Response to a Copyediting Query from a Previously Slowing-Down Client

Hi.

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.

Excelsior,

Bob

Haven't Been Here in a While

In the words of Warren Zevon in his own version of "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me," "I don't wanna talk about it." I will say that things are a whole lot different now than they were just prior to my 59th birthday, the dateline of the prior post. Yow.

The hands-down best part of the changes is that I recently became a first-time grandfather, so wonderful things do happen. Our son and daughter-in-law have decided that once our granddaughter has a recognizable face, she will also have no social media presence. They won't be posting pictures for public viewing, and I'm sure it'll be a long time before their child does. And my kids are not Luddites by any means, DIL included. Nor do they particularly put themselves out there, at least via the only medium that I very, very occasionally access: the much-dreaded Rat's Nest; both sons have abandoned it, and our daughter-in-law might post twice or thrice a year. I think they do Instagram stuff, but I don't really know (or know what that is) nor do I care. All three can stare into their phones for hours with the best of them, although the new parents now have a better way to spend their time.

And no photo of my most brilliant and beautiful granddaughter will appear here, because it wouldn't last long anyway. Scroll down a little and you'll see that Blogger has scrubbed the picture of the mascot and me, for godsake. I'm not sure which of us triggered the facial recognition bots. Google years ago wiped out from this blog the photo of the czarina and me with John Cale . . . and also wiped out, at least on my side, the same photo as an attachment to an email to an author in Israel, for whom I was writing an index. Thankfully the author did receive the email and the photo deletion didn't until occur until sometime down the line. But it still makes you go hmmm, as some long-forgotten sort-of comic would say.

Just got through the leanest month in the modern history of LandonDemand. September's already looking better, which isn't saying much, unless folks bail on me. It's happened before. Or something is moved to next season. Or a well-known university press gets a job back three weeks early—a true sign of my lack of stuff to do—but the Holy Grail known as the Purchase Order Number has not yet been assigned. And I start what becomes a string of worldwide emails to get one. I mean, talk about no good deed goes unpunished.

On the other hand, with this same press, I once filed an invoice on Thursday morning and was paid late that afternoon, direct depozick [sic]. So I can't really complain.

I just realized that the insomnia I've been battling for much of this year could have been spent right here. Anyone out there reading this is very, very lucky that I've not happened upon that notion before now. I've been unleashing the word horde (thanks, Wm. S. Burroughs) upon any poor soul who'll stand still long enough. (See paragraph 1.)

And no more comments. Sorry. The spammers are getting past the meager defense that Blogger provides. I'm always available via landondemand@gmail.com, often too much so. Write me, especially if I don't know you.

End in Sight, It Must Be Right

Two weeks in, and my wife appears to be headed home later today (Monday). Fingers are crossed. I'm spending the night here, writing an index in a dark hospital room in the middle of the night. It's about 10 degrees outside. Tere is resting quite comfortably, and I've managed to find 9 hours of music-type sounds that mimic our backyard, once you filter out the barking dogs, whom I hope to spring on Tuesday from a week of boarding, which followed a week of bizarre nonroutines for them. Poor puppies. But Tere's got something to listen to overnight instead of the occasional person hollin' oudda they head.

Our outdoor cats (in my mind, they're outdoor) seem to have flown the coop. While I feed them, I'm sure they know that Tere is their main advocate, and they probably sense she's not there. And once the dogs were boarded, the cats didn't have much entertainment or other warm bodies to rub up against. But I kept putting food out, and they'd show up occasionally. Not so much the last few days.

World's Handsomest Mutt Zooey doesn't pay much attention to the felines, but the hound and the gray cat, Suzzy, are buddies. Suzzy and Maggie, our little tortoise-shell beast, are both hunters and pretty clever, and I have no concern that they could survive outdoors. Maybe someone else has taken them in and is letting them pee on their valued rugs.

Once Tere and the dogs are repatriated to the Commonwealth, with my luck the cats'll show back up.

I remember when we left Florida 19 years ago, we had a crazy indoor/outdoor cat that we hoped wouldn't show back up when moving day came. She'd disappear for a week or two at a time, so long absences weren't uncommon, but by the time I finally pulled up stakes, four weeks had passed since I last saw her. Probably nabbed by a hawk or decided to seek higher ground on the mainland. I remember leaving the house for the last time, thinking, Georgia, please don't show up. Because if she did, I'd have been compelled to take her with me. I am not going to knowingly leave a pet behind, even a cat that could survive perfectly well on the North Florida coast surrounded by seafood, barring outdoor dangers. In 33 years, we've only ever lost one cat to a car, and it was a great cat. Poor Hobbes. And poor Otis, another great animal and Elvis's mentor, probably succumbed to the circle of life near the marsh, or he started walking back to Atlanta, when we moved to Fernandina.

We had Elvis for 19 years, and after him, I'm pretty ambivalent about cats. If one's around, that's fine, but it better be doing its business out of doors. Every. Goddamn. Time.

Six Steps to Enjoying Your Editorial Work Environment

1. For a variety of reasons, have the thermostat set at 57 degrees through about four or five winters in one's home.

2. Develop Reynaud's Syndrome, so that the longer digits on one's right hand turn a deathly, pasty, waxy white while sitting in one's office, which is surrounded on three sides by brick and drafty ninety-year-old windows, with no insulation above and garage below.

3. Go into hock to get the damn heat pump replaced.

4. Turn thermostat to 68 degrees.

5. Puzzle through about half an hour of not knowing how to respond to the climate change without weeping.

6. Get over it, and get back to the production line. Too bad the line is suffering temporary difficulties because the current project is a complete nightmare.

How to Market Your Editing Services at an Annual Convention

You can make it real easy by already having the following:

• 35 years of experience
• no need for additional but only replacement work
• an exhibit hall full of present clients who can and will happily leave their perch and vouch for one's services 

Thankfully, I've accumulated the items on that list. Reports from AAR/SBL 2018 to follow (or will appear above, eventually).

One thing that occurred to me just now: That dopey English professor at UMass-Lowell who refused to pay me for an index a few years back and that dopey southern university press (link most intentional*) that agreed he was an @hole of an author but refused to stand behind me wash far in the background when I'm meeting face-to-face with world-class theologians and publishers who are genuinely happy to speak with me and who value my work -- and who lament my (mostly) getting out of indexing.

So many nice people. And coming from where I live, being in a gathering of thousands of scholars, none of whom appear to be morbidly obese or emaciated and meth-driven, was joyous. From the time I left Tri-Cities, TN, airport on Friday morning -- traveling through the ATL airport, 2.5 days in downtown Denver, coming back -- I did not see a single morbidly obese person until returning to the gate for the return flight to Tri-Cities. A woman in her mid- to late 20s, and a two-seater.

* LSU Press notwithstanding. Tennessee also.

News Report

I remain news-free. Twelve days. A lot of people still are moving and smiling, and not just the crazy ones. And I feel a lot better.

No News Is Good News

I couldn't tell you one single local, national, or international event that has taken place in the last six days. I feel pretty good about it.

New Blog Approach

It’s what you might call multipurposing of related content. Scholars do it all the time. If I had a dollar every time I saw an author with a virtually identically titled article published the same year in a different journal, and it was a book chapter somewhere else and a presentation at a conference, I’d be able to make the next payment on my Lamborghini.

And this way, I’m sorta always on topic. Unless I need to throw down for an hour on the therapist’s couch.

I gotta buncha killer emails to India to post. Good lord. Being that angry all morning, from the time your eyes have barely cleared, is no fun.

Reminded of a line from Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, as I often am. The players had been asked to report for batting practice at 10am in advance of a 12:30pm start because of a nationally televised game. One of the players said, “Ten o’clock? I'm not even done throwing up by then.”

+++

By the way, on this note from your email—and not apropos to this project—

Endnotes no longer need to be provided as separate document as InDesign has a new feature available in its latest edition of the platform.

First, that’s great news. Second, one day I’d like to sit down with all the designers and typesetters and managing editors I work with and say, “OK, Just what the hell can InDesign do?” Because, as far as I know, all my folks use InDesign but they all tell me different things. And I don’t know what designers are doing on their ends that I should probably be doing, or what I’m doing that I don’t need to be doing (such as HTML coding if InDesign can pick up a bulleted list). 

I’ve heard different things for years about notes and lists and tables and style sheets (thank you, [name of press here]) and so much else. There’s one press I work for, and the designer absolutely refuses to learn how to do style sheets. They’re in InDesign, of course, right? You match up the style sheet in Word with the style sheet in InDesign and voila? The jobs are basically novels and memoirs, very little formatting, and my life would be so much easier if I could just use style sheets—which very, very few presses use, I’m sorry to say. The two times I tried style sheets, he wrote the publisher like the world was going to end. I tried to explain it to him up front. He was agreeable. Then no way. Not gonna do it. 

I've Been in a Mood

I'd say it started about two weeks ago. The czarina had gone off to Atlanta to stay with friends in their recently rebuilt home in what used to be a fear zone close to downtown. When our friend moved there 25 years ago, Domino's wouldn't deliver. Now, it's great. The czarina left essentially to lay eyes on our older son, who was there to be in a wedding of some people he'd met while acting. We hadn't seen him since, uh, July, and before that it was way back in, uh, June. Yeah, well, whatever. 

A hurricane was moving through Atlanta, so the wedding was moved across the street. It was supposed to be where the czarina and I were hitched, oddly enough. Our son was going to be a groosman at the same place. They still dressed there, and the restaurant, now under a different name, had at least one Thornton Dial on the wall, as well as some other cool stuff. Mitchell had everyone talking about the art.

I was here in Bristol, baby, with the shedding menagerie. My father's eighty-fifth birthday would have been the seventh of the month; my work game has been off; the electronic gig had backed up two weeks of work into about four days, on top of the usual Lucy and the chocolates; mid-October was coming; eating, sleeping, basic maintenance, all shot to hell . . . I'm down to 177, and the last time I saw that, I was on my way to 145. Couple years after my mother died. "Lotta ins and outs. Lotta what-have-yous."

So—how much you getting paid for this?—I just sent off an index for a book to a company that has certainly in some way affected your life in a significant way (this readership's life) with ramifications, published by a university you know, by some coeditors who are or were the equivalent of C-suite gentlemen in this particular field. "Not exactly lightweights," judging from their bios. 

I'm feeling a little better having accomplished something, and I guess I was feeling my oats. This was after asking the receiver of the invoice if I could send and he could process speedy delivery. I've never worked with the guy or any of these people before, except the press, which won't be involved until I send the index to them author-approved.

Nine hours after the fact, I'm rereading the email I sent them. I guess it's professional enough. The letter is verbatim from Gmail. I love it because I can use it again and again. Absolutely generic, except I did take out the name of the university. It's somewhere east of the Mississippi, I'm pretty certain.

A peek behind the curtain. The underlying tone is, "I really hope you leave this thing alone." I'm almost scared to send off an index anymore. It's also coming up on the one-year anniversary of that experience. I'm not sure I ever addressed that incident in this space. Lordy. Pathetic. Talk about some horseshit scholarship. 

+++

Hi, all. First, thanks again for your patience, and apologies for the earlier bait-and-switch.

I've attached the index manuscript as well as a marked-up PDF noting some things I saw along the way. You've probably already caught most of these issues while reviewing the page proofs.

From looking at your distinguished bios, I'm guessing y'all have been to this rodeo before, but a few notes:

* Multiauthor books present a challenge in that different chapters, especially if they've been printed elsewhere before, might refer to the same concepts using slightly different language. I've tried to consolidate different terminology here, so please keep an eye out for where I may have misinterpreted. I've also presented a lot of cross-references but may have missed opportunities for additional ones. Feel free to add.

* Another challenge with this type of book is avoiding the rabbit hole of trying to present data in the index in addition to the conceptual items. Of course, with an index, a guide to the book's data is not desired. The index would become unwieldy very quickly, and it's also against standard indexing practices, as XXUP's guidelines aver.

* If you want to make or handle any changes on your side, please do so, although track the changes so that I can see what you've done, to ensure that the index still adheres to standard protocols.

The deadline for the press is Monday, 10/23. Hopefully you'll find the index to your liking and any back-and-forth will be brief (although, of course, the index needs to satisfy the authors, within reasonable constraints). I do have a few very minor queries in the index. If you could address to those, I'd appreciate it. They may result in no changes at all.

If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks for an interesting read.

Innocence and Experience

I wasn't going to post the following quote, as it's a bit humbling, but I loved the response it generated.

From an author for whom I've done one index -- although we struck up a fast friendship while doing so:

XXX is a good egg, and I think you'd like her book. I hope it works out for the two of you to work together. I told her the truth about you: that I've met no one better at their job than you are at yours. Also, how easy, fun and stimulating it is to work with you.

 

I passed that comment along to a managing editor for whom I've done hundreds of indexes, copyedits, and proofreads. The response?

 

You are good, but you are very strange...

An Email I Will Long Cherish

From a dear friend of mine -- the only person's whose Facebook friend request I ever accepted, and even that for only a week -- whom I met in our first job out of our respective colleges. We whiled away the hours, mostly second shift, proofreading airline timetables and lottery tickets. We became fast friends, enjoying music, the early Letterman years, Braves baseball, and a variety of other effects. In retrospect it is unreal to recall that we only worked together for eight months, because we bonded for life, although we don't communicate frequently. But my wife is a Facebook friend of his. . . .

My friend is fifty-eight years old and has a delightful six-year-old son, which informs the email I received today:

Hey.

Just wanted to tell you that the Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers live CD has grabbed a spot in Zachary's brain. We listened to it a good bit for a week or so after you sent it to me, and then a couple of times here and there. Yesterday, he was walking around muttering "dum de dum de dum dittle um day, oh New England!" and I just had to laugh. That's not even one of the songs we've played a lot. We were in a loop of playing "I'm a Little Airplane," "Ice Cream Man," "I'm a Little Dinosaur," and "My Little Kookenhaken."

So we had to play "New England" like 3 times on the way to school today.

You are one subversive motherfncker.

More Lattice

Just finished indexing a marvelous book: The New Space: Movement and Experience in Viennese Modern Architecture, by Christopher Long.

I write that, well, just about never -- especially when I've just sent in the invoice.

This story has a point. Maybe more.

The next PDF I open is Modernism and Opera. I won't mention the authors, just in case.

For the following, turn off your sound for five seconds. Those ads are obscene.

It's too bad that I'll be working on these books almost a month apart. I might begin to learn something. Only the strange and useless will stick after 30 days.

Something I have learned, however, in indexing the second of Prof. Long's books, is that indexing is much easier when the writing is crystal clear, as well as academic without being too scholarly or flowery.

I hope he's a professor somewhere. We're going to a graduation this weekend, and I suppose I'll see a few. Son and future daughter-in-law are receiving their MATs, and the University is finally deigning to award our son Harry the bachelor's he earned a year ago. Never quite figured that one out. Maybe he got it.

Don't come around the house. Two vicious animals will still be in residence.

My wife has recently spoken of perhaps taking possession of a young one of these . . . although nothing else is one of these:

Elvis, 1996-2015

You Read It Here First

Or maybe not. AP sez "internet" is lowercased as of June 1, 2016.

A lot's actually happened since the last post. In no particular order, trip to Chicago that included seeing son no. 1 perform, a few other wild cultural events, and a trip to the Baha'i Temple north of Chicago, which is simply breathtaking.

And it's also possible to experience peace. I know because I've had the same feeling in two similar but wildly disparate places: the Baha'i Temple and -- can you guess, longtime readers -- the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, KY. Tere and I were walking very slowly around the outside of the temple in the dormant gardens area (probably exploding soon) and I leaned over and said, "Feel that? . . . That's what Gethsemani feels like." And she said, "I get it."

Don't want to jinx anything, but I've felt oddly peaceful since that day. I'll take it lasting a while longer.

Good news is rumbling on the Fred Neil front. Just saying.

A fascinating linguistic moment in Chicago. We were at a staging (not exactly a performance) of The Last Defender, which entails a team of 16 working together to prevent nuclear annihilation. Without giving anything away (I hope; the show has been extended five or six months from its original date), at one point people need to line up and hook themselves together. The young woman (say, 30 years old) next to me said to everyone else, "Those of you with the receptive end, get ready."

I leaned over (I do a lot of leaning over and talking to women, I guess) and said, "Very good. 'Receptive.' I never would have come up with that." And she said, "I had to say something, and that was the best I could do."

Folks, a few years from now electrical outlets or tools or what have you won't have a male and a female end anymore.

Oh! Younger son and fiance will be teaching outside Denver in the fall. Haven't even graduated yet. Everyone is most pleased and proud. Son no. 2 is going to be teaching 11th-grade English. His kids are in for a ride.

I think I got on here to do something else.