widows & orphans

New Book on Developmental Editing

2009-05-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

"I once had an author who railed at me for not finding an 'appropriate' copyeditor for her manuscript. Her book explored how to interpret Latin American political history using game theory. She expressed dismay that her copyeditor was not an expert in these two fields, and moreover had no Portuguese and only rudimentary Spanish. I explained to her, as tactfully as possible, that a person with mastery of those four domains was not likely to choose freelance copyediting as a career."

Find New Ways to Publish -- or Perish

2009-05-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

There's no question our field has changed dramatically in the last two decades. How many of us work on bluelines anymore? When was the last time you copyedited with a red pencil instead of Track Changes? Or proofread for printer's errors on galleys?

Just writing that makes this cranky editor feel old. She also remembers her first job when she moved to Seattle in '93: selling books at the venerable Elliott Bay Book Company. Hand-selling books. At a brick-and-mortar (where seemingly steadfast bookshelves swung out to reveal secret caches of overstock in hidden rooms, employees could be caught stroking the books like lovers, and the smell of baking ginger-molasses cookies wafted from a cafe that was not a Starbucks).

But we know the only constant is change, so I'll ditch the sentimentality and get to the point. It's obvious by now that publishing is in the process of reinventing itself (or, more accurately, being pressured to do so or die). Here are a few of its new incarnations:

I'd Like a Vanilla Soy Latte and a Copy of Moby Dick, Please.
The UK Daily Mail reports the Blackwell book chain is testing out a new device that can print out a book -- cover, binding, and all -- in the time it takes to brew an espresso. The store currently offers 400,000 titles and hopes to expand to more than 1 million by the summer.

Coffee and books, now who would've thought!

I Can't Talk Now, I'm Reading
AP reports that Amazon just bought a company called Lexcycle, which has an app (Stanza) that lets you download books to your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Apparently Kindle is just too darn big; maybe readers only want to take it one stanza at a time.

Offset Is Offline
OK, this isn't exactly breaking news, but I hadn't heard about it, so I thought perhaps some of you hadn't either. It seems that Kodak's come up with a digital inkjet printer, Stream, that combines the best of both worlds: the speed of traditional offset printing (up to 24 mph) with the digital flexibility to cheaply customize content. BusinessWeek notes that "The global printing industry is just at the beginning of a big digital transformation. ... Readers could tell publishers the sort of content they want; it's not hard to imagine subscribers receiving thousands of distinct printed copies of this magazine."

Let's hope customized content = more editing/proofing jobs and not just more typos.

A Sight for Sore Eyes

2009-04-28T09:33:00.001-07:00

Now that I'm again feasting, I've noticed my eyes have not quite adjusted to being back at work. Spending eight or more hours alone staring at a computer monitor can do funny things to a person, such as exacerbating an already existing tendency to mutter to oneself. Deadlines = a loss of personal hygiene + a gain in takeout pizza consumption. (That's a topic for another post, oh yes.)

But it's the eyes that really take a beating in our profession: sore, dry, achy. Tired.

I'm sure anyone reading this (hello? anyone out there?) is familiar with the proper ergonomic positioning of monitors, Computer Vision Syndrome, and the need to, well, BLINK every once in a while.

Yet those in the editing/proofing trenches also know that hours can go by before you remind yourself to take a break.

Your Cranky Editor has found a wee solution to this professional hazard, which she doesn't mind telling you she ripped off from a client, and which she humbly shares here. (Nope, she's not getting a kickback from the client, just providing the link in the interests of fair attribution. Nor does she make any claims about how this exercise will improve your health or vision; side effects may include ... ; consult your doctor; etc., etc., insert your legalese here.)

It's called the 10-10-10 Rule, and as simple and commonsense as it sounds, it bears repeating:

Take a break every 10 minutes, looking at an object at least 10 feet away for at least 10 seconds.

Now, I'm lucky enough to have a window next to my desk. I've found that forcibly stopping myself mid-edit and gazing at the tree across the way does wonders for my eyes, my mood, and my ability to rewrite a dangler. But even if your desk faces a wall or some such non-natural sight, you can position a houseplant somewhere around you and look at that. (Notice how the green font above is instantly soothing?) And you can write that plant off on your taxes!

Try it. See if it helps you. I've also found that it works better than a game of Spider Solitaire when you're in the middle of grappling with a particularly hairy, obtuse sentence/'graph and your mind is about to explode.

Feasting

2009-04-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

After two weeks of enforced downtime, the gods of freelance are again smiling on me. Which makes me wonder why I ever bother to worry about work, as I know from experience that "feast or famine" is the law in the freelance kingdom.

It also makes me wonder about that idiom's origins.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms notes that "this expression, which transfers an overabundance or shortage of food to numerous other undertakings, was first recorded in 1732 as 'feast or fast,' the noun famine being substituted in the early 1900s." As you might expect, one of the examples listed refers to freelancing.

Hmm, what changed in the early 1900s? And when did the expression become so associated with freelancing?

I'll have to do some digging -- when I'm next in famine mode.

Facebook Fracas

2009-04-20T21:19:00.000-07:00

Well, more like a minor drama, as no noses were broken nor chairs thrown. But words were, with the result that a scant two weeks after my entree into online social networking, I have "unfriended" someone.

It started with that most innocent of Facebook activities, the friend request. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been "friended" by a few of the people who share my not-very-common surname (apparently more common than I'd thought).

Funny how that one tenuous link -- just some letters, really, if you think about it -- is enough to melt your reserve, so that you throw open the doors and say, "Come on in!" Admittedly, this is not your actual house, but for those of us who spend most of our days alone on the computer, Facebook can quickly come to feel like home, just as our virtual desktop -- ordered with files, "sticky notes," a background photo, say, of someone we love -- is somehow more our office than our physical desktop (which, if you're like me, is covered in style sheet hard copies, plates topped with the crumbs of yesterday's lunch, and mugs half filled with stale coffee).

So when I saw those letters so familiar to me, I immediately stamped the visa. Then came a flood of "updates" (paraphrasing here) which gave me a few seconds' pause: "I had tuna for lunch," "I am brushing my hair," "My top 5 [albums, people I want to punch, movie stars I've met, etc. ad infinitum, blah,blah,blah]."

Now, don't get me wrong: posts like those are the lifeblood of Facebook; what, in my opinion, has made it so wildly successful. It's just that some people can overdo it. A fact that I try to keep in mind when I post, though as they say, one woman's treasure is another woman's junk.

The babble I could ignore. It was the censorship that got my attention.

My Facebook relative, like seemingly everyone else on the planet last week, took a public stance on the Susan Boyle story. A nasty, mean-spirited stance, but still. We all have a right to our opinion.

I posted a comment challenging that stance, then went off to work in the garden and eat dinner.

When I returned to my desk, prior to turning off the computer, I checked Facebook one last time -- and noticed that my post was gone. Airbrushed out of existence, like a movie star's cellulite or Stalin's enemies.

As a FB newbie, I didn't realize you could just "disappear" comments. But there you have it. You can also make friends disappear too, via the "edit" link on your friends list. Which I did, after registering my dismay at being censored. Ah, the irony. It reminds me of high school, without the inedible cafeteria cuisine. But I don't think I'll disappear my Facebook page just yet.

Ashton Kutcher Is Famous and I'm Not

2009-04-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

But of course the question is, if I join Twitter, can I become famous? Or, er, get some new clients or something?

Though the Cranky Editor ensconced herself in her living room for half an hour on a gorgeous Friday afternoon last week, she did not discover the answer on Oprah. She did find out that Ashton beat CNN to be the first to hit the million mark in Tweeterland (i.e., a million Tweeters? Twitterers? Twits? -- depends on your perspective, I guess -- now follow his "stream" ... of consciousness, which he and Oprah and Gail cited as an example of democratization [ugh, that word!]).

She also found out what the interface looked like (like this, if you're a handsome rich Hollywood type), and that Twitter messages (aka Tweets) are limited to 140 characters or less, and that even the mighty O herself hasn't a clue what this new technology is really good for.

That made CE feel better, though she's wondering about the future of actual books, with their unhip many thousands of characters, and attention spans and the ability to express sophisticated, subtle ideas. She thinks if Dickens were here, he'd be all over it, Derrida too, of course; Sartre not so much. What would Walt Whitman do? I mean, on Twitter he could really contain multitudes. Could Proust get with the program? Facetious tone, serious question: note the rise of flash fiction, text message novels, etc. Not stressing here, merely positing.

Here's another take on the zeitgeist (hmm, using that word too much, but it's so darn handy), from a business book/blog perspective (thanks to Ben's FB post for the link).

Since I'm still not famous, I'm heading outside to pull weeds and listen to the original, feathered Tweeters.

Zeitgeist to infinity: Twitter + Oprah

2009-04-16T20:12:00.000-07:00

From the NY Times:

The woman who can single-handedly send a new product or book flying off the shelves has just joined Twitter. She has not yet written a tweet, but more than 30,000 followers have already signed up to follow her every 140-character thought, and the number is growing. Rumor has it she will write her first tweet on Friday, when she is dedicating her show to Twitter. (It airs at 4 p.m. Eastern time — check your local listings here for details on viewing the show in your area.)

Facebook: A Freelancer's Friend?

2009-04-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, I'm one of those people who must be dragged kicking and screaming into the zeitgeist: I've never read The DaVinci Code; I don't watch American Idol; I'm one of the last people on earth without a cell phone (to wit, my 84-year-old mother, villagers in Romania who still plow with yoke and oxen, some 5-year-olds at the daycare across the street -- all of them free to incur roaming charges).

And until last week, I'd resisted the pressure to join my peers on Facebook, despite invitations in my in-box, entreaties from friends, taunts of "cavewoman," and the growing sense that I was missing out on something big, like a Beatles reunion concert with a resurrected John Lennon.

For a time (i.e., til the hoopla turned its attention to Twitter), Facebook seemed to be, well, in your face. Branching beyond its initial mission as a social networking site, it began to be touted as a marketing tool, although word on the street was watch out that el jefe doesn't find photos of you doing shots.

The inevitable new-tech brouhaha followed, including who owns my witty comments and quiz results? (I do, says FB, so when I take down my listing, no one will know that my result from the "Which Crazy Bitch Are You?" quiz was Sinead O'Connor.) What about privacy issues? (Oh yes, there are privacy issues. There are always privacy issues.) And even, is it possible to inadvertently "friend" a member of the Mafia? (Difficult, but possible, if you have a Sicilian surname, for example. I have been friended by no less than 3 people simply because we share a not-very-common last name. Do I know these people? No. Could they be a member of the Mafia and/or have a less-than-savory character? Quite possibly. It's hard to tell from a photo and a few select factoids about political and media preferences who is a potential axe murderer.)

Now, though, I'm Facebooked and friended and having a blast. Not just from posting goofy status updates and old travel photos that have been languishing in My Pictures files; not just from reconnecting with old friends (from high school, my old job at Elliott Bay Book Co., holiday in Cancun) and making new ones (aforementioned surname sharers). But also:

Reaping the benefits of friends' eclectic experience. Example: Had it not been for Perry, I would never have known about Wolfram|Alpha, a new search engine that doesn't just pull popular results, but uses AI and actually thinks about what you're searching for. Ben shot me a job posting. My niece told me all about what they're covering in her Magazine Writing class at Emerson (hint: Twitter is the new It Girl).

Discovering new marketing avenues. You can set up a page for your business; cross-promote your website, LinkedIn or Biznik profile, etc.; announce upcoming events (readings, publications); ask for relevant job postings; join groups that list editing and proofreading gigs or focus on topics that relate to your work specialties; and a million other things I'm sure I haven't found yet.

Multiplying your network. Natch, but when I recall that about 85% of my freelance work has come from referrals -- which, of course, are born from networking -- I think it pays to honor the obvious.

Establishing community. This might not be your bag, but for me, working alone in my PJs... well, a freelancer gets lonely sometimes. Spider solitaire is nice, but sometimes human interaction is what you need.

Now, you say, all this is well and good, Cranky Editor, but can't you do the same stuff via e-mail?

Nay, I say, as e-mail just doesn't have the same vibe. E-mail is work assignments and deadlines and spam and Aunt Mary sending chain letters and your bank telling you your balance has dropped below $500. Facebook is a window into people's days and moods and idiosyncrasies. It's the same reason the IRS allows you to deduct for meals and entertainment: A LOT of business gets done in very unbusinesslike settings. Plus, for some things, Facebook is to e-mail as a Cuisinart is to a wooden spoon: faster, more efficient, easier on the wrist. (N.B. Twitter seems poised to blow Facebook away. But that's as yet uncharted territory for me, one that I hope to delve into soon, your guinea pig.)

The cons? So far, mainly time-suck. I've only got 25 friends at the moment, yet keeping up with their postings remains a challenge. I can't imagine what people with hundreds of friends do, but I suspect it's a lot of skimming. Of course, this all depends on how active your friends are, and you can certainly ignore your FB profile. But it's all too tempting to eat the whole box of cookies, especially if you have some free time between assignments.

The verdict? C'mon in, the zeitgeist's fine.

Fear of Branding

2009-04-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

Well, hey, it's only been close to a year since the last post. I could say I've been busy with work, which I was. I could say I didn't have anything to write about, which would be a lie. (The fact that I now have to dodge Shopzilla's ad for "Vitamins & Nutrition" when I look up the word "ubiquitous" on Webster's, for example, is fodder enough for many chewy posts.) I could throw out that Blogger's spell-check -- which is currently red-flagging "Blogger's" and "spell-check" -- annoys me, but what kind of editor would I be if I paid rapt attention to spell-check?

rapt. 3: wholly absorbed. Brought to you by Zilliant price management software.

Really, though, since I'm not technologically adept enough to fudge the dates on this thing and pretend that I haven't assiduously been ignoring it, I'll have to come clean: my sorry excuse is fear. Fear of adding the two zillionth word that tips the blogosphere into utter inanity. Over-40 fear of new technology. Fear and loathing of self-promotion (buy the Diane brand of editing: cleaner, faster, stronger -- now with 10% more queries in every manuscript!) Fear of typos, danglers, misused usage, repetition, impure thoughts (sometimz i just wanna write w/o havin to wach me grammer and spellin), and badly articulated, poorly styled, meandering, clear-as-mud sentences that don't communicate to my intended audience.

Query: Who is your intended audience and how will you find them if you don't actually tell anyone you're writing this thing? Please elaborate.

But all that has changed. Primarily because right now I am in famine freelancer mode (and my intended audience knows exactly what I mean by this, should I decide to let them in on the secret that is widows & orphans). Now, I've been in famine mode before. I'm a freelancer; it comes with the territory. This time feels different, though. It feels angsty, panicky -- like I should be eating three squares of ramen and collecting pennies on the street. Yes, it's the zeitgeist: my health insurance went up $75 a month, my co-op dues $15; even bus fare has increased. One of my longtime clients just laid off half its staff; another has temporarily discontinued raising rates/paying rush fees. After sometimes having to turn down, refer out, or subcontract work these past few years, I find that I'm rather unprepared for -- gasp! -- a week without a looming deadline. Splash! Some cold water there.

Yet icy liquids also have a salutory effect. Cleansing, bracing, renewing. (I'll have a Grey Goose martini, please: up, extra olives.) Could it be that taking stock of my freelance career might perhaps be a good thing? Check. That finally creating a Facebook page could be, well, fun? Check. That searching for a few new clients may well take me on adventures I could never have imagined? And that mapping those adventures -- and other forays on the sometimes dark and dirty streets of our profession -- with an actual, as opposed to intended, audience might not take me over the flat edge of the world where monsters live? Even with some typos on the map? Check and check.

So here it goes. widows & orphans -- cleaner, faster, stronger! 10% more musings; 20% less angst!! See, I just got branded, and it didn't hurt a bit.

Would You Like Commas With That?

2008-05-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

Commas may be the parsley of the punctuation world: many writers seemingly use them by the handful to garnish their sentences. But do these pint-size pauses really enhance the meal?

Insofar as they enhance digestion of the sentence, yes. But, as with any ingredient, you can have too much of a good thing -- particularly if, as here, you have, without a doubt, too many clauses. Or if you, divide subject and verb.

Some would argue that those writers who espouse the "salt shaker" view of commas are the same ones who still insist on skipping two spaces between sentences; that is, they are old enough to remember the days before computers and stubborn enough to miss them. Others maintain that commas, like salt, bring out the flavor of the rest of the dish.

Here is The Onion's (no culinary pun intended, though it is rather appropriate) take on the subject:

Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere

Wayback Machine

2008-05-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

Well. Ahem. Clearly, I got distracted there for a few years. But now I'm back. Really. Yupper.

word processor

2005-11-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

Remember the visceral joy of using a manual typewriter? The staccato rat-a-tat of the keys hitting the paper, the zippy ding! when your words collided with the margin, the silky, inky ribbon, the clawlike t that always stuck and had to be coaxed down from its perch by hand?

Maybe I've been working too much lately, but I miss that interactive, hand-cranked, sniff-the-Xerox fun. Or maybe I'm using the typewriter image as a kind of fetish, trying to channel the spontaneous "I made this" kid feeling that, let's face it, is pretty much absent in the profession of editing. (Look Mom! I colored the typewriter pink!) Quite possibly sitting in front of a computer screen every day in my PJs reading other people's sentences for hours at a time with only my cat and the sound of rain for company is driving me spare. Whatever the reason, I need a creative outlet; lacking sewing, drawing, soap-making, or other cool au courant DIY skills, I figured blogging might pep me up. And blogging about editing...now there's a nice combo.

Like a cayenne chocolate bar, a blog about editing is nicely self-contradictory. The sweet creaminess of the chocolate finds a hot pepper partner. The precision of editing weds the freedom of not knowing what I'll write until I write it. I mean, look--I can't even type a proper em dash in this blog, much less use an en dash. (Caution: Editor cutting loose.) But most of all, I'd like to share what I love--and I really do love editing. Yessiree, Barb, any job where I can immerse myself in words, glorious words...where I get to consult the dictionary on an hourly basis...where I can write off my book habit on my taxes and get paid for the shivery thrill of catching a typo--we won't even mention shopping for stickies, pens, and other school supplies--that's the job for me.

The pink typewriter seemed like the perfect image for this blog, and if I can figure out how to do it, I'll put it up near the title. Oh yeah, the title. I've actually been thinking about this blog for a while now, always under the title Cranky Editor. But for some reason when I actually registered with Blogger, the name just seemed, well, too cranky. Plus Seattle's already blessed with a most excellent literary journal, called Cranky. (There's just something about that word. Cranky, CRANKY. cranky. I almost can't stop saying it.)

While I will definitely be donning my crankypants (Future postings: OUCH, or, Typos That Make Me Want to Poke My Eyes Out With a Stick; Queries You Don't Dare Write [Au: HUH??]) from time to time, I want this blog to be amusing, informative, empathetic, real-world-useful, participatory, and FUN. Like a good girlfriend. Like a chocolate cupcake with pink icing (sense a theme here?). Like a favorite poem. So, casting about for a suitable moniker, I came up with widows & orphans.

For one, I am a BIG lover of ampersands. They just look so cool. I also think proofers are underrated (more on that later), so there's a bit of an homage there (another name I considered was the rather less melodious Hyphen Stack). Plus, though I know several male editors, the majority of us seem to be women, so the name seemed fitting. And, as a freelancer (particularly on a dreary Northwest November day), one can start to feel adrift in a sea of white space.

So, welcome to widows & orphans, your virtual break room. Grab a cuppa, kick off your shoes, and stay awhile. What are you reading? Are you in Feast mode or in Famine? Caught any good typos lately? Did I ever tell you the one about the dangling modifier that...