along with some comments on the world of a freelance editor
What It Is (posts below left; rate sheet, client list, other stuff below right)
My name is Bob Land. I am a full-time freelance editor and proofreader, and occasional indexer. This blog is my website.
You'll find my rate sheet and client list here, as well as musings on the life of a freelancer; editing, proofreading, and indexing concerns and issues; my ongoing battles with books and production; and the occasional personal revelation.
If the "better" refers to the cleanup of my iPhone-generated headshots, anything is an improvement over the basic material. They're great.
There's a lot going on in this m/s, which seems to be a diary from 1900, with a lot of formatting to clean up and recipes, which are always a pain in the patootie as far as consistency-making, even when trying to adhere to the original. The end also seems to have placeholders for art, which ideally you or I could strip out before or while editing, as they only get it the way. I could always insert "art goes here." The saving grace is that I'd assume the text should stay untouched as much as possible, although I'd query inconsistencies.
Since we're moving into a new era with the press, I'd love it if we could use Word's Comments feature instead of in-text queries [QY: like this] as the comments are easily deleted if that's what you and the authors want to do and have very limited possibility of mangling the text, unlike going into the words and deleting that way. Comments are very easy to deal with -- and much faster -- once getting the hang of them, which should only take a few moments of practice. We can do a test run if needed, but I do think they'd make things easier for everyone, except for maybe Kerry, whose typist only creates more work for everyone. Those jobs would take half the time if she (I presume it's a she) didn't use auto lists for what ends up being half his copy.
Anyway, because of all the extenuating circumstances (formatting, recipes, dealing with copy not to be edited [which does create issues of its own]), $5/page * 290 pages = $1450.
And an FYI, if I've not mentioned: I'm dealing with upcoming major surgery, which could take place as early as March 14 in Charlotte (!), if all goes according to (my) plan. Anthem has different ideas, and only the deity knows what his or her plans are, so everything's up in the air and causing ridiculous stress on my end. My primary and valued clients need to know about this. I'm expecting three or four days hospitalized, and thankfully recovery would involve sitting around and not doing much except reading, which is how I spend my days anyway, and getting paid for it. I'd also be bringing a manuscript with me to the hospital, presuming they'd leave me alone long enough to read it. (Right now, it's scheduled to be a book about Joseph Smith and his golden plates, which should be a romp.)
Anyway, keep me posted. Seems like these beach books are usually a go, and early March might be a good time for me to fit this in.
Thanks, K—. The thought of the press cranking up is a great, great thing for me -- and for you too, I presume.
From R. Panikkar, original version, mid-1950s. Take away the "if" at the beginning, and you essentially have the liner notes to A Love Supreme (1964). And when you listen to the final movement of A Love Supreme, it is the words below he is playing through his sax. You can read along and listen.
If there is a God, there is nothing above, outside, or even below him. Nothing independent of God. Nothing exists without being an existence, a consequence, an effect of God. Nothing is disconnected from Him. All that is, exists in God, from God, and for God. All beings not only proceed from God and go toward God but also are in God. +++ A Love Supreme
I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee O Lord. It all has to do with it. Thank you God. Peace. There is none other. God is. It is so beautiful. Thank you God. God is all. Help us to resolve our fears and weaknesses. Thank you God. In You all things are possible. We know. God made us so. Keep your eye on God. God is. He always was. He always will be. No matter what...it is God. He is gracious and merciful. It is most important that I know Thee. Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thoughts, fears and emotions – time – all related ... all made from one ... all made in one. Blessed be His name. Thought waves – heat waves –all vibrations – all paths lead to God. Thank you God.
His way ... it is so lovely ... it is gracious. It is merciful – thank you God. One thought can produce millions of vibrations and they all go back to God ... everything does. Thank you God. Have no fear ... believe ... thank you God. The universe has many wonders. God is all. His way ... it is so wonderful. Thoughts – deeds – vibrations, etc. They all go back to God and He cleanses all. He is gracious and merciful...thank you God. Glory to God ... God is so alive. God is. God loves. May I be acceptable in Thy sight. We are all one in His grace. The fact that we do exist is acknowledgement of Thee O Lord. Thank you God. God will wash away all our tears ... He always has ... He always will. Seek Him everyday. In all ways seek God everyday. Let us sing all songs to God To whom all praise is due ... praise God. No road is an easy one, but they all go back to God. With all we share God. It is all with God. It is all with Thee. Obey the Lord. Blessed is He. We are from one thing ... the will of God ... thank you God. I have seen God – I have seen ungodly – none can be greater – none can compare to God. Thank you God. He will remake us ... He always has and He always will. It is true – blessed be His name – thank you God. God breathes through us so completely ... so gently we hardly feel it ... yet, it is our everything. Thank you God. ELATION-ELEGANCE-EXALTATION All from God. Thank you God. Amen.
Throw a head in there somewhere. And when you do, make it accurate. Why should a head have the word "oligarchy" in it when the word appears once on the next seven pages?
I'm not going to worry about this stuff too much once I start easing some of these indexes off the schedule. Turning into a mess. I never (well, very rarely) get bored proofreading or copyediting. Indexing . . . takes about 15 pages.
75 degrees here today. First post of the year: Washington's (real) Birthday. And I'm working on a book that harps on some of the current woes.
Gray matter’s getting a little frayed here. I just sent this to a UK-based managing editor. The bolded phrase is the book's topic:
Got it. Thanks, J—. No promises, but you might have this back well in advance of the deadline. I’ve been dealing with some absolutely brutal indexing jobs from a variety of sources, and I need something to calm my nerves. And when living in a country in which mastering catastrophic risk seems like another way of saying, “waking up in the morning,” I wouldn’t mind feeling like something’s—anything’s—in control.
Bears repeating that indexing is sometimes a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.
I'm working on a book now that is so far beyond my ken that I'm crafting an index based on more than a modicum of intuition, because the text itself is meaningless to me.
There might even be a musicality to this type of indexing, where mellifluous phrases substitute for substance.
The battling tendencies are (a) to overindex -- trying to capture details that hopefully are important -- or (b) to succumb to the MEGO effect and grasp at a catchy clause now and then.
This work is neither easy nor simple. But it'll all be worth it. Sales of this book should hit the dozens.
My namesake
With all due respect to the author:
It would be disastrous if the formalist were forced by this admission to the metamathematical conclusion that there is no fact of the matter whether ZFC is consistent. But Kitcher is not quite forced to this conclusion. The metamathematical, combinatorial claim that there is no proof of “0 = 1” in ZFC is, for all Kitcher says, a fully contentful claim whose truth does not consist in its derivability. That claim might therefore be true, in the ordinary sense, even if the number- theoretic statement Con(ZFC) is neither derivable nor refutable, hence neither true nor false in the only sense appropriate to it. The difficulty is that this severs the link, essential to foundational research in mathematics, between metamathematical claims of consistency and derivability, on the one hand, and the ground- level mathematical claims that we normally take to formalize or code them. This part of mathematics is predicated on the assumption that we can convert modal or combinatorial claims about the consistency of formal systems into mathematical claims— claims about the existence of models or about the existence of (numbers coding) formal derivations. The objection is that Kitcher-style formalism would call this aspect of mathematical practice into question. Understood as a modal/ combinatorial question, the consistency of ZFC appears to be a factual question with an answer— albeit a question we cannot answer within established mathematics. By contrast the mathematical question whether there exists a number that codes a proof of “0 = 1” in ZFC, or the question whether there exists a model of the ZFC axioms, must be understood as a question that has no answer at all, since the candidate answers are underivable in every authorized game and hence untrue in the only sense pertinent to such claims.
An author with whom I've been working pretty closely just received a rejection letter from a writers' agency. Agent really liked the book but feels it's not sufficiently marketable.
The manuscript was in essentially OK shape when I first saw it, yet it needed a thorough albeit not difficult copyedit. Here's the agent's assessment after the Land on Demand touch:
I may as well get right to it: I’m going to pass on this. But believe me when I
say I’m passing with many regrets, as I think that you’re an excellent
writer with a superb grasp of both language and the type of style, tone, and
pacing that makes for a good biography. I’m a big fan of biography and read a
fair amount of it, and in terms of composition and content, this
manuscript is on par with anything else that’s out there.
Well, thanks. And, well, I guess I do know the person's name. But check out the lefty bass player and about three seconds of a seriously hammered Judy Garland at the beginning:
I'm about to read my first scholarly treatment of The Beverly Hillbillies, about 15 pages of a larger chapter.
These pointyheads better get it right. Unfortunately I'm proofreading, so any unsolicited comments about content I might make at an earlier stage would be out of place, particularly since the proofs are going back to Bangalore.
Regular readers of this blog as well as people who know me understand that every day I work mostly on books that, if all goes well, may be read by a few hundred people -- and some volumes won't be that popular, if that's even the right word. While I labor over a small percentage of books that are for a private audience -- the yesterday-mentioned corporate histories among them -- most of the books I proofread, edit, or index are of great interest only to the author and (maybe) a small handful of other scholars and insiders. I doubt even the author's parents would pick up these volumes and read them anywhere close to cover to cover. The parents might not even brag about them at parties.
Which is not to say that some of these aren't damn fine books; they are. But their topic matters are so obscure that folks are often amazed when I tell them not only what I've read but, if I can remember it, the batch of books that either just left my desk or are about to arrive. The variety and scope of the obscurity is also impressive.
For years, it seemed that I worked primarily on theological tomes. Now with changes in clients, changes in amount of work from certain clients, and indeed changes at the clients themselves, the theology isn't as heavy. Seems that international relations and social sciences are creeping in more and more. One press, and it's not exactly a secret if you look at their catalog, and if you know anything about the presses listed at the right, has moved largely from the fascinating (seriously) world of the intersection of science and religion -- nuclear physics and other topics that I don't understand -- into the realm of libertarian politics and economics. Or at least that's what I'm seeing. At this point in my life, I can't say that I like the trade-off, although the latter books are generally written by popular authors, and the writing is breezy.
Anyway.
The idea for this blog posting comes from an idea for an email. The producing artistic director of the theatre where my wife works has always been amused at my reading list. I thought I'd compile a month-by-month list for him of my most obscure titles for the year. I've done so and listed them below. Instead, he'll get a copy of this blog posting. He doesn't read blogs anyway, but I've alerted him that I was doing a blog posting in his honor. Maybe he'll read this email, or just skip to the list.
And, please, keep in mind that I really did like some of these books. One of the authors, I have a reason for presuming, followed this blog for a while after I worked on his book. I hope he doesn't take offense at seeing his book here if he checks back in.
The titles in the 2014 Obscurity Review are also a function of what else I worked on that month. I didn't factor in corporate histories or self-published books. The books listed below are all available for sale from their publishers, which I've not listed here, but which I assume hoped for some success for these books, however that might be measured. So if you're a lucky author, none of whom I've named here, who ended up in a month in which I had more self-published books than others, your book had a much better chance of being chosen. Congratulations.
Turns out that most of these books are indexing, because I only get indexes from this particular client, which happens to publish plenty of these kinds of books, bless their hearts.
Books by month, title, and job function:
January
Securing the West: Politics, Public Lands, and the
Fate of the Old Republic, 1785–1850 [index]
February
Uphill Battle: Reflections on Viet Nam
Counterinsurgency [proofread]
March
Newton and Empiricism [index]
April
A Polity of Persuasion: Gift and Grief of Anglicanism [index]
May
A Complete Identity: The Youthful Hero in the Work of
G. A. Henty and George MacDonald
[index]
June
Diplomacy on Ice: Energy and the
Environment in the Arctic and Antarctic [proofreading]
July
All Things New: The Trinitarian Nature of the Human
Calling in Maximus the Confessor and Jürgen Moltmann [index]
August
Hidden Riches: A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study
of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East [proofreading]
September
The Creativity Crisis: Reinventing Science to Unleash
Possibility [proof/edit]
October
Politics and Culture in
Contemporary Iran: Challenging the Status Quo [copyedit]
November
(tie)
St. Francis and the Foolishness of God [proof]
Urban Villages and
Local Identities: Germans from Russia, Omaha Indians, and Vietnamese in
Lincoln, Nebraska [copyedit]
December
Pastoral Leadership: A Case Study, including Reference
to John Chrysostom [index]
One day I'll do a post about when I get out of the house to go work at the public library. That a whole 'nother story.
Well, back to copyediting. Might be an early entry for next year's list: Perspectives in Interdisciplinary and Interactive Studies.
On ballplayer/broadcaster Richie "Whitey" Ashburn:
From 1971 until Ashburn’s death, he was joined by Harry Kalas in the
booth, where the two became best of friends and almost inseparable on
road trips. During his speech at Ashburn’s Hall of Fame induction
ceremonies in Cooperstown, New York, Kalas paid tribute to his colleague
and friend of nearly 30 years in the most fitting way by acknowledging
Ashburn’s professionalism as an astute broadcaster and his sense of
humor as a regular person. Kalas said the following:
>> People ask me what it was like working with Richie. His
Whiteness and I were together for 27 years, and it was such a joy. He
not only brought to the booth baseball experience but also laughter.
Whitey had a marvelous sense of humor. I remember doing games with him,
and it would be getting late in the game, late in the evening, and
Whitey would say on the air, “I wonder if the people at Celebres Pizza
are listening tonight?” Well, within 15 minutes, bang, pizzas are
delivered to the radio booth.
This went on for a while, and pretty soon the Phillies management
summoned him and they said, “Richie, Celebres Pizza is not one of our
sponsors. We can’t give them free plugs.” Now we do birthday and
anniversary announcements on the air, so shortly after his meeting with
the Philadelphia brass, it’s getting late in the evening and he’s
getting hungry. He said, “Well, I have very special birthday wishes to
send out tonight to the Celebres twins—Plain and Pepperoni.”
Tired of looking at the old entry, and no time to compose anything coherent. If printed books are dead, no one bothered to tell my publishers.
So, forthwith are posts that I had in waiting. I'm tired of looking at them, too. If they no longer make any sense, well, I've had a few other entries like that as well.
* * *
CreateSpace: Garbage In,
Garbage Out
6/2/2012: In full disclosure, I wrote this rather hastily some weeks back. Would someone who actually knows please tell me the story: Does CreateSpace ever typeset copy for a book's pages? Or do they simply print what the author/customer supplies . . . PDF, Word doc, whatever? Is there ever any human contact? Do they provide a good service? I was just ranting here . . . to a degree.
If you're a self-publishing author and you don't know how to
format your manuscript properly, your book is going to look like absolute crap
when you get it back from Amazon's CreateSpace . . . unless CreateSpace has
different levels of service, and one of them actually gives a darn what your
book looks like as Amazon taps your bank account.
My two experiences
with CreateSpace page proofs show that the folks at CreateSpace setexactly what the customer sent in.
Maybe that's all they do. In some circles, that would be called "customer
service." In my world, that's called "revenge."
To all
self-publishers or ghostwriters working with same: For a very nominal fee, I
can clean up a manuscript so that your page proofs will look, well, like a book
when it's designed. And I can pretty much guarantee that my charge up front
will be a hell of a lot less than what Amazon will charge you for typesetting
corrections after the fact -- if they even perform that service.
And itwillbe worth it. Because unless you
know what you're doing, and without that kind of intervention, your labor of
love is not going to look like any other book on your shelf -- and I'm not
saying that in a good way.
Many writers,
frankly, just care about the cover and the spine. Author's name and title and,
presto, "I'm an author." But if you care what's between the covers,
you really do want it looking as good as possible. You don't want your readers
saying -- and I've heard this -- "The book was prepared so sloppily that I
put it down."
A self-published
book can look as good as any other book in the world. Yes, it can. If you don't
know how to make that happen, people can help you.
I'm one of them.
Shameless plug
over, but that's what this real estate is all about, folks.
* * *
Two Kinds of Writers
Early in my blogging days, I spoke of Bill Shipp, a man who made his bones in
journalism before I learned how to read. When I first worked with him, he had
already written for four decades and was a giant of Georgia journalism by any
metric. He demanded heavy editing. The rare call I received from him usually
dealt with the paucity of my red marks rather than their overuse.
I do some pro bono
work for a nonprofit that likes having its work proofed, edited, torn up --
everyone there, except the executive director. She doesn't want a word of hers
touched. Doesn't matter if it's a point of grammar.Leave it alone.
--
I returned a
manuscript to an author a few weeks ago, and I'll admit -- as I admitted to the
author -- that my customer service was not up to par. And I'll state that here,
just to be fair to the readership. Mostly dealing with turnaround time and
communication. I performed, however, a rather thorough edit.
The author's
comments were very nice, including this remark:
Your
work on my book was excellent and finding you encourages me to write more
and more and more.
Frankly, I can't
think of much higher praise for an editor. That one's a keeper. Even better,
the author writes about interesting stuff. Pinch me.
* * *
Special Onetime Offer:
Legacy Rates
6/2/2012: I actually never got around to the point I wanted to make here, which would have made the headline make sense. Ah, well. It also leaves a blog post in my head. Dammit.
This post is neither a coupon nor an attempt to gather more
clients into the LoD fold, although I never mind doing so. I worked long enough
in the insurance industry to understand spreading the risk.
Rather I'm looking
at a wholesale overhaul of my rate structure for authors -- not publishers --
based on a number of factors, primarily self-publishing and authors writing in
their nonnative language. Nothing against such authors personally, but it makes
no sense to charge them anywhere close to the same as the publishers' rates.
The work is invariably more difficult, requires far more hand-holding, and
takes longer . . . and there's little potential for repeat business, where an
easier project down the line makes things even out.
Too, once a writer
(I'm thinking of one in particular from years ago) knows an editor is going to
clean up a particular editorial issue every time, the writer has no real
incentive to understand what the hell the editor is doing and write it
correctly to begin with -- even a matter of the simplest English composition.
Imagine 2000 pages
of this:
"Why
did the dog eat the biscuit," Ed asked?
Not a 2000-page
manuscript. But five different novels of about 400 pages each. Don't you think
after the first one, where I corrected scores of such constructions, the author
might have learned something? (And this author is old enough to know better and
of such demographics and background that the author is clearly not a stupid
individual.)
When I say
"old enough to know better," I'm talking about some of the great
divides in U.S. education. This author is old enough to have learned the basics
of composition very well. At the time the author grew up, I doubt he could have
made it out of third grade composing a sentence such as the one above.
(Too, people of a
certain age, regardless of native intelligence and barring some mitigating
factors, can read aloud without hesitation. Not universally true with
people under 30.)
* * *
Word of the Day, and Other
Irritants
6/2/2012: I have a longer list on three small pieces of paper. Time to throw them out.
while at the same time
about 38
both (yeah,
"both," thanks to a university press managing editor who scrubbed a
manuscript of every single one before sending it to me for copyediting)
very unique
coteaching with another teacher
* * *
[no title]
6/2/2012: I have no idea why I saved this. I think I liked the part of the sentence that appears after the second em dash.
It is interesting to note the rather Pelagian
character of this soteriology, emphasizing the centrality of human agency over
against the initiation of the divine—particularly salvation by moral emulation—and
therefore providing no real sense whatsoever of how the divine actually enables
the salvation of the nationbeyond merely providing the opportunity.
* * *
A Day in the Bunker
I've referred to it many times before,
whether on the blog or in conversation. Here's a day at the LandonDemand
Intergalactic Corporate HQ:
By the way, I was
raised on this show. I think it showed four times a day in NYC when I was
growing up. Things haven't changed much, except now there's only one bed in the adults' bedroom.
* * *
And this added bonus, from
fall 2009.
6/2/2012: I forget if I posted this exchange. I emailed Moi some version of it. I'd forgotten most of it, but the whole thing still makes me shake my head. "Per" is the gender-neutral pronoun that an author used. I employed it here for a while to maintain gender anonymity. In this case, per is a dude. Now, I don't say "per." I just change the person's gender. Or not.
I'm going to take a page from one of the most offensive yet most
popular Internet sites, the Drudge Report, and break the news here. Anytime
someone tries to put out some dirt on Matt Drudge, he immediately posts the article
on his own site, as if to say, "I got nothing to hide." This is
another way of saying, "The best defense is a good offense."
Yes, indeedy, folks. Far and away my most bizarre client has given
me the heave-ho. I'm not going to get into too many details, to preserve per's
anonymity (I am fair, after all) and thus to preserve my own hide.
Let's just say this: Per is a Bible-thumping prophet (like an
apocalyptic, see-the-future type) and an America-loathing rabble-rouser. Per
foresees the end of America as we know it unless we all come to Christ and
change our ways. I can go on and on about per, as I have come to know per over
the last year or so, but I will let the slightly edited correspondence speak
for itself.
===========
Yes Bob I will send the western union today
although I am not going to pay you for re-editing your own work in chapter 26.
The other day when you ask me, where did I get this copy from. . . I got it
from you. That is the reason why I run everything through you before including
it in the manuscript, so the entire manuscript will have to be re-edited
because it is my opinion you either farmed it out originally or you did not do
such a good job that you have found your own work to be problematic with
errors. I know you by now (not using any gifts of foresight) that you are not
going to re-edit this entire manuscript again, and do it right at no charge,
but in my opinion you should because I have already paid you for it, and even
if you did go through it, it is further my opinion you would not go through it
with a fine tooth comb, so my only option at this point is to hunt for a new
editor and wish you the best. I will send you some money but frankly in my
opinion, I have wasted about [dollar figure here] and the manuscript is not
ready to go to press. Goodbye Bob.
===========
Isn't thisfun?
Here's the response I wanted to send. Special blog exclusive.
===========
First, when I asked, "Where did this come
from?" I'm certain I was referring to a specific piece of text, not an
entire chapter, and how it fit into the surrounding text. I'd need to see the
context for the statement.
On to larger matters:
You've received all the tracked versions of every document you've sent me (all
of which I've kept), so you've seen exactly what I've done along the way -- no
portion at all of which has been farmed out. I don't farm out my work any more
than you farm out your prophecies.
You've had no complaint about the work until now. You've had scores of
opportunities to say that you didn't think my work was up to snuff and to end
our relationship based on the quality of the work you were receiving from me.
I've never heard a single word from you along those lines -- even though you
claim that you've been rereading and rereading the manuscript. If there were
really something seriously wrong, you would have noticed it long before now,
and you would have terminated the relationship long ago. You obviously felt
comfortable enough with my work to continue to send me regular updates for nine
months after editing the original manuscript, and to send me emails asking for
advice, which have always been answered. Along the way, you'd mentioned at
least twice all the money you'd be sending me once the book came out because
you treat well those people who treat you right. Those aren't the actions or
words of an author who is unhappy with the editing.
I can guess at any number of reasons you now no longer want me to work for you,
but I'm not going to try to get into your head.
Every person who is in publishing full time will tell you that copyediting is
part of a process, which includes proofreading as well, and proofreaders often
catch what a copyeditor has missed, especially in a manuscript that at this
point is being slapped together totally haphazardly, with a sentence here and a
sentence there out of context going out for editing. If the manuscript overall
is now not reading the way you want it to, it's largely because of the process
you've undertaken since last November.
I've been getting emails since last November with documents titled things like,
"last change before typesetting" and "one last thing." You
can attribute it to [ . . . ] or your desire to have this book be its best, but
I've worked with any number of folks who also have issues with [ . . . ] and
who want the best for their publication, but who also intuitively understand
what it takes to make a publication its best and how to work with an editor to
bring that about. Your approach to the text of the book at this point is akin
to a dog who keeps digging up a bone and looking for somewhere else to bury it.
You just can't leave it alone, and confusion is the inevitable result. If you
want to blame me for that, that's your decision. The corrections you've been
sending my way have resulted from your claims that you had a better way to say
something, or you've been adding new material (election, Michael Jackson, new
interactions at churches), or you've been qualifying your experiences in [ . .
. ] to make sure you don't land in additional legal trouble. Never have you
said, "I didn't like the way you did this. Please review." Never. Not
once. And that you kept sending me material clearly showed you thought I was
doing something right.
According to your own account, you've gone through photographers, web
designers, cover designers, and editors before me -- blaming them for all the
problems and their inability to do what you want them to do. I'm now added to
the list. Without the gift of foresight, I suspect the pattern will continue
with typesetters, proofreaders, indexers, printers, distributors, bookstore
owners, publicity people, and so on. When I read in your book that you'd been
in 20 car wrecks, 19 of which were not your fault, that about summed it up. And
when I read repeatedly in your book about your lack of faith in the United
States and the American judicial system, yet when I look online and see that
you are constantly in court, asking that very same American judicial system to
clear up your problems for you, I see that I've been dealing with a bundle of
contradictions all the way along.
You are certainly correct that I would not reedit the manuscript again at no
charge. And I'd be wary of vendors who give you rock-bottom rates and claim
decades of experience. I don't think you'll ultimately be happy with their work
either, or you'll find that they'll start charging you for continually making
changes and adjustments (as they should), which will make their original low
price end up not so low in the long run.
You say that this book will come out on God's time and according to God's plan;
if that's the case, then your dealings with me have just been part of a grander
scheme in which you claim to have complete trust. Or maybe it's like the
judicial system: it's something you fall back on when it suits your purposes.
I wish you the best of luck with the book.
Bob
Note that this book remains unpublished. June 2, 2012.
Talk about a bummer. Don't judge a book by its summary, not when you've been given it to work on, anyway. Because work somehow turns out to be work.
A few days ago, I was pretty happy with the summary of this book I'm working on. I'm about 90 percent done with it now. Aside from those topics listed in the previous post, the book also relies heavily on Breakfast at Tiffany's, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and some other pretty cool topics.
Problem: author, with some press complicity, I feel, has managed to put into production a manuscript that still needs a hell of a lot of work.
OK, class. Today's lesson is MLA style. MLA, I believe, is the Modern Language Association, or maybe it stands for More or Less Authorlike. Because that's often what I get when I receive a manuscript that's been written according to MLA style: authors who know how to put words together but who fall down on the job when it comes to things like organization or documentation.
Case in point. In MLA style, you generally use a short in-text citation that refers to a complete list of Works Cited at the end. In the hands of a fifth-grader who knows how to follow the damn instructions, this task should be easy enough.
The sentence goes on like this and you get to the end, where the reference appears (Land 23). "Land 23" means that I am citing page 23 of the book or article by Land, which in this case happens to be titled, "Why Authors Are the Bane of the Publishing Industry." If I happened to have two items in the Works Cited and the other one was a book titled Why Can't PhDs Compile a Decent Freaking Bibliography? then the original reference would appear as (Land, "Why Authors" 23).
So, you cite a book in your chapter, you list the book in the Works Cited. Easy enough.
Except per has cited no fewer than 50 books in per's work that don't appear in the Works Cited, which means that per's gonna spend a lot of time pulling books off per's shelves and recording bibliographic information (or missing page numbers [grrrr]) before per can send this book back to me. Then I'm gonna have to copyedit all the references that my time would have been better spent copyediting on the first pass. Because half the time, they can't get the style right, either.
Other side of the coin: Works that appear in the "Works Cited" when they don't appear in the text at all. My solution is to call the damn thing a Bibliography, which might comprise Works Cited and Uncited. A lot of publishers want there to be a one-for-one correlation, though, and don't often agree to the Bibliography heading.
Another problem with this book. Per has left in the book summaries of the entire book that don't match the book's content. Here's where I blame the press, since I don't give authors much credit for the authoring they do. Why didn't someone at the press pick up on the fact that of the five chapters the author describes, not only are they all out of order, but the damn chapter on serial killers isn't even mentioned? If there's a demographic I don't want to inadvertently make mad, serial killers come at the top of the list.
(The book does bring up an interesting point about serial killers though. Just like there might be nonpracticing Jews or nonpracticing Catholics, there might also be nonpracticing serial killers out there. Now that's a comforting thought. Reminds me of an old Onion article: "Neighbors Remember Serial Killer as Serial Killer": "Oh, yeah, he was always bringing home nurses and chopping them up in the backyard. . . .")
Where was I? Oh yeah. Well, never mind. It's 2 a.m., and I'm going to try to get as close as I can to finishing the copyediting before bedtime. Then it's a full day of word processing -- mostly queries for the author. And since it's the end of the term and all the students will be going home, per's gonna have to do all the work perself. Poor, poor per.
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
"Keep your own counsel. Don't draw any conclusions from anything you see or hear."
How much have I complained about the subject matter of the books I read? Well, I might have a winner here. From the introduction:
The five chapters thus examine five diverse and highly distinctive narrative genres which manifest the cultural history of authenticity: the literature of adolescence [with a focus on Catcher in the Rye, for better or worse one of the basic texts of my own adolescence], the narrative discussion of depression, the serial killer genre, stories of mid-century Jewish assimilation, and the narratives of corporate manners.
Now if this book lives up to the promise of this sentence, I have a few pleasant days of reading ahead of me. If the author goes all academic and takes all the fun out of it, then fifs on per.
Can I complain? Of course I can complain. The manuscript is in 10-point Courier, 1.5 spacing; MLA style; and a gazillion references to look up in the Works Cited.
But how often do I get any of the following: Holden Caulfield, depression, serial killers, Jewish assimilation, and corporate manners? And all in the same book? Pinch me, I'm dreaming.
Thanks to my five or four regular readers for allowing me this little hiatus, and for occasionally checking in to see if the test pattern was still up. I can't say that it won't go up again soon, but there's been a little activity that calls for an update.
Big question among freelancers is "How's business?" One of my fellow freelancers, a book designer and typesetter, is staying busy because he has learned how to lay out books for Kindle and such. Smart guy.
Another one who mines similar fields as I do, I've not gotten a real good feel for how things are for him. His client list is by design a little smaller than mine, but it used to be that a lot of my work came from him, and if his clients are sending him work and he has time or the need to do it, he might very well be busy, and it keeps work from coming to me. No hard feelings there. I would do the same thing.
I wrote to a few of my publishers last week. One, which has a printshop in the basement (a big one), just laid off 35 people on the pressroom floor and in the art department. Not a good thing.
Another one, a production company that kept me very busy over the last year and a half, says that business has slowed tremendously, and if it keeps up, they don't know what they are going to do. I think much of their work revolved around the textbook market, and it might be that the publisher who was their main client has decided that new editions every two years are not necessary. As the parent of a college student, I can't say this hurts my feelings that much.
So I've been beating the bushes a little the last couple of days. One or two things might turn out. Maybe. I'm going to go along as if nothing will happen, because that's often when something does. But a cratering economy causes people to put on their thinking caps, and that's what I did. We'll see.
So, what's with the Flying Negroes? Probably one of my earliest posts dealt with the phenomenon that I'll go my entire life without hearing of a concept, and then I'll read about it in consecutive unrelated books. This last weekend I was working on a book of essays about Phillis Wheatley, the first African American woman to be published in the United States (late 1700s, from New England). The book mentioned the Flying Negroes, a myth from that time about slaves in America who sprouted wings and flew back to Africa. Interesting stuff. The book went back to the publisher Sunday night.
Today I'm reading a book of essays about the Gullah-Geechee culture in the barrier islands of Georgia. And here again come the Flying Negroes. This time there was a little hint of the whirling dervish thrown into the mix.
Anyway, the test pattern is gone for now. If you're reading this, I'm glad you're here. And I hope the feeling is mutual. Let me know what's been going on in your world since I've been gone.
Any regular readers of this blog and anyone who peruses my client list knows that I am often up to here with theology. And that my own religious tendencies could at best be described as agnostic.
I read material now from all over the spectrum. While the Christian left (yes, it exists) has generally consumed the last 8 years, a local author has recently found me who refers to the authors I work for as "theologians" (scare quotes intentional). I think that's because they generally voice a theology with which per does not agree. But per has been very open-minded in the emails I've sent, challenging per on certain issues and making no bones about my general feelings regarding the whole religious what-have-you.
And while I read theology most days, I've never been able to formulate any stance of my own, except in a negative way. In the last few minutes, that's begun to change, and I want to capture it before it goes away.
What I'd be looking for religiously/theologically would be
the social justice work of the Catholics the autonomy of the (non-Southern) Baptists the acceptance of minority opinions of the Jews the welcoming nature of the United Church of Christ the Buddhist recognition of suffering the Taoist perception of cycles oh, and probably no God.
It's the easy words that'll trip me up. You'd think that after 34 years of marking up galleys (give or take), some things would stick . . . or at least I could proofread without a decent dictionary an arm's length away.
But that's not the case, and it's not because with my impending cognitive descent I am forgetting how to spell. But compound words and the (non)hyphenation thereof always send me scurrying to the Merriam-Webster's 11th, which must be followed.
Consider the following examples:
redheaded or red-headed piggybacked or piggy-backed bathwater or bath water or bath-water good-bye or goodbye grown-up or grownup wood-burning or woodburning
It's this kind of stuff that I have to look up time after time. It's an offhand (off-hand?) application of the Pareto rule or the 80/20 rule, or however you know it: I spend most of my time looking up the same few words over and over again.
(By the way, MW11 says that the first instance of each of the above groupings is the correct spelling.)
American vs. British variants of English words I manage to remember. Class, if you're living in the United States, it's gray, not grey; leaped, not leapt; worshiping, not worshipping -- and if you are spelling "towards," "upwards," and "downwards" with the 's' at the end, you'd better be on the east side of the pond.
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Intern news: a local college is sending an intern my way beginning in January for her to complete her requirements as a technical communications minor (she is an English major). The last time I worked with an intern, I think it worked out well for her. I ended up referring some work to her and thus gave her a client (or part of one) to start a budding freelance career of her own.
And that's what I tell college-age groups when I speak to them. Don't plan on being a full-time freelancer right out of school. Go and get a real job (boy, would I love to put some scare quotes there), and start trying to freelance on the side. Set a goal of having two freelance clients by the time you're 25 years old, and then let it snowball with references and marketing and staying in place while all the full-time workers switch jobs and take your name with them. Aside from the age, that's how it worked with me -- although it was hardly that methodical. Many lucky breaks and connections, and in one case, the benefit of a writer/editor friend who never stayed at one job more than nine months. At one time I had eight different clients that resulted from places where he'd darken the doors for a little while and then leave. But he'd bring my name with him and leave it behind when the door hit his butt on the way out. Thanks, Tim.
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Interesting weekend, not all good. Went to a wedding party of a longtime (not long-time) friend whom I met while proofreading at a printing plant right out of college. We became very fast friends, the kind of thing that happens when you work with someone in cramped quarters under high pressure for little money for 70 hours a week -- and you have common interests to boot. At this party were people I'd not seen for anywhere from 10 to 15 to 25 years. While we've all grown older, whether or not we've grown up much is up for questioning. But a great time was had by all in reconnecting. A friend who hadn't seen me in years told Tere that she couldn't believe how talkative I've become -- like a different person. I think it's partially the effect of spending most of my waking hours these days in even more cramped quarters under higher pressure, alone. But I think what blew this friend away was seeing me even being chatty with strangers. Yes, I am a different person than I was in 1985/1990. I'm not sure I've grown up as much as figured out partially what it's like to act more like a human.
We spent the night in that town and then drove straight to the family visitation hours for a funeral of a 22-year-old we watched grow up, the son of our longtime next-door neighbors in Atlanta. Very, very sad. I won't go into details of the death, which apparently are a little sketchier than first believed, but suffice it to say that no 22-year-old oughta die, leaving behind parents and a younger brother. The late 22-year-old, his 19-year-old brother, my 19-year-old son, and my soon-to-be 16-year-old all grew up together, and we kept connections even after moving away from Atlanta, and we remain very good friends with the parents and surviving son, so it was a tough couple of days.
But speaking of reconnecting, we also at the funeral and visitation saw a bunch of people whom we hadn't seen nor spoken to since leaving ATL in 1997 -- and not all of whom we necessarily looked forward to seeing again, unlike the wedding. And we also saw a lot of the kids we knew back when they were 6 and 9 and 12 years old, now into late teenage and early adulthood years. Now, no one's kids are perfect -- certainly not my own -- but, well, if looking at most of them is any indication, I'm glad we moved away. I don't think any of them or their parents will happen upon this blog, and those who might get a resentment based on what I said will just be adding to the resentments they had 11 years ago. A few of the kids looked like they turned out all right (alright?), but, well. . . . 'Nuff said. Probably too much.
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Working on a book about the women of Opus Dei, as well as the memoirs of a Hungarian woman, mostly during WWII. Horrifying material thematically in the latter, the stuff of nightmares. But in comparison to most of the work I get, this reading is bordering on the pleasant. I know it won't last long.
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Found out over the weekend at the wedding party that most of my international readership is actually a globetrotting industrialist friend of mine checking in from foreign locales. So, instead of Moi and a cast of a score or two, I've got Moi and the industrialist, bless their souls, and someone who keeps checking in from NYC (could be my bro.) and a curious soul from Amherst MA. I think I'm the more curious one about that. Perhaps some things are better kept a secret. ======
Gone on too long. Opus Dei awaits, and thence to bed.
There's a little widget off to the right-hand side of this blog from a company called Feedjit. It allows me (and perhaps you, I don't know) to look at where people come to this blog from and what brings them here. I don't know specifically who is checking in, but I can see that I get a lot of repeat viewers from some towns, and I can also see what terms they were searching that might have led them here for the first time.
Deep down, I have mixed feelings about this little gadget. On some level, I wonder if I am part of the move toward invasion of privacy (Moi, give me a gut-check here. What do you think?) in that I'm monitoring people's actions in cyberspace. On the other hand, this is my little piece of real estate -- actually designed as a marketing tool for my services -- so to the extent that it might help me draw more people to an awareness of my services, I should mine it for what it's worth. Hence, the title of this blog entry, which I might get around to eventually.
A favorite story of mine is a guy who moved to a small town and wanted to establish himself as a regular at the local diner. So he goes into the diner every day for six months, sits at the counter in front of the same waitress, and orders the same thing. Every day. Six months.
Finally he gets up the nerve to test whether he's established himself as one of the locals. He sits down at the counter and, screwing up all his courage, tells the waitress, "I'll have the usual."
She says, "You mean the regular."
He says, "OK. The regular."
And she responds, "Fine. In your case, what would that be?"
As my kids would say, "Pwned." (If you don't know any teenagers or gamers, you'll have to look that one up.)
I used to guard against this, because private individual that I wanted to be, I would go into restaurants where I was indeed a regular, or a usual, and intentionally order something against type once in a while just not to be so predictable. This was especially the case in Atlanta when I was single and tended to frequent the same places to eat . . . where the waitrons would think they'd know my order, and I'd ask for something else.
(Why are people so weird? More to the point, why am I?)
So, I'm looking at feedjit, and there appears to be more interest in style sheets; that is to say, people often find my site looking for information on style sheets. And I've made my point in a number of posts on this blog what I think about style sheets: that they are largely a worthless endeavor because most typically they either (1) repeat what is already in Chicago or Merriam-Webster's, (2) are rarely accurate because the people who create them often don't bother to follow through on what they are trying to standardize, or (3) seem to be a way for copyeditors to show off how meticulous they can be. As a proofreader, do I really want a 15-page, 2-column list of every proper noun in the book? Do I have time to check every proper noun I read against this list? As a copyeditor, do I have time to compile this list? For proper nouns as a copyeditor, presuming I receive an electronic copy of the manuscript, I can create a custom dictionary that will capture these names, but stopping as I'm editing a book and writing them down or keying them in? Hell, that's hard work.
And it would be nice to think that one could trust authors to get their own information right, but, well, they are authors -- the banes of the publishing industry. When you work regularly with PhDs who don't seem to know how to compose a footnote, let's just say that skepticism comes easy.
If you've happened upon this blog looking for information, and you're not finding what you want to read, send me an email, or post a comment, and I guarantee I will respond to you. Guarantee.
One of the reasons I started this blog was to demystify the process of what I do. An accountant friend of mine once said that I should have been a CPA, because my greatest skill is the ability to stick with incredibly boring materials for a long period of time. And he might be right. There are editors out there who know more about grammar than I do, and who can improve people's writing better than I can, and who might actually have some knowledge about what they are reading. I wish them all the best. Can they do it day after day, night after night, year after year, oblivious to the content but focusing on the task, and hopefully maintain some sense of humor about it and not turn into prima donnas?
I've seen some freelance editing websites where it seemed like most of the people were intent on keeping all this stuff a secret, or not telling people their rates, or going to the mats over the difference between "complicated" and "complex." And I've seen people's websites where they list all their areas of expertise, but don't name a client and don't post a rate sheet. Not that what I'm doing here should be a model for everyone else. It's just my approach, for better or worse. Only a few of my clients I think have ever visited here, and actually I think they were prospective clients for whom I ended up doing a book or two. Probably the last thing my regular (usual) clients need to know is what's going on in my head. As I've said, the best verification I get for my work is repeat business and timely paychecks. And if you look at my client list on this blog, just about every one of those clients is an organization I've worked for in the last 18 months, and many of them are pretty steady. For one in particular, I probably work on about 30 titles a year, at least. Praise Dan, from whom many blessings flow.
So, back to the privacy issue. I'd love to know who some of these folks are who check in regularly. I know Moi, obviously, because you can see her comments and I know where she lives. But there are a few localities that I just wonder. I have some suspicions, and in the interest of keeping things private, I'm not going to call them out here.
If you are a regular visitor to this blog (you know who you are, even if I don't), thanks for checking in even if you don't post a comment or send me an email -- although I'd love to hear from you. And I really mean the following:if you are legitimately looking for answers to questions about copyediting or proofreading or indexing, get in touch with me via email or phone or whatever. It's to my benefit that the overall tide of freelance editors remains as high as possible, because it helps everyone and convinces people of the worthiness of this service if people are receiving quality editorial help for their money. And if you learn more or get some knowledge from me, you're not going to take away any of my business. There's enough business to go around -- for the people who are good at this and get their name out there.
There's one convention I go to every few years if it's close enough to where I live and I have a more or less free place to stay when I get there (yes, I'm cheap; the entrance fee to the convention is expensive enough). And when I get down to the convention display floor -- essentially for a few days the world's largest religious bookstore -- I am amazed and perturbed at how many of the exhibitors are not clients of mine. While I might be working for 15 or 20 of them, there are another 100 that have never heard of me and that are getting along quite well without me (and vice versa). But they're using someone. And that's just religious publishing. There are dozens of publishing fields out there that use freelancers like me. And if you happen to be a publisher of (I saw this category in some publishers' listing a few years ago) lesbian science fiction, hey, I can use a break now and then from reading yet another book about the baby Jesus. Give me a call.
So, I'm indexing this rather thoughtful tome entitled Quenching Hell: The Mystical Theology of William Law. On second read, I am getting an idea of what the book is about, but as with most of the stuff I work on . . . right over my head.
Then comes the first A-level head in the last chapter: "Baby's on Fire." There is no subsequent text in the chapter to justify the use of this header.
Folks, "Baby's on Fire" is one twisted Brian Eno song that appears on the most excellent album pictured here (as well as on Here Come the Warm Jets). If you can't read the type, this is a concert album featuring Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Eno, and Nico. Plenty of good stuff to recommend.
The lyrics appear below. And if anyone can tell me what the connection is, or if the author -- one Alan Gregory -- happens upon this blog and can explain the reference, I would be most appreciative.
Baby's on fire
Better throw her in the water
Look at her laughing
Like a heifer to the slaughter
Baby's on fire
And all the laughing boys are bitching
Waiting for photos
Oh the plot is so bewitching
Rescuers row row
Do your best to change the subject
Blow the wind blow blow
Lend some assistance to the object
Photographers snip snap
Take your time she's only burning
This kind of experience
Is necessary for her learning
If you'll be my flotsam
I could be half the man I used to
They said you were hot stuff
And that's what Baby's been reduced to
Juanita and Juan
Very clever with maraccas
Making their fortunes
Selling second-hand tobaccoes
Juan dances at Chico's
And when the clients are evicted
He empties the ashtrays
And pockets all that he's collected
But Baby's on fire!
And all the instruments agree that
Her temperature's rising
But any idiot would know that.
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Late update: I just wrote to the author. We'll see.
