As the Late-Night Talk Show Hosts Say, "And We're Back."

My pal at one of my publishers said I seemed like a happier person when I was posting to my blog. (I didn't bother to mention the details in which my life's gone to hell since then.) I'm going to attempt again to do so, but it'll be repurposing my daily emails. All will be scrubbed for personal items and, maybe, too-personal revelations, so apologies for any duplication my readers may encounter. But my voluminous email output, since I eschew social media, are my running diary and journal; God only knows if my longsuffering esposa ever happened upon my email and text messages she'd be horrified, and since she only remembers what happens in the present as long as it involves her resentments against me, she'd have plenty of fodder to keep her mind occupied, when she's not chatting with catfishing randos in Egypt. That was yesterday's joy. 

So, reinstallment one of an attempt to keep my vast readership of maybe half-a-dozen—on a good day—forthwith. You get what you pay for.

+++

[In reference to a job offer] Sign me up.

I'm scheduled for surgery on March 14, but Anthem Healthkeepers is fucking me over in astoundingly creative and infuriating ways, so I doubt that date's gonna hold, if it takes place at all, at least with my preferred provider. All Anthem cares about is that my "ventral hernia repair with possible component separation" is done in Virginia, even if that means it's done by a team of snake handlers, barbers, and meth freaks with switchblades and their filed-down vampire teeth, as long as they are in-network. 
But if by some divine intervention (your most unexpected words, given that "it's all fiction") it takes place, I am motivated to have the decks cleared by March 12, since I have to make my way down to Charlotte by myself on March 13 and am horrified to find out that Greyhound doesn't deliver. I guess the days are over when they'll take you anywhere. I was hoping for some interesting adventure. So it'll be a one-way plane ticket arranged by my elder issue, since online booking of air travel might as well be trying to negotiate a Sanskrit-to-Koine-Greek translation for me. Last time I tried to book a plane flight online I think I bought six round-trip tickets, only two of which were necessary. I wrote the other ones off as probably taking too much time and effort to unravel them.

My early March is kinda thin right now anyway, and a 150-page scriptural index shouldn't present much of a problem.  If there's any way you can unearth it from your designer in late February so that I can get it in by the end of the month and not wait 66 days for payment I'd be most appreciative, but I understand if not.

Hope all's well with you. I sure could use me some Bagel Bitch right now. Some of mi esposa's friends claim to be coming up from Atlanta in mid-March for an early prebirthday visit with her, and her Christmas-celebrating Jewish friend will be bringing deli, but it ain't the same. I eagerly await our move to northern Virginia, which may take place sometime this year, when I'll be only 4.5 hours from real NYC bagels and a decent slice of thin and greasy pizza. First stop, though: Dorothy Day's gravesite on Staten Island, at Our Lady of Perpetual Sadomasochism convent, or whatever it's called. Funny if you look it up on Wikipedia. Notables buried there are St. Dorothy-in-waiting and a passel of Staten Island mobsters, which is par for the course. Ah, home.

So, these emails, for as long as I keep it up, will be written with an unidentified third-party reader in the background -- and since you and maybe my other managing editor pal and my brother are the only ones who ever seemed to read the damn thing, I guess you'll find a few things new. But I might post everything, inshallah.

Peace and love,
bl

The Never-Ending Episode

Nothing wrong with the book, but you can piece together the like quotes and understand that this project has been on my mind way too long -- an index scheduled before the partial indexing ban was instituted, although I'll likely take indexes from this publisher as long as they offer them because there's just something to be said about being nice in this world:

Francis Harper and Arthur Leeds’s archival research in Philadelphia coupled with that conducted in London by Francis Pennell and Professor Ernest Earnest of Temple University during the course of Pennell’s literary and biographical research had identified Bartramian manuscripts and copies that had received little previous study.

Let it also be known that the headmaster of my rightfully much-maligned high school had the name of William Magavern Williams. And he graduated Williams College.

And Speaking of My Online Gig, from Which I Am on Hiatus

Thankfully, this ain't me, but there are some interesting parallels:

We get forty little thumbnails, that way we don’t have to watch the video we can instantly see “oh, well there’s some genitals” or “there’s a man’s head but he’s not connected to it” . . . something like that. And we can instantly apply policy. It’s extremely streamlined.

Nice Indexing Juxtaposition

Just the way it turned out. I had nothing to do with it.

trolls, 154–55, 160, 161–62, 168, 177

Trump, Donald, 145, 147n9, 149n13, 167

truth

    communication in service of, 160

    regime of, 39

Today's Index Entry Winner: Everybody in the Pool

But the day is still very young:

Dipolog-Iligan-Ozamis-Pagadian-Ipil-Marawi Committee on Mining Issues, 112 

One Method of Writing a Descriptive Book Title

“The Southern Harmony, and musical companion : containing a choice collection of tunes, hymns, psalms, odes, and anthems : selected from the most eminent authors in the United States : together with nearly one hundred new tunes, which have never before been published ; suited to most of the metres contained in Watts’s hymns and psalms, Mercer’s cluster, Dossey’s choice, Dover selection, Methodist hymn book, and Baptist harmony ; and well adapted to Christian churches of every denomination, singing schools, and private societies : also, an easy introduction to the grounds of music, the rudiments of music, and plain rules for beginners by William Walker.”

Make Your Donation to Wikimedia

I just did. Any editorial professional who doesn't give at least something to these folks should be ashamed. You know you use it.

As Damon Runyon might have written, "Do not be a welch."

Sample Response to Author for Indexing Query

Just sent this letter to an author looking for an indexer. I'd asked for a few sample manuscript chapters since the pages weren't ready yet. I'm also printing it here so that I can use it as boilerplate, not that I'll remember it. I'm so geeked up about going to Denver tomorrow, I'm still working on what should have been finished seven hours ago. Gonna be the usual long night before travel. "Live and don't learn, that's us" (Watterson). I wonder if AAR has ever done a Calvin and Hobbes session. The question should be, "How many?"

+++

Thanks very much, J——. Even though I'm a known quantity to —— Press, I understand their and your stance perfectly.

As far as the prospectus, my first reaction as an indexer is, If I had this before starting any book, my life would be immeasurably easier. I'm just sitting here shaking my head at the thought. I might ask authors or presses for it in the future, and if that's the case, I've gotten my money's worth out of this correspondence already. 

All that notwithstanding, your material has made it with room to spare under my psychic limbo bar. If the job were to come my way and came with the usual 6x9" or 6x9.25" trim size, the rate would be $5 per indexable page, which is generally from the first page of the introduction through the end of the last chapter, inclusive. Add on to that pages for any indexable front matter (maybe a preface, not foreword or acknowledgments) and back matter (notes, not bibliography or appendices [except in the most general of fashion]). For a book around 90K words, maybe 230 pages or so? Of that, usually about 210-15 would be indexable.

So if it's the usual academic trim size, entirely depending on the final page count of indexable material, probably in the $1075 range, give or take. If you're associated with an institution that might be paying for the work, I'd ask to start any necessary payment paperwork (registering as a vendor, submitting a W9) at the beginning of the job. I've found that being a first-time payee can take an inordinately long time, and I like to grease the skids. If paying on your own, I accept checks or—for the more adventuresome or 21st-century, which isn't me—PayPal.

Let me know whatever you decide. I'd like to work with you and will add you to my schedule if that's your call.

Thanks.

+++

And if you're wondering about that rather formal head, I'm putting some knowledge to work. 

Changing the Joint Up

I could just turn space into the equivalent of a Twitter feed, with a 280-thought limit. That gets the diversion monkey off my back and feeds the content monkey at the same time. Hell, if I tripled my readership, I could hit double digits.

Marketing

In advance of said convention, though, I did an incognito search for Bob Land edits (with no quotes). I was pleased with the result, especially with what I am learning about SEO from what in some ways is my best "client."

I was hesitant to put this blog URL on a business card, mostly because every other time I have purchased the usual allotment of 500 cards, something happens to cause them to go out of date after I've distributed about 40 of them—and I never know when the blog might go dormant for another nine months or I just want to pull the plug on the whole thing.

This time, I kept the business card to the essentials, and I left off indexing: name, d/b/a (unofficial), services, email, phone number. And, lordy, the folks running the Minuteman Press on the Tennessee side are a window into the local culture. Cash and checks only. Woman who runs the place gives you a look that pierces right through your eyes to the back of your head, while chortling in a manner than only four-pack-a-day smokers can do. Her husband, I presume, has big ol' muttonchops and some other beardy thing going on. And a grandkid or two and a beagle. I walked in there about 4.10p on Monday, and I think I caught them as they were getting ready to leave, well in advance of closing time at 5p.

Editing Tips

This blog provides editing tips in a more, eh, anecdotal manner. Over the years, though, I've printed more than enough pieces of sample correspondence to use if you want to establish with people you barely know that you're a seething malcontent.

Proofreading Tips

(1) Pick up a copy of Highlights for Children. Go to the page to find differences between the two images. Find them all. (2) When venturing to impress an object of sexual desire, pointing out errors on menus only goes so far.

Indexing Tips

Run. Now.

Authors and Designers: Just Stick with What Works

Letter to a managing editor, in response to an author who wants special symbols by those Bible translations that are his own. The author had suggested an "a" or an asterisk.

"Everyone's got a new wrinkle.

"An 'a' would be confusing: could be a part of a verse. I wouldn't use an asterisk, because people will be looking for what it refers to, like a note. I'd suggest a dagger, but don't you wacky Romanists use that sometimes to indicate a person is dead? 

"A symbol is fine; the more distinct the better, and preferably something people wouldn't associate with a note marker. God forbid it should just say 'author's trans.' like every other fncking book. How about a pentagram, or an uroboros?"

Another book I am working on has one of the goofiest fonts I've ever seen for the sans serif text: when a lower-case f precedes and i, l, or another f, it has a long descender. Why? Because people just can't leave sh!t alone. Everyone's gotta make their mark.

Very prominent theologian or biblical scholar or philosopher—maybe she's all three—has a very particular way she wants her indexes done. Unfortunately no one let me know this while I was dragged through the mill of four rounds of changes, with her probably thinking she was dealing with a drop-dead idiot the entire time. The next year, she has another book with the same press, and it comes to me for indexing. I asked the managing editor, "Are you sure? Does she know it's going to the same indexer?" Yes, yes.

When I knew what she wanted ahead of time, got an immediate approval. Art imitates life. Indexing still sucks.

On the matter of authors, another managing editor mentioned that a book that was coming to me for indexing (I've promised this one press they have me for indexing for five more seasons) came from the desk of her worst proofreader. I have these bighearted managing editors who want to keep sending people money for doing crappy work. They could pay me the same and, well, never mind. So, her worst proofreader turns out to be . . . an author who likes to proofread and index. 

Well, hell. That's your problem right there. Authors generally don't understand either one.

Without going into too much detail, as it's a sad story -- but it's also 4am and I'm between projects and in a holding mode and not at all tired -- we came to know a teenager a few years ago, and I asked him early on, "What kind of work would you like to do as an adult?" He said, "Psychologist." I just shook my head. Never knew a psychologist who wasn't crazy. Ever been to an optometrist who had 20/20 vision?

Two-three years later, poor kid is dead. Born into truly unimaginable (for me) wealth and privilege, off-the-charts intelligent, and never given a chance to develop a single tool to deal. Sooner or later, that's gonna catch up with you.

Is there any point here? Eh, not really. Let me know if you figure one out. 

"Between the idea and the reality / falls the shadow"? That always works.

My God, Would It Just Kill Ya?

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.


Ah, woe.

Where's That 3D Printer When I Need It?

Because I'd like to take this author's attitude, copy it, and embed it in the mind of all the authors out there who think they know what belongs in an index, all the evidence to the contrary.

I'd also like to send him flowers, even though the first line of his email scared the living hell out of me.

+++++

Hi Bob,

I hired you because I figured you know how to do an index. The last one I did took too much time.

So I am just going with the index you produced.

Scott

Nothing Worse

I think the worst part of my job is dealing with authors who want to remake an index because they "don't understand the rationale" behind, well, apparently anything. I'm dealing now, thankfully at second-hand, with a volume editor who is wondering why a particular phrase, which must be wrong, is appearing in the index.

Because it's not only a term, it's right where the index says it is.

I finally responded to the press, somewhere within about a four-email string of seething rage, that if the editor didn't like the term in the index, they should take it out of the book.

Oh, an email just came in. Maybe it's from India, telling me what else is wrong. I hate waking up to emails from India. They are never good. Work requests don't seem to come at dawn.

Maybe my problem is going to sleep. I don't know if it's easier to start a day or end a day being just off-the-rails pissed off.

"Ant trade," in case you're wondering.

The Friday News Dump

is going to have to wait. If I wasn't wore out, I'd work up quite a rant against authors who once again just don't know what they're doing—and that's not by my standards. Those standards are the ones drilled into me by unforgiving managing editors with reasonable heads on their shoulders. Those standards are the same ones written in the mostly godforsaken 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. I don't think anything is more godforsaken about the new edition than the now-retiring one. They all are.

And AP. God. There's another organization that couldn't find its stylistic ass with both hands.

Authors. I've known a few I'd trust around an index. Indexes are not

* For making connections you neglected to make on page proofs
* For finding terms that your grimy little hands couldn't manage to type on the page in 330 pages of your prose
* For organizing your allegedly comparative text so that the entries are entirely compartmentalized by nation, thus disallowing the reader from seeing at a glance, for example, what the Communist Party might be up to in different countries

Another thing you shouldn't expect an indexer to do unless you've moved the sharp instruments:

* Remove abbreviations "because they are repetitive," and no one needs that cross-reference.

About 5 hours ago, I sent in the second longest index I've ever had to start whittling down. It was brutal. And now I'm back to this index, the longest ever, and of course the work is now unpaid because I'm not getting any extra ducats to do this review. It's all going through India [ugh]. Say it twice.

And the labels function ain't workin' on this thing. That ain't good.

PS: And after all that, Cousin Lazar is left on the cutting-room floor. Something seems appropriate about such summary judgment.

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.

Just a Matter of Time

What was the old saying? If you sit on the Left Bank long enough, you’ll eventually see someone you know? That might not be exactly right, but the point’s made.

We have a friend who’s about the same way. No matter where you go in the world, eventually you’ll run into someone who knows him. (Then again, a few of his friends [including the czarina and me] think he may work for The Company -- and if you have to ask, forget about it.)

With all the books I work on, and especially with the nature of my more regular clients, it was only a matter of time before I hit upon a reference to a particular distant cousin of mine. Actually, this same press (it’s Yale) has printed at least one volume of the correspondence between the two people mentioned below. The second one is, indeed, a cousin. No joke. And let’s just say that not all of his accomplishments were as attractive/admirable/mentionable in polite company as putting marble and chandeliers in the subways of a particular city. A more notorious part of his resume is responsibility for the deaths of about 20 to 30 million people.

I've known my whole life the guy was a badass (and he just died in 1991), but I didn't know that his range extended as far as Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

You can pick your friends. . . . And for any people I've ever worked with who might say my editorial tendencies can be a bit authoritarian, well, consider the blood that runs through my veins.

In June 1931, at a “special plenum of the central committee of the All-Union Communist Party,” Stalin and his deputy in charge of the Moscow region, Lazar Kaganovich, had announced that the Communist Party had renounced all “foreign theories” of both urbanism and disurbanism, including those of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. Instead, the new focus would be on Moscow as a model of the urban “socialization of everyday activities,” with Kaganovich in charge of its development.

(l–r) Cousin Lazar (and yes, there's a family resemblance with my maternal grandfather, Morris "Spike" Kaganov), Uncle Joe 

The Reappearance of One of My Favorite Acronyms

Or abbreviations or initialisms. No bandwith, in the parlance of our times, for keeping those items distinct.

MINUSTAH (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti)

Not one of my favorite books, though. The book is pretty good, if only I didn't have to index it. Right now, and I hope I'm close to done with the editing, the index stands at about 16,000 words. I've never paid attention to the word count of an index, but I'm sure by any metric, that number is ridiculous.

A Record I Am Not Happy to Set

Harking back a few days, I appear to be on the way to having a 150-page indexing manuscript to edit down. That's just ridiculous—and it's what I get for caring a little too much.

Proofreading. Lots and lots of proofing. That's what I need. I'm so much calmer with a stack of paper and a red pen. I can deal with disturbing concepts a whole lot better when I'm just reading about them. Having to massage them into indexable form is a different story.

Take a book. Smash it into thousands of little pieces and then put them back together in an entirely different form. Indexing in a nutshell.

Prayers are welcome.

Daily Demands

Working on a 600-page index—40-plus chapters, all different authors, global study of an Issue of Importance. Indexing is different from proofing and copyediting in that longer jobs make for increased difficulty in a way that doesn't affect the red-pencil tasks. Typically indexing problems grow exponentially with length, and indexing problems are not always easily solved. I'm speaking of consolidating entries and subentries and even keeping track of what you've discussed. My usual tendency to overindex also gets worse with length, because I don't want to leave something out that might reemerge 450 pages later—and I want to have enough subentries because the listing will be huge. Sorry, publisher and Chicago, but this index is going to have a lot more than a dozen main entry numbers for UNSCR 1325.

At this point in my life, and I hope this is no jinx, there aren't many hard-to-solve proofreading and copyediting problems. Make a decision, mark the style sheet (in the case of copyediting), and move on. It's someone else's prose and output. Indexing is an original product, the result of decisions I make related to content and wording. It's writing. It's hard. It's not fun.

Before the return to indexing, though, I have some hours to put in for a relatively new client. I try never to mention or allow readers to identify clients here (usually successfully, I think), but one particularly notable employer resulting from some early posting on this blog comes in for a little revisiting. I ranted my way into employment with an Internet publishing outfit called Demand Studios, subsequently Demand Media Studios. If I ever write the book I've been asked to, but never will, that seven-year-long episode could merit a chapter.

But now it's led to a similar gig of reviewing the work of dozens of contributors to a company called Dotdash, which used to be about.com, which predated Google, for Chrissakes. about.com for a short period was the property of the old grey lady, but unfortunately for my great aunt Ettie, I cannot now say that I work for the New York Times. She'd have been pleased. So far, the task almost approaches pleasant. Causes me to learn a few new tools (never bad for this dotard) and actually improves my editing for more scholarly endeavors. And if the gig ever turns south, which I hope it doesn't for a long time, you'll not hear about it here.

Not Exactly Cognitive Dissonance

But it feels very strange to jump between copyediting a biography of Daniel Berrigan and indexing a play-by-play of the activity in al-Anbar province, Iraq, circa 2006.