As I Was Saying

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jessica Thompson: A Remembrance

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

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

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

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

One of my fellow copy chiefs died yesterday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shout Out to DSSers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Year in Review 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, almost forgot about my much-reviled client.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to work.

Quote of the Day

From today's proofreading project:

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

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

Another Indexing Dilemma

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

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

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

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

Happy Holidays

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

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

--Alan Price

The Spirit of Christmas

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

Take a dump for Jesus.

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

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

Judgment Call

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

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

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

Getting What You Pay For

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

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

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

To Boldly Go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

John:

I can do it, but a few things:

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

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

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

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

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

===========

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

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

Confusing index entry for today

From a book dealing with America as a Christian nation:

Martin, Luther

Blowback from the Editorial Desk

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

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

====

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

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

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

=======

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

 No word yet from the publisher's managing editor.

Guidelines Minutiae

Indexing

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

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

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

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

Copyediting

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

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

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

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

====

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

Random Notes

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

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

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

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

Says It All

Occasionally, This Job IS Fun

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

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

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

A Tense Few Hours

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nonplussed, that prompted a hasty response from me:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks.
Bob

Responses, sent over a few emails:

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

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

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

tell me what to do.

———

From me:

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

———

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

———

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

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

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

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

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