to the table. I’ve met a number of these folks in person, and I’d have to say that some are pretty good friends of mine at this point. And I can also say that working for Demand has, yes, improved my work as a copyeditor for other clients.

Does the company make a lot of people angry? Absolutely. Is their output generally miscategorized by Internet bloggers? Absolutely. Am I going to continue working for the company? For the foreseeable future, for my own reasons. If I won the lottery tomorrow, would I give it up? Yep, that and indexing. But there are some aspects of the job I’d miss. Working for myself for the last 17 years (geez), I must admit that I get lonely sometimes, even though I have clients I speak with on a regular though intermittent basis. With Demand I truly feel like I’m part of a company and a community, and I’m not talking about getting the warm fuzzies over corporate America and a shameless march toward the almighty profit. I’m much more talking about the relationships I have with some of my fellow copy chiefs and a small handful of the editors in my charge. At this point, they—the people and the relationships—mean a lot to me. And while my previous stint in management, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, didn’t quite turn out as planned, I’m getting another shot here . . . not that I relish being in management by any means. But one of the knocks against me at the Fed was that I was too close to my staff. Well, hell, there’s far worse things. And I like to think that for a lot of editors and writers, I provide a certain approach to my duties that positively influences the people I’m working with.

Back to work.

Quote of the Day

2011-01-06T21:42:00.000-05:00

From today's proofreading project:

Sober bouncers serve a "vital" function of preventing the intoxicated beautiful people from succumbing to the advances of the riffraff.

Presumably, the sober bouncers need not concern themselves with the intoxicated beautiful people succumbing to the advances of other pulchritudinous drunks.

Another Indexing Dilemma

2011-01-03T19:24:00.000-05:00

First, Happy New Year to the loyal readership and drive-by viewers.

The rapper 50 Cent appears in the book I'm indexing. Given that numbers are to be alphabetized as if the word was spelled out, should "50 Cent" appear alphabetized as "Fifty Cent" or "Fiddy Cent"?

As projected back in November, indexes did take up much of December. I think 8 or 9 indexes rolled off the LoD desk, amid other work. Tends to drive me crazy after a while.

I'm planning on another Year-in-Review post sometime soon, a la 2009. No crazy authors this year that I can recall, but some other interesting stuff happened and may portend for 2011. And a lot of stuff went on under the radar. A peek at the Internet's most reviled content producer might be in order.

Happy Holidays

2010-12-24T01:50:00.000-05:00

I've never seen this movie, but I've had the soundtrack album for 30 or so years and love it. I'd totally forgotten about it until I saw a post on another website that referenced Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's awfully pretentious albeit incredibly successful "Lucky Man." In the holiday spirit, I offer you:

If you have a friend on whom you think you can rely,
you are a lucky man.
If you've found the reason to live on and not to die,
you are a lucky man.
Preachers and poets and scholars don't know it,
Temples and statues and steeples won't show it,
If you've got the secret just try not to blow it,
stay a lucky man.
If you've found the meaning of the truth in this old world,
you are a lucky man.
If knowledge hangs around your neck like pearls instead of chains,
you are a lucky man.
Takers and fakers and talkers won't tell you.
Teachers and preachers will just buy and sell you.
When no one can tempt you with heaven or hell,
you'll be a lucky man.

--Alan Price

The Spirit of Christmas

2010-12-22T12:23:00.000-05:00

Folks, I just proofread it. I don't make it up. In the holiday spirit, I offer you:

Take a dump for Jesus.

Behold my dear Brethren! the blessed Bridegroom cometh, clothed with Majesty, as with a Robe, with Light, as with a Garment; with Zeal, as with a Cloak. See he is girt with a golden Girdle, his Head and Hairs are white as Snow, and his Eyes are as a Flame of Fire, his Feet like unto fine Brass, as if they burned in a Furnace, and his Voice as the Sound of many Waters [cf. Rev. 1:13b–15]! See the unrivall’d Beauty of his Person, and the inexpressible Riches of his Love! Our adorable Jesus, Is white and ruddy, the chiefest among Ten thousand! He is white in Regard of his unsullied Innocence, and red in Regard of his severe sufferings for us! See he comes from Bozra and Edom, with his Garments died red! his Vesture is discoloured, or rather adorned with his Heart’s-Blood; O amazing Sight! See those Wounds, Believer, he patiently and willingly bore for thee! Wounds which are Scars of Honour, Signatures of Victory, and Arguments of Love and Endearment! Surely his Garments smell of Myrrh, Aloes, and Cassia, out of the Ivory Palaces: Now let the everlasting Doors of your Souls open to embrace your Lord; now let your Bowels move for him: now let your Hands drop with Myrrh, with sweet-smelling Myrrh, upon the Handles of the Lock [cf. Song 5:4–5]! While the King sits at his Table, let your Spikenard send forth the Smell thereof; seeing the Marriage of the Lamb is come, O let the Spouse make herself ready to embrace him. Amen. Even so come Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen.

Gilbert Tennent, Brotherly Love recommended, by the Argument of the Love of Christ: A Sermon, Preached at Philadelphia, January 1747–8. Before the Sacramental Solemnity. With some Enlargement (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin and David Hall, 1748), 35-36 (emphasis added).

Judgment Call

2010-12-18T23:01:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a book that mentions counterculture icon Wavy Gravy. Do I index the name as "Gravy, Wavy?" Decisions, decisions . . .

RIP, Don Van Vliet: "Everybody's Colored, or You Wouldn't Be Able to See Them"

2010-12-17T18:44:00.001-05:00

http://music-mix.ew.com/2010/12/17/captain-beefheart-dies/

Getting What You Pay For

2010-12-16T17:23:00.000-05:00

I do some work for an Internet publisher that has a help desk for its writers and editors -- and wannabes. This missive came in today.

Message: This my second massage to you.I have read your contribuors articles which is very informational and intrested contribute my knowledge through but i am from india.Indians also have good knowledge in all areas & one of the biggest English speaking country in the world other wise our mother tounge is HINDI.If possible give a chance to indians including me to share our knowledge through you around globe . Thanx and regards.

A friend passed along an interesting article a few weeks back relating to the fear of the coming hundred years being the Chinese century. One of the article's points was that the next ten years might be the Chinese decade, but that the century will belong to India because it is an English-speaking country, and 5 billion people don't want to learn Mandarin. Not that one person's email in search of employment to a help desk halfway around the world should serve as a proxy, but this person obviously feels his English is good enough to write for money. That's telling.

To Boldly Go

2010-12-05T18:10:00.000-05:00

Like the world's not scary enough. Ripped from the recent workload:

Many Pentecostal believers have not considered that they might be commissioned and trained as lay ministers to be sent to "new" frontiers. After all, public schools, government offices, and corporate entities are often condemned as "worldly," "secular," and evil instead of being viewed as places of genuine Christian (missionary!) service.

Not Your Father's Christianity . . . and a Glimpse into the Future, Maybe

2010-12-01T16:38:00.001-05:00

"Three insights from science today that shed light on the emergence of Christ are morphogenetic fields, quantum entanglement, and holons."

Page 6. And I had a headache before I started.

Books generally print according to cycles, mostly geared toward big conventions. Publishers speak of their spring and fall seasons. Spring means books are coming out in March, printed in January-February . . . which means indexing in December. My schedule presently shows indexes for seven books (some are mercifully short) for December. Yet another reason that Christmas is most certainly not the most wonderful time of the year.

I've said it before: If you're a publisher who happens to be reading this and you must have some copyediting or proofreading work done this month, the lines are now open. There'll be someone here around the clock waiting to answer your email.

==

Received an email today from one of my favorite presses. The press has a proofing job for me, with a twist. Proofing marks are to be made electronically on a PDF of the book. They wanted to know my take on the matter. My response below:

John:

I can do it, but a few things:

1. It's something I can do because I have the full version of Adobe Acrobat. Proofreaders who just have Reader would need to spend the money to buy Acrobat to have this tool.

2. Regardless of the final product (a marked-up PDF), personally I would still print out the pages, mark them up, and then transfer changes to the electronic version. I realize that's my problem and not yours, but -- and this is just for me -- the quality of my proofreading would go through the floor if I did it all on screen. I can proof or edit a very short document on screen and suffer no loss of quality, but a lengthy, academic tome . . . I don't think I'd keep many clients doing it on screen only. Again, that's my problem.

3. Even if I were confident of proofing on-screen, marking up a PDF is definitely far more time consuming than marking up hard copy. An hourly paid invoice would necessarily reflect that.

4. Something for your consideration: What's the ultimate intent here? Is it to stop shuffling paper around? Stop hard-copy merging of people's comments? Perhaps one PDF can be passed onto another person? I proofread a book for an Australian professor who was doing a postdoc in Sweden, and he found me on the Internet. I proofed his book, then found it would cost about $150 to send the pages to Europe via UPS, and even then, it would take about 8 days to arrive -- both of which were unacceptable. What I did instead was take my marked-up proofs to Office Depot, where they scanned them in and saved the file as a PDF. I then sent the author the PDF of the marked-up pages. Far as I know, everything worked out fine. Personally, I'd far, far rather do that than electronically mark up a PDF. But you guys are signing the paychecks.

I'm willing to try just about anything, especially in the interests of keeping a very good client happy and dragging myself a little more into the 21st century. I'll take the job, and I'm sure you've considered on your end the reasons for doing this. If I can otherwise help with this conversation at all, let me know.

===========

What do you think, folks? Proofreading a 200-plus page book on the screen and marking up the PDF?

And for what it's worth, it doesn't sound like the kind of title that's destined to keep one's eyelids from drooping anyway. Too, anytime I'm tied to the computer, it's all I can do to veer off to check emails, look at Moi's blog, read the news, check out youtube, search for people online, update the blog, and a million other things that keep the Land on Demand meter from running. Which isn't good.

Confusing index entry for today

2010-11-29T09:05:00.000-05:00

From a book dealing with America as a Christian nation:

Martin, Luther

Blowback from the Editorial Desk

2010-11-08T17:32:00.002-05:00

My corporate credo since day 1 has been "I will work for anyone who does not advocate violence against me or my family directly." Yes, I am your basic freelance whore, and I've had some clients call me such. As a freelancer, I'll wear that as a badge of honor.

I almost expanded the credo today. Message sent this morning to a publisher, regarding a 5,000-word hagiography of Ronald Reagan:

====

I'm working on the Reagan project, but it's all I can do to tell you that I'm about a step away from saying I can't work on it.

From the author's claim that Reagan was born in 1911 in "the middle of the Great Depression," which didn't occur until 20 years later, and his characterization of Jimmy Carter as a simple peanut farmer from the plains of Georgia -- when he was from Plains, Georgia, and was a former Georgia governor, not to mention instrumental in the navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program -- I can't help but really question the veracity of this book overall. The bare facts of history are easy enough to research, but if the intent of the author is to skew history to the point of misconstruing facts and even getting such basics wrong as when the Depression took place, I'm not sure it's worth $80 or so of my time to contribute to such a volume, nor do I understand why XXX would want to be associated with such a treatment of history.

I will hold my nose and keep plugging away, but I'm really surprised at what I'm reading, and what XXX was planning on publishing. I'll state right out that I'm no fan of Reagan, but even his biggest fans shouldn't have to rely on lies and deception to get their point across.

=======

Best and only comment yet comes from my wife: "It's most likely a textbook for Texas school children." Bravissima.

No word yet from the publisher's managing editor.

Guidelines Minutiae

2010-10-26T20:36:00.004-04:00

Indexing

I worked on an index recently that is destined for a university press consortium that is new to LandonDemand. The consortium represents five universities in a part of the country known for its excellent higher education. I will leave it at that.

The press offered an interesting detail about how it wants its final indexes to appear.

> Use subentries only for entries that have more than eight or ten page numbers. As far as possible, make sure that each subentry has multiple page numbers rather than a single page number.

That guideline would take some getting used to, although I'd do well to heed its advice. The level of detail in my indexes would be diminished, and I'd likely spend less time in composing them. Having done something a certain way for years, the shift would require an adjustment in my work practices. I can think of a few of my clients who probably wouldn't be wild about the change in approach, but maybe I've been overdelivering for too long. Speaking a few weeks ago with the freelancer who kind of inspired me into this business and finding out that she's charging about 33 percent more for her indexes than I am makes me think I could stand to pull out fewer hairs over this tedious task.

Copyediting

From the style sheet of one of the clients I rehabilitated earlier this year:

> Do hyphenate all participle-terminated prenominal compound adjectives (e.g., “participle-terminated” in this sentence).
> Do hyphenate predicative compound adjectives that are participle-terminated (e.g., “participle-terminated” in this sentence).
> Do not treat noun-adjective compound adjectives in general in the same way as participle-terminated ones.
> Do not hyphenate compound adjectives consisting of noun modifying noun (e.g., “water quality analysis”).
> Use an en dash in compound adjectives consisting of two joined nouns or parallel adjectives (e.g., “Thai–Cambodian border”).
> Do not hyphenate adverbially modified compound adjectives (such as “adverbially modified” in this sentence) even if the adverb does not end in -ly.

I admit freely that except for the line about the en dashes, I had to read the above about four times before I understood what the hell was going on. Not to pull the curtain back on the Wizard or anything, but I am not Mr. Grammar, which might be a surprising admission for copyeditor. (And to those folks who think the SAT is a predictor of future career success, if that's the case, I'd be an engineer today instead of an editor.) I know proper grammar, but I can't explain it. I can't tell you what all the different tense variations are or the names for anything other than the essential parts of speech, but I guess if my client list is any indication, I do a fair job out of making sense out of the whole deal.

Without any doubt, the person in my work career who could throw around all the names of tenses and parts of speech with the greatest facility was one of the worst editors--and certainly the worst manager--I have ever encountered.

====

On an unrelated note, some ignant author stories are lurking, but I need a little more distance between job completion and talking out of school before I write anything about them.

Random Notes

2010-10-11T19:46:00.003-04:00

Mostly because I'm tired of the guy pictured below.

1. An old friend/author/client popped into my head recently -- a guy I worked with in Atlanta whom I came to know through some freelance work on the political newsletters and then some ad agency work. He eventually wrote a novel and then moved to New York as a late career change . . . actually to teach in the inner-city schools: a rather noble and admirable pursuit. I'd edited a draft of a novel of his some years back. I thought yesterday, I need to get in touch with him and see how he's doing -- unrelated to his book. I'm working at the computer today, and an email from him comes in, saying the new draft of his novel is almost ready, and could I work on it? I wrote him immediately, Strange thing. I thought of you out of nowhere yesterday. He wrote back, Haha. that's great. I just started thinking about contacting you yesterday! Universe works in funny ways.

2. Yes, funny ways. I dreamed last night that Moi and I were shopping in New York City. Not sure if this is dream or nightmare or somewhere in between. I can imagine spending time with Moi in NYC in any number of pleasurable pursuits from which I could benefit from her vast knowledge: museums, food festivals, dingy nightclubs with echoes of long-lost genres. Shopping with Moi in NYC? Nyet.

3. I am in the middle of about five consecutive indexes, which means I am psychically about to come off the rails. Lord, deliver me.

Says It All

2010-09-20T16:16:00.003-04:00

Occasionally, This Job IS Fun

2010-09-18T13:58:00.002-04:00

Just received an email from one of my clients, asking me to edit the foreword to a coming volume. Author is a very well-known economist, named a few times to Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.

Six hundred basically well-written words; I like to think I made them even better. Hope I did anyway. We'll see what the client thinks, or what eventually appears in print.

Given that so much of what I work on (and that so many of the authors whose books I work on) will languish in academic obscurity -- for better or worse -- I'm still a child enough to get a charge out of editing the words of semifamous individuals. If that makes me an immature idiot, I can live with that. I've probably been called worse, and for better reasons.

A Tense Few Hours

2010-09-16T03:42:00.006-04:00

Taking a page from the Tylenol playbook, in which I air the dirty laundry. Sometimes this isn't all fun and games:

I spent the last few days working on a rush-rush job from an author whose PhD dissertation I edited a few years back. Nice person, interesting topic. Author contacted me a week or so ago to edit a book covering generally the same ground as the dissertation.

Without giving too much away, the author has some difficulties with the processing of the written word, and that's not a knock or a snide comment. The author is brilliant, top-notch education, and severely dyslexic. Obviously, writing, editing, revisions, etc., take great effort, and even then a lot gets by.

So mostly what I'm hired to do is to make sure that the manuscript is free of the kinds of errors a person with dyslexia might miss or institute in the composition of the manuscript. Spelling, word order . . . The author is not concerned with the writing itself. Quite the contrary, as I came to find out the hard way.

Still, I'm a copyeditor, and since this book is destined for the kinds of publishers I typically work for, I have a passing idea of the ways such books should read and, for example, be punctuated.

I was about three quarters of the way through the editing, trading some emails with the author, and in one short email the author makes the statement:

Make sure to use your eyes, not just spell check, as i have words in the wrong place, etc.

Nonplussed, that prompted a hasty response from me:

If I was just using spell check, it would have been done three days ago.

Tonight, I've completed the book, spending half an hour on the phone with the author to go over queries because the author can't really deal well with queries and keying in changes in response to them, especially when a clean version of the book is supposed to be going off to an acquiring editor tomorrow. We're talking, and I'm going through the questions, and the author seems quite pleased with some of the inconsistencies I've found. I also mention in passing that I cleaned up some of the grammar, removing unnecessary commas, and generally making for a smoother-flowing read.

We get off the phone, and I guess the author got to thinking. I received the following email (which I've cleaned up, because I don't want to give the impression that I fault the author for misspellings):

hey Bob, how long would it take to reinstitute my short sentences?

I actually fancy myself a stylist when it comes to this, and if they're not incorrect, want them the way I very carefully polished them to sound (however crazy I may be).

I could do this, but would take me tons of time probably.

If the answer is yes, then I'd only want you to do it if you could still get it to me by the am. Otherwise I'll just send it in, and work it out later. but my dyslexia's not so good on the back and forth thing.

In other words, dear friends, "Go back over the last three days of work you've done and strip out any place where you might have brought any higher-level editorial thinking or experience to pesky issues such as sentence structure, grammar, word order . . . because, well, I am quite enamored of my own writing style, and you're not going to change it."

My response follows, which probably could have been worded better, but, hey:

Not sure what you mean. I didn't really change much of your writing, and certainly didn't make short sentences longer. If I did, it was for clarity rather than trying to cramp your style.

Mostly what I did was take some commas out to improve syntax and ease of reading. I don't think (I might be wrong) it changed the style of your prose. As far as whether the original text was correct or incorrect, that's sometimes not quite black-and-white. Commas can be used to allow readers a pause where the grammar might not necessitate it -- and maybe that's what you're thinking about -- but overused the drawbacks for the readers might outweigh the author's desire to see a certain style in print. Even though the book is written as a narrative, we're not dealing with a book where readers would expect to encounter many literary devices. Readers want a smooth read, without speed bumps.

In a few places (probably half a dozen), I changed passive voice to active voice, because I thought the text would be clearer as a result.

Overall, I think you have a very engaging style of writing. For a book of nonfiction on a potentially dry topic (and I think I mentioned this with your dissertation), I find myself caring very much for the people you write about, and that's no easy trick to pull off -- especially with an incredibly jaded reader such as myself, who is often as not just focused on payday.

I've attached the tracked and clean versions of the document. I hope you'll agree that the work done was not counterproductive to your intent in sending it to me. If the ultimate desire is to place it in front of readers (and a blind reviewer or two who first have to pass judgment on it), I'd like to think that I've added value here, and increased the possibility of a positive review, rather than negated it.

Pleasure talking with you on the phone tonight. And remember those author/date citations in the last note.

Thanks.
Bob

Responses, sent over a few emails:

Okay, I'll read. You said on the phone you made some shorter sentences into longer ones. Maybe I misheard. I like my sentence style, and have worked super hard on it, and have strong opinions on it (for myself only). It's a literary thing, for me, as long as it's clean grammatically. Anyway, that's why I asked you to focus on bugs, not style- should have clarified ahead of time. And this will be on a trade [publisher's name here], not pure academic. Anyway, I must send this off right now, and will redo the other things when I can breathe. Sorry if I sound irritated, I'm not. I'm grateful, but wish I was somehow more clear about what the precise thing I needed was. Would have saved a bit of time!
———
My final point is here "ease of reading" is a subjective thing. Lots of great writers, in my book, write in ways that catch you in a particular way, sometimes not so easy. My sentences if you read them out loud have a very particular rhythm to them, and it's very intentional. Intentionally rhythmic, and percussive. Thus sometimes short sentences. Not that you have to like it :)

peace!
———
yea, this will take dozens of hours, really, for me to put back the way I want it, in terms of non error changes you've made. Bob, I asked you for an edit to catch errors: I said type-o's bad spelling, misplaced word, wrong grammar. mistakes. i said it like three times over. you've done all that very well, but you've also done a stylistic edit, which i know you meant well to do, and which we could argue over, but which i did not want, did not ask for, and really cannot have. Its up to me to decide my style, and I like it the way it is.

I need to give this to my editor, who likes my style, tomorrow, and am not sure what I should do. I cannot give it to him with so many stylistic changes, which I worked very very hard to craft. Actually I don't see how i can even do this, as its not clear to me where your edits are stylistic vs,. grammatical.

tell me what to do.

———

From me:

Give me an example of what you consider a stylistic change, and I'll go back through the document and undo 'em all. I didn't make that many changes, and I can probably have it back to you in two hours.

———

Thanks, Bob, both for the willingness to tweak, and for putting up with me. It's been a long day around here.

———

We will see where all this ends up. I can argue my case here, but unpacking this phrase gets down to the root of the issue: "it's not clear to me where your edits are stylistic vs,. grammatical."

Dear readers, in your mind, is this not an admission that part of the writer's style indeed flies in the face of standard grammar? And as copyeditor, am I not tasked with fixing it? And if the publishing house looking at your book happens to be the same university press that puts out the premier style guide in the book publishing industry, might not attention to grammatical conventions be a good idea?

Another thought: even in a late-night follow-up phone conversation, the author talked about the effect of the writing style when the book is read aloud. Practical? A good way to approach the written word when it's not poetry/screenplay/script?

This might be the rare case in which proofreading a manuscript was actually in order.

After all this, the author and I will likely still be on friendly terms. I hope so. Hopefully the author doesn't read blogs.

(R) and TM

2010-09-14T18:48:00.004-04:00

Been so long since I've actually posted about a real-live editorial issue from here in the bunker, I hardly know what to do.

I was called in to proofread a corporate history recently. I've done plenty of them, but this was for a new client, so that's nice. After sending the pages back, the project manager sent me this note:

XYZ Inc. is asking why we didn't use copyright [sic] or TM signs in our narrative - it's mostly on items in chapters 7 & 8. Is there some reason we didn't?

Answer:

First, in classic freelance CYA mode, that's not something I figured as a proofreader I'd be looking for or making decisions about. That would be a question for the writer and XYZ's legal and marketing teams.

But as an editor, here's what I'd say. TMs and (R)s are not required in running text. Typically they'd only be used in display copy -- heads and perhaps jacket copy and such. Even so, it really comes down to how much XYZ feels the need to aggressively protect its own trademarks and on what turf.

As an editor, if I received the manuscript from XYZ, I'd presume that XYZ would know which terms were trademarked and that the terms were in the manuscript as the company wanted them. I would not presume to question or change, under the assumption that the manuscript had already cleared all the internal legal hurdles. That's ultimately XYZ's responsibility because they have the answers; neither the publisher nor the editor can presume to know where those marks go. That's my two cents, anyway.

Too, given that this book is largely going to be for internal distribution, I'd think -- and presumably also for sale at the Visitor Center -- it's going out to a friendly crowd. And it may be that's a moot point, but companies tend to be less fussy when the stakes aren't as high. (R)s and TMs have a way of junking up otherwise nice-looking text.

For companies that do want to insert those pesky beasts in running text, some will do it on every instance, which looks like hell. Some will do it only on the first mention on a page or spread, which seems arbitrary. Basically it's the call of the legal beagles and how much they want to assert their authority.

So, class, did I handle it correctly?

My Favorite Epigraph

2010-09-01T12:30:00.000-04:00

Take time to familiarize yourself with this manual. The slightest deviation from the style described herein will lead directly to the collapse of our carefully constructed editorial house of cards, economic upheaval, spiritual and moral chaos, and the end of civilization as we know it.

—APWA Style Guide, 2nd ed., American Public Welfare Association, 1995

Someone's About to Make a Lot of Money, $99 at a Time

2010-08-12T10:48:00.003-04:00

from Publishers Weekly email, August 12, 2010

Bowker Starts Manuscript Submission Web Site

Bowker is the latest company to try to use technology to match publishers and authors, launching an automated manuscript submission process for the general trade. BowkerManuscriptSubmissions.com is an online service that lets authors post their work for publishers to read. Authors pay to present their book proposals to publishers via the service, and acquisitions editors can use the site's various tools to sort and read them. Cost for writers is $99 to post a sample chapter and description of their work for six months.

Bowker modeled its site on ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com, which is managed by and in cooperation with the Christian publishers association ECPA and which has been in operation for nearly 10 years. Bowker v-p of publishing services Kelly Gallagher said the site will alleviate the "time-consuming and frustrating" traditional process of matching authors with publishers. "BowkerManuscriptSubmission.com applies a proven model . . . allowing authors and publishers to find each other very efficiently."

The site lists resources for outside editing services, agents, self-publishing, and writers' conferences. Publishers can sort submitted manuscript proposals by genre, audience, author, and date of entry. There is no charge for publishers, and Bowker is asking publishers to register at the site.

Acronym of the Day

2010-08-11T10:43:00.002-04:00

I just wish the content were juicier:

New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD)

All kinds of great image content comes to mind that I dare not post here.

Notable Quotes

2010-08-05T07:56:00.001-04:00

I spoke with a first-time unpublished novelist today (working on the first book), who--upon finding out what I do--had a few questions for me.

1. "How do I copyright the book?" A common enough question: I explained that there's no real formal procedure for copyrighting a book. You just put the copyright symbol on the manuscript with your name and date, and that's done.

2. "What do I do after I get it wrote?"

==========

Received in an email yesterday from a new client this amusing little aside:

"Our scholarly material may, at times, be more dense than your usual fare."

If he only knew.

Index Entry of the Day

2010-07-27T11:47:00.002-04:00

Dear, John, 328n34

And for the newcomers to the wacky world of indexing, that means note 34 on page 328. Some style guides would have an indexer write that as 328 n. 34. LandonDemand doesn't do some style guides, and a number of my publishers prefer the set-tight, no-punctuation approach. If nothing else, there's no chance of the page-number entry breaking across lines:

328
n. 34

or

328 n.
34

Today's Fun Typo

2010-07-24T21:49:00.003-04:00

Unpublished, fortunately, but caught by some sharp-eyed editor:

How to Make a Drapery for a Large Triangular Widow

I don't think I can call up an image through the google that would do justice here. But if any of my sharp-eyed readers can do so, I'd be happy to post it.

Self-Publishing Made Simple

2010-07-07T06:58:00.008-04:00

From The Network Is Your Customer (Rogers, Yale University Press, forthcoming [2010]):

An even greater impact on the book industry may come from the arrival of custom-printing kiosks, such as the Espresso. This “ATM for books” can print a hundred pages a minute and bind the pages into a finished book on a machine that will fit in the corner of a local bookstore. The first Espresso in Europe appeared in the famed Blackwell’s bookshop in central London, where it expanded the bookstore’s famously large selection with an additional half-million titles, ready to print from digital files. A customer coming in to find Charles Darwin’s out-of-print book on earthworms was able to print a copy in minutes for about twenty dollars (instead of paying a thousand dollars on the secondhand market for rare books). The first Espresso in the United States was in the homey Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont. The store found that many aspiring authors came in to print short runs of their own unpublished books once they found out they no longer needed an established publisher to accept their manuscript. As its digital library expands, the Espresso will allow small, local bookstores like Northshire to offer just as many niche books as an online powerhouse like Amazon.

========

http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm

========

What great news for authors. And what's great news for authors should be great news for authors who want to put out quality books. Are you an author wanting to self-publish? Don't forget quality control. Have the book copyedited. Pay a professional to proofread it. Are you putting out a family history or a work of nonfiction? For your readers' benefit, the book needs an index. Whether you come to me or someone else, do your audience a favor and make the book the best it can be. Your future readership will grow as a result, and you'll be prouder of your past output when you look back at it.

A word to the wise.

She's Gotta Not Have It, or No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2010-07-01T20:09:00.006-04:00

Bob:

When you edited chapter two of [a book on leadership], you changed his to the word her in the following sentence:

A sage leader learns to delegate her time wisely and finds a sense of balance in life.

Some of our writers might feel that we are trying to impose political correctness on them if we make changes like this. So for future reference, you can leave it as is (his) or change it to something like this:

A sage leader learns to delegate his or her time wisely and finds a sense of balance in life.

Thank you.

XXX

==================

XXX: I wouldn't call it imposing political correctness as much as living in the 21st century and not offending half of the potential readership. Don't these folks want to sell books? Does the writer not think there are women leaders?

I alternated "his" and "her" through the book rather than the rather clunky "his or her," which gets cumbersome after a while.

I'll do whatever you want me to do, though.

Bob

==================================

Funny thing is, the CEO of this publishing house (not listed in my client list) is a woman.

In my mind, gender inclusiveness in a business title is not PC. It's common sense. When I read a book on leadership and every single pronoun reference is male, I'm wondering why the company has decided to reprint a Sputnik-era volume. In this day and age, if I'm a woman reading a book on leadership traits and no generic leader in the book is portrayed as a woman -- and when that's the case, I don't think it's writer laziness as much as a conscious decision -- I'm putting the book down, if not using it as a fire starter when wintertime comes.

Grrrr.

Retraction of Prior Post

2010-06-28T20:52:00.002-04:00

Hi Bob,

We were about to contact all of our freelancers about the press's welcome packet, but looks like you received the package first. You can ignore the background check part of the application; the press needs the updated W-9 form only. There won't be any major changes to the way we process checks; you'll still submit the invoices to the in-house editor, and your invoice will be processed the following week.

Not-So-Brave New World

2010-06-23T19:14:00.009-04:00

First, kudos to Moi for the title inspiration.

Some management changes have resulted in new procedures at one of the presses listed to the right. I received a package today with about eight forms to fill out, and almost in passing one of these sheets states that as part of the new order, all vendors must pass a background check (no drug dealing, child molestation, or felonies allowed, among others, I'm sure), and because I'm a freelancer, I must pony up the $55 for my own background check.

Speechless.

I can actually pass this background check without any difficulty. Not the problem. But a background check for someone who proofs and indexes their books? Is that really necessary? And that I have to pay for it? I'd love to hear from those who occasionally check in here who are freelancers. Ever heard of something like this?

At the very least, I'd like to see the background check report. Maybe someone has stolen my identity and at some point has done something interesting in my name.

Geez Louise.

Rather Prescient

2010-05-30T08:32:00.003-04:00

Media of Social Communication

Among the major changes of our times, we do not wish to forget to emphasize the growing role being assumed by the media of social communication and their influence on the transformation of mentalities, of knowledge, of organizations, and of society itself. Certainly they have many positive aspects. Thanks to them news from the entire world reaches us practically in an instant, establishing contacts which supersede distances and creating elements of unity among all men. A greater spread of education and culture is becoming possible. Nevertheless, by their very action the media of social communication are reaching the point of representing as it were a new power. One cannot but ask about those who really hold this power, the aims that they pursue and the means they use, and finally, about the effect of their activity on the exercise of individual liberty, both in the political and ideological spheres and in social, economic, and cultural life. The men who hold this power have a grave moral responsibility with respect to the truth of the information that they spread, the needs and the reactions that they generate, and the values which they put forward. In the case of television, moreover, what is coming into being is an original mode of knowledge and a new civilization: that of the image.

Naturally, the public authorities cannot ignore the growing power and influence of the media of social communication and the advantages and risks which their use involves for the civic community and for its development and real perfecting.

Consequently they are called upon to perform their own positive function for the common good by encouraging every constructive expression, by supporting individual citizens and groups in defending the fundamental values of the person and of human society, and also by taking suitable steps to prevent the spread of what would harm the common heritage of values on which orderly civil progress is based.

Paul VI, Octogesima Adveniens (1971)

Insurers don't give you credit for all the telephone poles you miss

2010-04-18T22:29:00.004-04:00

Cook-book misprint costs Australian publishers dear

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8627335.stm

An Australian publisher has had to pulp and reprint a cook-book after one recipe listed "salt and freshly ground black people" instead of black pepper.

Penguin Group Australia had to reprint 7,000 copies of Pasta Bible last week, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported.

The reprint cost A$20,000 ($18,000; £12,000), but stock in bookshops will not be recalled as it is "extremely hard" to do so, Penguin said.

The recipe was for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.

"We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind, and why anyone would be offended, we don't know," head of publishing Bob Sessions is quoted as saying by the Sydney newspaper.

Penguin said almost every one of the more than 150 recipes in the book listed salt and freshly ground black pepper, but a misprint occurred on just one page.

"When it comes to the proofreader, of course they should have picked it up, but proofreading a cook-book is an extremely difficult task. I find that quite forgivable," Mr Sessions said.

If anyone complains about the "silly mistake," they will be given the new version, Penguin said.

Two more happy customers

2010-04-08T13:02:00.005-04:00

Hi there

When I got my first glimpse of the index you wrote for The Cat and the Toaster [Wipf and Stock, 2010], I thought I should write and say thanks. I spent a half hour just reading it over. Later I found that Dr. Hall had done the same thing. And the other day someone else told me he was reading the book, and I asked how far he had gotten. "Well," he said, "actually, I started with the index."

Writing to you was one of those nice thoughts we have sometimes, and then ignore... But I just opened it again to track down a quote, and after finding it so easily, I told myself it is time to write to you!

Thanks, Bob. You did a masterful job with that index. Your work is a tremendous asset to the book.

You make us look good, and we are grateful for your help and your good work.

With appreciation,
Steve Daman
Emmanuel Gospel Center
Boston

=================

Dear Bob,

We had a meeting this week with our new publisher NYU Press, and the director of production was gushing about the high quality of the copyediting. So we told her why and she asked for your contact info.

[from the folks at the American Human Development Project]

What Would Grind Your Guts about the Following Response to an Email?

2010-03-23T15:59:00.002-04:00

Bob,

I had to file personal bankruptcy due to the business failure. I'm unemployed currently and have no means to pay you or anyone else.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Give me about two and a half minutes

2010-03-22T23:34:00.002-04:00

Sorry, folks. Been busy . . . too busy to post.

But I found this today. Turn that frown upside down.

Sometimes You Just Ask

2010-02-12T02:00:00.007-05:00

Over on Moi's blog, one of her regular posters is, if I get it correctly, an artist who works in illustration and design. I forget if it was on Moi's blog or here that the topic turned to drumming up freelance work. I mentioned to K9 that sometimes it was just a matter of going back to clients you hadn't heard from in a while and mentioning, "Hey, I'm still here."

K9's response was, "I wish it was that simple."

Sometimes it is.

As I've written before, clients come and go. If you'd have named for me a few years back the clients I'm surviving without now, I'd have asked you if you wanted to sit next to me at the Salvation Army for dinner tonight. But publishers and authors go, and others seem to take up the empty places right at the right time. My dear wife ascribes this to the presence of a deity. Maybe yes, maybe no. A lot of folks out there aren't doing so well these days, not to say that any deity is responsible for every little turn of events. I don't think the ways of the universe are conducted on such a micro level anyway; nor does my wife think that way, I don't believe. And theodicy's certainly not the subject of this post or this blog.

But I guess I could phrase as it as "Knock and the door will be opened to you; seek and you shall find."

Or that every invention is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

A few publishers that I hadn't worked with lately popped into my head this week. I tracked one down, and it's now under the management of a larger group that handles a number of smaller imprints, all publishing in kinda the same field. The only contact person I could find on the new webpage was the president and publisher of the larger group. I'd forgotten the name of my old contact.

I emailed the president/publisher, telling per that I wanted to contact the press that was now part of per's larger company. I was a freelancer who wanted to reestablish contact with this press.

This was yesterday. Within an hour, I heard back from my old contact, asking for my most recent resume and rate sheet. Half an hour later, per said there might be some work for me.

I received news of a project today. I'll have it next week. A nice copyediting job.

Sometimes you just ask.

Publisher 2: I wrote my contact, whose name I remembered this time, and said, "Hey, haven't heard from you in a while. If you're still using freelancers, I'm still here."

Response: "Great to hear from you. We're still using freelancers, but just putting out fewer books. Will definitely keep you in mind."

Sometimes . . .

Back to publisher 1. I was put in touch with the graphic designer for the book I'll be copyediting. I did my A-student freelancer thing and said, "By the way, if you know of any publishers or authors looking for someone who does what I do, feel free to pass my name along, and I'll do the same for you." Per immediately wrote back with a contact at a press that labors in the same academic fields as most of the rest of my clients, and said, "Tell per I recommended you." I did so. Contact, if the widget is correct, was checking out the blog earlier tonight. I cannot assume, of course, this will turn out to be a good development, but it's a press that I would be very proud to put on the client list.

Sometimes . . .

I said this before also: if I had the nerve and the confidence in some regards at ages 14, 18, 22 that I do now, aspects of my life would have been totally different. Then again, there's no telling what bad roads such nerve and confidence might have taken me down then until now.

Agnosticism is a funny thing. I think everything is tied together. I think things move toward some conclusion that might not be revealed without the benefit of decades of hindsight. It just is so immaterial to me if someOne or someThing is tying that knot or moving things toward any conclusion. That's for the bigger brains to deal with.

It's too late at night for this. I belong in a dorm room at age 18, having serious discussions, although I don't really remember many serious dorm room discussions. A lot more laughing than pondering.

Bonnaroo lineup is out for 2010. It's tempting. Younger son and wife certainly want to go. Older son hasn't mentioned anything. Of course, being there represents heaven on earth to him, but hopefully he'll be busily and gainfully employed somewhere this summer in a pursuit that renders him unable to go . . . and that pursuit would likely not be in shouting distance to Manchester, TN. But knowing him, he'll try to figure out some way to game the whole deal so he can still do Bonnaroo. I like doing the tent thing. Mi esposa says she's over that and wants to do an RV. I just don't see it, but hell, I don't see a lot of things.

Side note, this from my Internet gig: Part of that gig, in addition to reviewing the work of about 100 other copyeditors, is answering the random questions that come in to a Help Desk from a cast of a few thousand writers of various levels of quality. I was dealing with one of the writers earlier this week and received this nice note:

---------

Bob,

You're awesome as always. I'd be lying if I said I'm thrilled when I'm told to take a different approach, but your advice is always specific and right on the mark so I am glad to have it.

Thanks again,

---------

Every so often, that craziness is worthwhile. As is this:

Publishing Industry Hiring Uptick . . . Just Not for Me

2010-02-01T09:37:00.002-05:00

Ugh, although I'm happy for the locals. From a formerly steady client that I wrote to this morning:

We’ve enlisted the help of a couple full-time in-house freelancers who have been doing a lot of the work we’d been sending out, so as far as outside freelancers go, things have been a bit slow.

It's okay. Their hole will fill in with something else. Always seems to, although the nice thing about this client is that their publishing is nonacademic, which offered a nice break from the standard LoD fare.

Comes and goes; that's how it's always been.