All posts by jkkblog

I'm a freelance editor and writer with a background in history and foreign languages.
Editing/writing life, Homeownership, Social comment

The fine art of being a great customer: enlightened self-interest

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If you want a tl:dr, scroll to the bottom.

This wasn’t inspired by my editorial work, but by life as an American consumer. That doesn’t mean it can’t apply, but it does mean it isn’t written from my vendor perspective. It stems from my time on the other, paying side.

Most of us 1970s kids were raised with a great falsehood. Some of us still believe it a factual selling principle in spite of all evidence to the contrary:

The customer is always right.

No. They’re not. They can’t be. The very statement is obvious baloney. The act of making it is a red flag big enough to sell to China.

In fact, some customers are stupid and wrong, and they are rarely if ever right. Nearly every customer who tries to quote that fiction is either harboring a delusion or using it as a club to beat the vendor into submission. A fair restatement from a vendor perspective would be:

The customer is right as often as we can arrange for them to be without giving away the store.

Until we accept that reality, we begin from a place of unrealism. It’s not that all vendors always do the right thing. Some never do, and some are outright criminals, but let’s at least assume that most vendors adopt a public perspective of enlightened self-interest. While they do want business, they don’t want to make enemies in the process because that’s bad business. (Ask Ziply Fiber.)

It follows that they’d like to keep good customers happy: those who pay on time, treat them decently, appreciate good things, and don’t raise hell over trivial stuff. Some more entitled vendors might add a few clauses designed only for their benefit, and most of those vendors have a problem.

Your call is not important to us anymore, and how I know

Be a bad enough customer long enough, and they stop trying to please you in hope that you will just stop calling. (There are other ways of dealing with this. I know an attorney who charges what he calls the “asshole tax.”) Habitually bad customers have alienated everyone within reach, and might have no other choice. They’re the people who called the nurse a stupid bitch one time, but are now stuck with her in the ER and she has to treat them even if she still quite rightly resents that insult. As a pro, she will do what is needed and correct, but there’s more she might do if she felt motivated.

I know these things because I have worked in sales, and I also used to be a bad customer. I was raised to imitate many bad things, including a horrible sense of snobbish pretension. I was raised by observing what I later realized were serious Karen stereotypes. Once I hit my thirties I realized that this was misguided and selfish–and highly counterproductive.

The mental workings I had used to justify this to myself were that I never wanted to be deprived of the slightest bit of fair value. The world was a damn ripoff and by God, I wasn’t taking it in silence. I didn’t get what I wanted? I demanded some form of compensation. I had to wait too long? Same. Suck service? I’d learn them with a dime tip.

On some level I was right in some of those cases, at least from a purely pecuniary tactical standpoint. From a strategic standpoint I was losing the war over pennies and nickels. I had to learn the principle of enlightened self-interest. I had to realize that, as Venita van Caspel taught us back in the day, that I should look at what something or some situation paid me rather than what it cost me.

Okay, I was an ass. Now what?

I changed. I never again sent back an entrée, stopped talking to managers about bad food or service. If I didn’t like the service at a restaurant, I still didn’t tip; I just paid my bill and never went back. Ever, ever. Why would I want to help people doing bad business? Go on BegsDoor (a place that will help you understand how this country got into the state it’s in) and you’ll see armies of people saying “you should tell the manager about it.” Why have a negative interaction when I’m already not very happy and never coming back? Faaaa. I’ve already accepted that I got poor value, and it’s the management’s job to prevent that, so I assume they are doing their jobs and approve of this. Let them manage their outfit without free consulting from me.

Pay without a word, then leave. Not my problem. Feedback is for valued vendors.

Obviously, I still believe in fair value. My view of fair value expanded. My psychological state also has value, and I’m not going to screw it up because the restaurant charges premium pricing for cheap ingredients. I’ll go do something more enjoyable.

It’s not too smart to let past negatives screw up your present (that’s how old people become grumpy old people), so I tried my best to start each new relationship with a positive and open-minded outlook. Without that, it’s pretty hard to lay the groundwork for what  might become a great relationship. Where it went from there was up to the vendor.

It started to work. Having removed myself from the problem side of the equation, I gained better outcomes. I stopped re-using bad vendors–but if the vendor did fine, I would treat them right. I might dicker a bit over a price, especially where they expected it, but if I got a discount then I considered I had a higher duty to them. They wanted to charge me less? Great; I would make sure they weren’t sorry they’d given me a good deal. If I sensed that the discount might cost me more than it saved me, I would not ask. Some discounts are not good discounts.

There is a concept in Theodism (a branch of Germanic heathenism which I respect, though I’m not a member) called “right good will.” Simply put, it means that you treat your friend, sibling, etc. better than expected. The idea is that you don’t have to watch your value equation because they’re watching yours. They are fine with doing that because you are watching theirs.

This also influenced me. It reminds me to see the world through other eyes. What would make the vendor delighted to hear from me? If I value that vendor, I ask myself that question.

For example…

The dividends the overall approach has paid are lasting and warming. Let’s take the best of the local Mexican restaurants here (which sadly isn’t saying a lot). Most of their waitresses don’t speak a lot of English. I speak just enough Spanish to empathize, and have lived my entire life in the American West. Hispanic culture is a part of our region’s heritage. Experience with the language and culture showed me that in Spanish-speaking cultures, to speak badly can be embarrassing. I noticed this because the staff members were always praising my truly awful Spanish, and I came to understand the unspoken message: I am a courteous person who will not humiliate you.

Well, I wouldn’t be embarrassed, but I see what you’re doing. Muchas gracias, Señorita.

I adopted that rather civilized outlook as my own (at least in those restaurants; definitely not when editing, where I simply have to tell the client the truth). It’s certainly more civilized than bullying a newcomer who is doing her best, as a percentage of people would earn my contempt by doing. So when the waitress spoke to me, I would say something nice about her accent, or how well she spoke. Every time I did so, I watched the tension drain from the server’s features. She understood that this (heavy-bearded, old, male) Anglo at least would not snarl at her or humiliate her.

It was easy to leave good tips, considering the great service I received. I had done nearly nothing to deserve this but fib a little. How is that anything but an amazing deal? Best value ever: better experience almost for free, and walking out happy. Word will get around. Come back any time soon, and notice a special respect in some folks’ tones, eyes. Nice way to start off a dinner date with my wife!

There are times not to dicker even if you could. An example is my favorite sports card vendor. We met for the first time in a parking lot, and I looked over the vintage cards he had priced for me. The price was very fair, so instead of dickering, I pulled out my checkbook and paid what he asked. This was the beginning of over a decade of business, with the deals getting better and better over time. If I couldn’t afford it, I’d tell him so rather than ask him to lower the price. He might offer to do that on his own. The value was always there; it was just a question of what I could afford to spend on old cards.

We became friends, and we’re still doing card business. I’ve even sold him some, which brought the flip side into play. I tried to base the price on what he would consider a great deal, but wasn’t sure about what that might be. I had to push him, however politely, and finally said the magic words: “Look. This is the best chance I’ve had to treat you as well as you treat me. You’re offering me $150 and I think it’s too much. Would you consider $125 an awesome deal?” He admitted he would. “Then not a penny more,” I said, enjoying the whole transaction. $25 to do right by someone who has asked thousands of dollars less than he could have over the years? Barely even registers. I hope I get to do him a great deal again sometime.

When a bad vendor screws up–as, being bad vendors, they customarily do–they’re going to be off the list anyway. When a good one screws up, that’s when you really cement the relationship. In a previous city of residence, I had an auto mechanic relationship so excellent that I’ve been tempted to take my vehicle back there for service, three and a half hours away. Well, one day they gave my name out to AAA without asking me, and I got an inquiry/questionnaire about them. Now, I don’t cotton one bit to having my information sprayed about without my advance consent, and I am often inclined to be very vindictive about that, but this was the best shop in town. When my battery was toast and I needed a jump, they sent a guy out to do it so I could drive to their shop. Is that not awesome? Who burns a vendor relationship like that? More plainly spoken, who is so shortsighted, childish, and stupid as to do so?

So rather than pitch a fit, I sat down with one of the managers I’d seen mature over fifteen years. I explained why I had a big problem with the info sharing. He explained that they were shooting for AAA certification of some sort, and that it would help their business a lot. “I get it,” I said. “Normally I’d be pretty pissed, but I respect you guys a lot. Please don’t do that again, but I won’t say anything rough on the survey. Fair?” He was relieved and appreciative. Relationship preserved, message received.

In 2024 I had spinal cord surgery for a condition that would otherwise have killed me, with debilitating pain ultimately destined for quadriplegia and death. I woke up in the ICU and was able to move my hands, and I felt better than I had in six months. I’d never before spent the night in a hospital, and my self-adopted daughter and some very good friends are nurses. The worst possible thing I could do was be at my worst, and it would be real smart to be at my best instead. The night shift nurse was kind and did some small thing to make me more comfortable. When I said “Thank you, Nurse,” she told me I was welcome to call her by her first name. “I appreciate that,” I replied through the medical fog, “but I’m pretty sure you worked very hard to become an RN. You earned that title.” She was surprised but not at all displeased. Nurses don’t get a tenth the respect they deserve. Try it.

Word gets around. The morning nurse got the same treatment, and asked if I needed anything. I asked was there any chance I could get a good cup of strong non-cafeteria coffee? “No problem,” she said. She kept checking back and ended up bringing me four cups of the good stuff before finally suggesting this might be a good time to switch to tea. I smiled, laughed, and went along. I wasn’t very needy and stayed off the call button. When they had to perform tests, even when I wasn’t much in the mood, I went along without giving them any guff. They have more than one patient and the give part of the give-and-take is to refrain from grousing about when they get their periodic duties done. You help them, they help you.

I was home about 48 hours after they stitched up my neck and detubated me (that should be a word). Coincidence? I suspect that 25ish me would have ended up in rehab rather than just going home. He would have made their lives harder, giving them zero reason to make his easier. Better philosophy = happier outcome.

One year my wife and I were at a pretty nice restaurant for our anniversary. The kitchen botched up our order, and started in on a party of 25 immediately after. The waiter had the unfortunate job of breaking the news to me. “It’s all right,” I said. “We live by a simple principle. Want to know what it is?” He nodded, actually near tears; he knew it was our anniversary. I motioned him closer and lowered my voice below the din of a busy dining room. “It’s easy. Don’t be assholes in the restaurant. No one’s trying to make your day worse. Stuff goes wrong. I know you’ll take care of us. In the meantime, I’m here with my best friend.” Down came the tears, but he also laughed. He got the great tip he deserved, and we got free desserts.

Guess how many times that’s happened over the years? It’s simple enough: Just be someone they’d like to make happy, rather than someone they hope never returns. I’ve lived both ways and the first is far more pleasant.

Believe it or not, part of it is knowing when to at least try to refuse taking something for free. A good vendor who has a bad day will often offer you too good a deal, such as not charging you for this or that. If you have the ability to calculate a good deal for you, you have the ability to calculate too good a deal. If this is a vendor you want to keep around and make you a priority, you have two options. One would be to simply make the payment for more, but that has an element of forcing a kindness on someone. More tactful, and likely to be declined but very much respected, is the rejoinder to her: “Hey, I really appreciate that, and it says a lot about your principles. $X – 30% is too much, though. You still did in the end come through; it just went a little sideways, and we all have rough days. You still need to make a living. I think you should split the difference with me at $X – 15%.”

As Molly Ivins might say today, you could then knock her over with Pete Hegseth’s bourbon brain. She’ll probably decline, which is all right; you made an honest effort and she knows it. Even if she accepts–and it’s good to push a bit–you still got a very good deal. Either way, she’s not going to forget you soon. Not only were you kind to her on a lousy day, but you tried hard to make sure it was still a decent deal for her. Put another way, you did your best to be great business for her. She’d like to do more in the future. If it’s between you and some mean old bastard (the kind forever and ironically leaning into the “honored citizen” stuff, reaming grocery checkers for carding them for alcohol) who hammers her on price and then complains about any tiny detail, who’s getting taken care of? Who’s better business?

It works this way in many situations. It earns ridiculous benefits: servicing priority, better pricing, quality work. The objective is to be someone they do not want to lose.

I’m not saying that your whole purpose for business is to kiss your vendors’ asses. Every day my browser opens up with a news aggregation of listicles telling us all the things we should do to make it easier for people. TSA agents, flight attendants, truck drivers, etc., etc. It’s too much, and unless you are a professional altruist or have no self-respect, at some point it’s natural to ask yourself if your counterparts are planning to make any extra effort on our behalf–you know, out of fairness. Otherwise it’s basically: Let me get this straight. My primary concern should be making your day easier. It’s unlikely you plan to show much appreciation. I should invest half my energy in your concerns with what motivation?

A few small asks, that’s fine. Asks that make sense anyway, that’s fine. Have no goal but to kiss your ass? That’s not fine. I think maybe I’ll fall back on treating you the way you treat me. You care about me, I care about you. You show you don’t care about me, fine; you entitle me to feel the same.

I fail to see what’s wrong with that–either way.

So no, it’s not about being everyone’s buddy, nor about restructuring my whole way of life to the Suckup Model. I don’t reward bad business, and if truly screwed, my rages are legendary and my memory eternal. I’m still pissed off at those movers from Boise. There’s an orthopedic surgeon in eastern Washington I came close to decking. I refuse to use self-checkout and that now keeps me away from Blowe’s and Home Despot. I’ve boycotted American Airlines for forty years. I quit donating to every Catholic charity when they poured several mill into manipulating elections in my home state. Every. Single. One.

In other words, none of this is me cosplaying Barney. I don’t turn the other cheek. It is enlightened self-interest; I want good outcomes and I have figured out how to maximize the chances. I also care about pleasant interactions and relationships, and I have found a way to have those and the good outcomes. The bad ones can stay on my bad side and out of my way. I will reward the good ones emotionally and financially.

If I don’t give them a chance to be likeable and good to me, that’s on me. It isn’t always possible. In some situations I’ve learned that I need to put up an automatic emotional wall, especially with car dealerships. The more they go on about how they’re an “alternative,” “no bull/no dicker,” “believe in nice,” the more certain you can be that you’ll gain nothing from trying to develop harmony. They are sure to do something you despise because that’s their identity, but you need a car. So treat it like dealing with a fairly dumb bureaucrat who has the power to hose you; maintain your composure; and sidestep all efforts to “establish rapport” and “overcome objections.” Bargain as though it’s life or death, without remorse or emotion, and plan to walk away the first time.

Don’t answer questions that are none of their fucking business, but don’t say it that way; just move past the rude question. (I’ve actually had a car salesman insist on an answer to some personal question, and then get mad at me because I told him that wasn’t pertinent. Guess how many people I’ve told about that place, with its whole “we’re the nice people” schtick. Not that I’d ever dime out Wilsonville Toyota, nor in any way imply that they behaved this way. Of course not. They just randomly came to mind.)

Kindness and good relationships are for those where it will matter. If you’re forced to deal with basic evil, you are at complete liberty to think only of your own interests. They surely will. If you have a mean streak, it’s okay to bring it out when dealing with evil. In fact, I consider it admirable.

So what’s the technique?

  • Evaluate a vendor on the first transaction, and decide whether you care. If you don’t care, find another vendor for that or just accept that this’ll never get better and stay with mediocrity. (Often necessary in small towns where there are only so many options and half the time they don’t even show up.)
  • Be polite and kind to good service providers, and don’t go back to those who don’t appreciate decent treatment. If you have no other option, put up the emotional wall and get through it.
  • Be especially polite and kind to service providers who see people at their worst, which is accomplished by trying to be at your best.
  • Don’t dicker just because you can. First see if their pricing is pretty fair, and if so, just pay it.
  • If you go to a store and milk them for some free advice, buy something. Always buy something when you go, even if small.
  • Remember that you’re not their only customer/patient/whatever. This could be called empathy.
  • Remember that they too have to make a living. This too could be called empathy.
  • Don’t overcontrol when you don’t really know that much. If they ask how you prefer something be done, ask them what they think makes the most sense.
  • Do little things. Tree removal people working all day in your back yard? Let them know they’re welcome to use your patio to eat their lunch. Hot as Satan’s perineum out there? Would it hurt you to offer them some ice water? Doubt it.

That could summarize this whole blog post. Be kind and generous until people show you that you need to be selfish.

 

Editing/writing life

Editorial maverick: my quick bullets of advice for writers

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And not much else. If you want to write, you so signify by writing. Here:

  • Decide on your genre (including a synthesis of genres) and write it on paper where you can see it.
  • There is no such thing as writer’s block. Refuse to give this invented malady power over you.
  • Write every day, something, anything. If need be, write about how you’d rather be doing anything else that day.
  • Never self-edit as you go. Use the comment feature to mark areas for later review.
  • Your biggest enemy is fear of writing garbage. Write anyway.
  • Use good peripherals: quality mouse, large screen, comfortable keyboard.
  • Start your marketing plan, unless it’s a vanity project.
  • Read Stephen King’s On Writing, and learn.
  • Don’t show it to anyone until you’re done. No, not even her.
  • Consider honing your craft by starting with short stories.
  • Back your work up and save frequently, using new filenames.
  • Learn the different editing modes, so that you know more about editing than at least half the “editors” out there.
  • “Write what you know” means to incorporate your knowledge into what you write.
  • When you don’t want to write, admit that to yourself.
  • Never book-format as you write. First finalize the content, then do the pretty stuff.
  • On a first draft, never stress over grammar or spelling. Create. Keep creating.
  • Use change tracking when you revisit the completed ms.
  • Your Faulknerian “darlings” are the things you think are your best quips ever. You’re probably going to be the only believer in those.
  • Read great writers in your genre; learn from them.

 

Human relations, Social comment

D&D’s 50th Anniversary

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This is the point where I’m supposed to talk about how old it makes me feel that my childhood pastimes are celebrating golden anniversaries. The answer there is that I get enough reminders of my age from my knees, shoulders, sleep, restroom visits, and medications that seeing Dungeons & Dragons turn 50 doesn’t move the needle.

I just read an anniversary special magazine about the phenomenon, and while it was surveying a long period of diverse endeavors (games, cinema, etc.), it didn’t really seem to connect with the major factor that made the game impactful. I think no one who wasn’t alive when it came out is really in a position to recognize it. In that case, let me be of service:

D&D SHATTERED LIMITATIONS ON WHAT IT MEANT TO GAME.

Before D&D you had family games like Monopoly, where there were house rule deviations such as Free Parking, and strategy games like the early Avalon Hill releases in their 1960s heyday. Be they short or long, those games all had rules and offered no provision for bending or breaking them. They might be badly written; in Avalon Hill’s case, they might have large loopholes and unanswered cases; but no one was saying ‘just ignore them.’ Play, in other words, had to conform to rules made by someone else far away. No, no one would come and arrest you for breaking them; the hard part for rule benders was obtaining consensus.

And then, when I was about eleven, along came D&D. The publisher was called Tactical Studies Rules; rules were what they did. But unlike other games with big rulebooks, TSR said in essence: ‘The Dungeon Master is the final authority in all rules questions. Oh, and if you don’t like a rule, change it. Do it however you want.’

It is true that D&D opened up the realm for imagination by inviting players to create their own milieus, handing them books of tools to help them–but that’s what everyone already realizes. What not everyone realizes is how norm-shattering it was to tell people it was fine to bend or break the rules if that’s how they liked to play. In an era where one could be paddled for acting up in school, truant officers still existed and people cared whether you attended school, you could flunk and be held back, and varying other constraints limited the actions of a young person, TSR came as your liberator.

In fact, most people mostly played fairly close to the printed rules–but many of them were moved to develop their own systems. And all of it was storytelling, a form of collaborative fantasy novel writing. We didn’t have nanu-nanu or whatever exactly it’s called, but we did have D&D. A setting well guided by an effective DM, attended by players who let their imaginations run loco, meant that we were all learning the art of storytelling whether or not we knew it.

So really, it was that combination. No one had ever before told us to just do it our own way if we disapproved of our orders. Not only would we tell stories of our own, but we would do it with only the limitations imposed by consensus.

TSR battered down the cell walls that contained our creativity, and told us to be free. And that’s the single biggest impact–one that amplified the other and made it more than it might otherwise ever have become.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Editorial Maverick: Who are my examples?

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One of the best ways to teach involves good and bad examples. In many cases it’s easiest just to show the client someone who does it better than I do, or at least as well, and recommend they learn from it. Why not share that list?

Tightening: C.J. Cherryh’s fantasy and science fiction, and it’s not  even close. I often say that you could string a bow with her writing. If you are looking to see how someone gets away with the minimum words while presenting great narrative and dialogue, she’s your draft pick. Another author who doesn’t waste words is Tim Cahill (also mentioned below), whose laconic Sconnie style is that of a trained but taciturn journalist.

Dialogue: The art of dialogue takes time to acquire. There is a fine art to the correct density of dialogue tags (“he said”, etc.), how to present emphasis, and so on. The one that stands out to me is the early and middle work by W.E.B. Griffin, before his son’s name went onto the cover (and definitely before post-Junior’s hired pens were hired). You could always tell who was talking, and there were just enough adverbs in the tags (as in not many).

The Moment: If you read much fiction, and even some non-fiction, you have observed that some authors show a powerful sense of the key moment. Most very good storytellers must be cognizant of it, but a few do it with deft gravitas. My money there is on Frank Herbert in his Dune books (not the ones after his death, most of which I strongly suspect were written by ‘lancers).

Third Person Limited Point of View: For those not familiar, this means that the storyteller is inside the protag’s head but doesn’t assume the protag’s identity (which would shift it to first person: to “I” from the 3P “s/he.” All perspective colors our fiction with a basic approach; for example, the most common for first novels is semi-autobiographical 1P, probably because that’s suited to the skill level of most novice novelists. (That sounds waspish, but is not so intended. Let’s be real: there are novices in all fields, and they find certain paths easiest. Thus here.) In any case, my favorite example for 3PL is C.S. Forester, especially the majestic Hornblower novels. A deep dive into a man’s insecurities, disappointments, triumphs, and tragedies, the bohicas and terrors and even joys of military/naval life.

Mastery of English: Winston Churchill, and it’s not even close. Churchill is what I read when I need to be reminded what I am unlikely ever to be. William Manchester (including two of his three volumes about Churchill) is another candidate in a different English dialect.

Urban Paranormal: I admit that I am pretty much over this genre, but keeping an open mind. It’s not that I fundamentally hate it, but rather that it is so often so very badly done. Miniature dragons as part of huge elfy/vampy/wolfy spell battles on the San Francisco waterfront, and the next morning the city wakes up to business as usual? No. One thing I believe is that every fiction author gets one cheat: one step they don’t need to account for or fully explain, one leap of faith. To use that one on the notion that the rest of the world would just keep calm and carry on after zombies came pouring through town–that is not good. Some–and they know who they are–are so fetishistic they have to keep ratcheting up the monstrosity, like a bondage addict who must up-kink in order to keep feeling the thrill. The one who seems at least respectably tethered to the rest of reality is Patricia Briggs with the Mercy Thompson series.

Travel: This is my favorite besides history, so I’m fussy here. For a laconic outlook that reflects his Wisconsin upbringing, anything by Tim Cahill. He has the gift of being funny without appearing to try. For unconventional ways to write about nearly everything, William Least Heat-Moon. One gets the sense that Heat-Moon is simply a deeper and more patient observer than the average person.

Biography: You might not have heard of her, but Fawn Brodie flat killed it. Just five: Joseph Smith, Thaddeus Stevens, Thomas Jefferson, Sir Richard Burton, and (the only one I have yet to read) Richard Nixon. Brodie is that sort of biographer that helps one feel a deeper understanding of the subject’s times, not simply the life.

There’s also a long list of popular authors I consider inept, even unreadable. I’m not going to write a blog post about them because I can’t. Most of you can, but I cannot. I’m in the industry, albeit one of its tiniest lights, and there’s a non-zero chance I could run into someone. Some people have long memories, and I don’t have a need to go out of my way to put myself on the bad side of those long memories for zero benefit. The standards have dropped, and as some of them age, time is unkind to their skillsets.

Anyway, I might not write about that in a concentrated form, but you perhaps have ideas. If you’d like to discuss Popular Writers I Think Are Lousy in the comments, I’m not going to interfere unless it gets out of hand.

Editing/writing life

New release: The Girl in the Rusted Cage, by Mindi Boston

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This women’s fiction novel is recently out. I was line editor, plus a bit more.

Mindi came my way thanks to a kind referral from author Mike Hancock, a fellow traveler from the Epinions days circa 2000. She reached out to me on the Facebook page, told me about her project, and asked whether I’d be interested.

I was. It’s a fictional tale of a pregnant teenage girl failed by nearly every support system that was supposed to step up for her. I don’t know how it feels to be pregnant, but I know how it feels when all the support systems abandon you. Mindi explained that the ms had been years in the making, was still too long even after tearing through it with ruthless trimming, and that she was exhausted. I also know how that feels. Due to the exhaustion, she wasn’t up for developmental editing with a major revisit to the ms. She wanted a line edit (tone, style, consistency), which would be one of the customary options at this point. I agreed to read it and give her my impressions.

There was something of a battler’s spirit about Mindi, that type of person who has dealt with significant adversity (in her case, single motherhood and major health issues; more than enough to know what she was talking about with regard to her fictional protag) but who remains sharp and feisty and a little bit brassy. I knew she would stand her ground on what was important to her, and that was fair. I hoped she would be open to persuasion as to a course of action, and that hope was justified. The ms was in rather good shape, and a line edit was a good solution, but I saw a few areas where some latitude might enable me to make things better.

One of my basic editing philosophies is that we should tailor our approaches to the client’s actual needs, rather than live by slavish conformity to the various editing modes. I view those the way the military views regulations, at least at upper levels: They are for the guidance of the commander, not as shackles. There are times and places to go afield from them. Same with editing, so I suggested to Mindi that we do a line edit with latitude. This would be short of a substantive edit by some distance, but would enable me to fix some flaws that might exceed the purview of line editing.  Mindi’s one of those wonderful clients who doesn’t overcontrol, which is sensible because she could still have rejected any or all of my edits. It’s great to work with someone who will allow you to give all the help you wish.

Her basic writing, dialogue, and timing were quite good compared to most first-time novelists, no doubt reflecting a background in journalism. There was some overuse of similes, and I did a lot with phrase order within sentences. Take that last phrase and adjust the order: I did a lot within sentences with phrase order. You can see why that would suck, which is why I wrote the original in the phrase order shown. For one thing, the within then with looks bad; with then within flows better. For another, since the first prepositional phrase would tend to be the more pertinent here, we’d rather tell them we did it with phrase order rather than that we did it within sentences. All the latter says is that we didn’t swap them around between sentences, which is kind of assumed but not bad to clarify. As I reflect, I could probably have yanked ‘within sentences’ altogether.

If you ever wanted to know how line editing feels, imagine over 100,000 words of such considerations, one by one.

Anyway, I worked my way through the story. Mindi’s vivid descriptive talents were a joy, and she rarely overdid them much. A few redundancies, popped in a few segment breaks within chapters and combined some others, otherwise tried my best to bring her novel nearer its potential.

Mindi and I both went through some life turbulence during the process. I started doing more tech editing, and was dealing with back, wrist, and neck pain issues; I ultimately had to have a mass removed from my spinal cord. Her basement flooded. I worked on it in grabbed hours here and there, half hours sometimes, trying to stay within the budget range.

She wanted to try her best at the trad-pub route, and I supported this while advising her that there were a lot of reasons many writers have stopped bothering adding their mss to the infamous slush piles. After investing a great deal of time and effort in a valiant attempt, she went the self-publishing route. I maintain that we learn a lot about our projects by trying to market them and seeing what happens, and I think the experience will help Mindi be her own marketer.

At the last moment, she decided on a major change. We worked through that, and now it’s time. I believe that this will be inspirational to everyone who has experienced, or cares about someone who has experienced domestic violence. I grew up with it and felt the authenticity in every word–and I’ve never even been pregnant. Well recommended.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Editorial Maverick: an interview with author Vanessa MacLellan

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Today I’ve got something fun for you.  Vanessa is a past SF con acquaintance of mine and we hit it off well enough to stay in touch. She has a new book just out titled Reluctant Hero that touches on some new themes for her; suggest you check it out. It’s kind of funny we did this via FB messaging (live, not canned), even though by a weird quirk of life, we only live at most a few miles apart. I think you’ll enjoy her candor and forthcomingness, if that is a word. Without further ado:

The Editorial Maverick: Vanessa, welcome to the blog!

Vanessa MacLellan: Thank you! I’m happy to be here, J.K.

TEM: You’re a successful indie author. This means that all indie authors who want to be successful should pay careful attention to what you choose to share. First, though, could you please give us the basics: where’d you grow up, anything remarkable about it, and up through college?

Vanessa: Sure. I come from Moses Lake, WA, in the heart of the state in the desert. I grew up in the Middle of Nowhere and so I often had to just play with my imagination rather than other kids.

I went to college at WSU for civil engineering, but I’d always been telling stories, writing poetry, and generally doing imaginary things. In college I played my first roleplaying games as well, and that opened up a whole new world. This was in the early years of White Wolf (a gaming franchise) and I adored it. Once I found a place in Vancouver, WA (for the real job) I immediately looked for other gamers.

TEM: Eastern Washington RPG nerds representing all in here. Do you find that your major helped with or influenced your later writing work?

Vanessa: In a way. I’m very analytical as an engineer, so I think I approach writing with more of that kind of studious planning versus just making things up as I go. I like numbers and formula and things that make sense. Even though I write fantasy and other speculative fiction, I still am pretty grounded about it and like it all to have form and follow a logical system. But as for real engineering, I don’t really put that in my books. Maybe I should!

TEM: It’s ‘what you know.’ So what were you doing in life before you decided you wanted to author fiction novels?

Vanessa: Well, I guess that whole ‘deciding I wanted to author fiction novels’ wasn’t really a solid line in the sand. I’d started writing very bad stories as a child and then in junior high I moved on to poetry… angst-ridden, and once I was an adult (and a gamer) I wrote stories for my early gaming characters and fanfiction for stories I wanted to see more of. I didn’t really decide to write my own stuff until NaNoWriMo of 2004 where I wrote my first environmental fantasy, to which I recently returned and got stuck again. So, I guess it was 2004 and finding out about NaNo that got me realizing…I can do this! And I did. And I’ve done it again and again (writing rough drafts, anyway).

TEM: And at roughly what age, if I may be so bold, did you decide to go that way?

Vanessa: 2004, I was 30. That was 20 years ago, if you want to do the math.

TEM: Heh, not my forte. Please share the thought process that went into your first book’s topic and story creation.

Vanessa: My first book was Three Great Lies, published by Hadley Rille Books in 2015. It’s a portal fantasy where a modern woman falls through a tomb into ancient mythological Egypt. My love for Egypt and Egyptian mythology totally took over that book. I don’t even know if there was much thought, it was more, I studied mythology for so long, I wanted to include it in a book. The portal aspect of it came from recently reading Stardust (I think that’s the name) by Neil Gaiman, and I was just delighted about going into a magical world.

Those types of stories are not new at all, but the timing just hooked me and so I decided a modern woman in mythic Egypt was what I was going to do. And I did it. And it took a while to edit it all because it was the first book I really finished and polished up and it was utter joy to have Hadley Rille pick it up.

TEM: A lot of first-time novelists would commit low crimes to have that moment. Now we’d like to hear how it felt. You were not then established. Were you confident? Nervous?

Vanessa: Hahaha…I was completely bowled over! I wrote this book and somebody wanted to publish it! Holy smokes. That’s like the holy grail. And I worked closely with the editor and he just loved it and supported it so much, I was very lucky. I would say I was super nervous, because what if nobody else liked it? I was also very happy and just inflated with all of this goodness. It’s hard to explain, but it uplifted me quite a bit. I love writing and here I was validated, if you know what I mean.

TEM: I do. You tried the trad-pub route before self-publishing. This is very interesting because so many of my clients wrestle with trad-pub vs. self-pub. Please tell us all you can about that change, the decision, and what it was like.

Vanessa: I mainly decided to go self-publishing because of the experience with my second book.

My second book is also mythology-heavy but it’s different, it’s dark fantasy versus portal fantasy. Hadley Rille told me if I wrote a similar book to the one they published, they would be interested, but this second book, Awaken, didn’t fit their bill. So, I wrote it and I shopped it out to agents and other small presses. Long story short, one press requested a full exclusively and had it for a YEAR, and rejected it, then the second had it for another year and rejected it. That was TWO YEARS gone just waiting for someone to make a decision. Ugh. I didn’t want to deal with that again.

Part of me would like the validation of an agent and traditional publishing, but the other part of me is 50!…and I don’t have years to waste because I have too many ideas in me.

TEM: You have a new book just out! Can you tell us about the inspiration behind Reluctant Hero? How did the idea for the story come to you?

Vanessa: Yes, I’m very excited about my third book coming out. It’s sci-fi superhero and the idea came from all my years of roleplaying games. (waving my geek flag) I love superheroes and enjoy a good superhero read and decided: I wanted to do that too! Many of my characters in the book are based on roleplaying game characters from my decades of gaming (see, I’m still writing gaming fanfiction).

So, I decided to make these RPG characters into characters for my book, but I had to decide where the superpowers came from. That was a lot of fun. I pondered it for a long time because I didn’t want it to be too similar to other mega-superhero franchises and I think it’s somewhat unique (though who knows, I haven’t read every book out there!) but I know my characters are unique. As for the story…the plot…it stemmed from where the powers came from. Someone put the Seed in the Seeded…why? How? To what purpose? That’s where the story evolved and I’m very happy with how it came out.

TEM: I was an RPG gamer myself for decades, so I completely get how your characters originated from roleplaying games. What are your favorite RPGs?

Vanessa: I love that! Did you ever insert a character or two into your story?

TEM: I gave some thought to novelizing one of my favorite characters, but it opened up a can of IP worms. Plus, truth told, I never much had a passion to write my own fiction. My first paid writing was non-fiction. Honestly, I’m more comfortable helping other people with their books than writing my own. But let’s get back to your RPGing.

Vanessa: I played White Wolf’s Vampire and Changeling for years, as well as D&D (earlier editions, and Third Edition, as well as Pathfinder). I think I liked WW the best, because it really was more of an unfolding story versus stats. Stats and dice rolling are important, but it felt like a more natural telling of tales. I enjoyed storytelling for other gamers and just kinda making stuff up, as well as plotting bigger stories. When the players go left field, you have to be ready for it!

TEM: Nekoka, the protagonist of Reluctant Hero, is a unique and compelling character. She’s the reluctant hero from the title, she’s a hedonist, and self-centered. What challenges and joys did you face while writing her story?

Vanessa: Nekoka doesn’t want to be a hero. She has dear friends that say ‘we have power, we should use it to help people’ and she disagrees. Just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you MUST do something. I know that’s not super popular in heroic fiction but it was where Nekoka needed to start. I think making the natural arc of her being ‘oh, no way’ to any kind of duty, to having her jump in both feet to be heroic was my biggest challenge. The progression needed to be believable and natural and I think she evolved nicely in the end.

TEM: Reluctant Hero blends elements of fantasy, science fiction, and superhero genres. How did you manage to weave these genres together so seamlessly?

Vanessa: At first, I was thinking I couldn’t mix them. I know people do it all the time and it’s been done for ages (I’m reading Silverberg right now which has magic and aliens and the like), but my engineering brain wanted to keep them separate. But I think, especially in the superhero genre, the lines are blurred. I can argue that the power is from a scientific source, but in such an alien situation, when does it become magic? So, in a way, they all just wove together naturally, on their own, as the characters used their powers using the rules I defined.

TEM: And now here you are in the Portland, Oregon burbs, just like me. The setting of Portland adds a rich backdrop to your story. Why did you choose this location, and how does it influence the narrative?

Vanessa: Howdy neighbor! Portland is such a dynamic city that I felt it would be a perfect place for my story. Though my story is in the future, it’s still very Portland. There are the wonderfully accepting open arms of Portland, as well as the not-so-shiny parts of it that we’re struggling with as a city. Two of my main characters are homeless, each giving a different perspective on that situation, and I bring in the fact that welcoming Portland LOVES the Seeded (the superpowered people) while other cities don’t accept them. Plus, it was a lot of fun to include sites I know and visit. One such site, the Firehouse, has since been torn down and it just shows how evolving and changing this city is, and you can’t nail it down.

TEM: I have certainly noticed that in nine years here. What do you hope readers will take away from Reluctant Hero? Are there any particular themes or messages you want to convey?

Vanessa: Oh yes. So, it’s a thing of mine…the whole found family and dedication to friends. It’s a thing! I can’t help it. Nekoka will do anything for her friends and even when she needs a break, she will always be there for them, and they for her. That kind of dedication, of love and loyalty, is my bread and butter and I love it. So, I just want readers to see how much she means to people and how much people mean to her and family can be found in all different places.

TEM: Being employed full time, how do you find time to write?

Vanessa: Ugh. It’s harder and harder. I have the full-time engineering day job and I write when I can. I fully believe in the writing tip of ‘write every day’ and I did that when I was younger. I got up at 5 am to write before work. I did this for years! And now, I can’t seem to write every day. Some days I just want to come home and drink a whiskey and read a good book. So, I carve out time when I can, but it isn’t every day. Retirement, I’m dreaming of you!:) But seriously, you just have to make the time. There is no ‘wait for the mood to strike.’ Now, I just need to listen to myself.

Pep talks. I’ll make it with daily pep talk.

TEM: This has been great, and it was kind of you to take the time on a busy weeknight. Thank you, Vanessa, and best of success with Reluctant Hero and all your endeavors, writing and otherwise.

Vanessa: Thank you, J.K. This was a lot of fun and it got me thinking of my books in an excited light! I’ll get back on the wagon! Cheers to you and all of yours.

Editing/writing life, Social comment

Editorial Maverick: So you want to write a book?

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Cool. What’s first?

It doesn’t begin with banging the keys, which is not to say I discourage that–but it would probably work better if you gave it some thought first. If your story idea is boiling over and running out your ears, and you want to get it on paper as though you were under the lash, very well–but early on, at some point, when you have satiated that urge for the day, give these things some thought.

Be honest with yourself. Why do you want to do this? What drives you? Common reasons are money, recognition, bucket list, inner personal need, service to others, revenge upon others, making people laugh, therapy, making spines tingle, and so on; there are as many more as there are people. I suggest writing down three if you can summon them, using all the self-honesty you can muster. All motives that don’t lead you to get into serious trouble you cannot handle are okay.

Your motives are important because they will inform everything you do. If money matters, for example, you’ll have to have a marketing plan. I divide books into vanity and commercial projects, and I do it this way: If it has a marketing plan that intends to turn a profit, it’s a commercial project. Until it has such a plan, it’s a vanity project because there is minimal prospect for profit. “Hoping I get noticed by New York” is not a marketing plan.

Please don’t misunderstand: I love vanity projects. They are liberating and often powerful. Many are books I would read for enjoyment. What they aren’t is moneymakers. All the passion in the world is not a marketing plan. And if you don’t much love marketing, well, you have company and it begins with me. It is not my forte and I do it because I must, because one of the reasons I want to edit is to earn. I groove on helping people achieve their dreams, teaching them to avoid common problems, and becoming more of a friend than an editor. That is why I’m the Editorial Maverick: I don’t do it the way most people do it.

(I’m not joking at all. If you were to read some editors’ groups, you’d see why. One can only take so much “Edibuddies please help me Ive been struggling for six hours where to put this comma and CMoS doesn’t tell me!” Jeez. If you can’t make a simple decision about punctuation without help from a huge book, you are either too poorly read or too fearful to be an editor. Decide. That’s why they hire you. If they wanted it screwed up, they could do that without you.)

Note that nowhere am I saying you need to start by planning out your book. There are slang terms for those who advocate just writing, and those who create flow charts to map out the story. I don’t care which you do. It should be whichever works. What I am saying is that, while you are doing whatever you do at the start, make time to be honest about your motives and goals. It is very difficult to set goals without motives, and it is very difficult to achieve goals without setting them.

Once you have a self-honest compilation of your reasons for wanting to write a book, you can decide whether it should be a moneymaker or a hopefully-break-evener. Because if it’s the former, you need to start the marketing plan as soon as you decide to write a book. If it’s the latter, of course, you are liberated from considerations related to the former. Do as you like and feel no shame–it’s just fine.

Whatever you do, if you begin with self-honesty about motives and goals, and own those decisions, will be fine.

Book reviews, Social comment, Sports

Current read: Victory Faust, by Gabriel Schechter

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This is arguably the best baseball book you’ve probably never heard of.

My copy was a holiday gift from Mr. Schechter himself. I met him at a mutual friend’s birthday party, one mainly focused on baseball enthusiasts, and he was handing out copies. I’m glad he was.

In 1911, a farm guy from Marion, Kansas (one county over from the one where my parents grew up) was supposedly told by a fiction fortune teller that if he went to Manhattan (New York’s, not ours), he would become a successful baseball player and meet the woman of his dreams. Charles Victor Faust was not, shall we say, richly endowed with any better critical thinking skills than he was a pitching arm, a batting eye, or a sense of baserunning. He hared off to New York City to thrust himself upon John McGraw’s New York Giants, a team that had come close to glory in recent years but never quite made it.

Faust made enough of a pest of himself to gain admission to the Giants’ clubhouse, if not the roster. He proceeded to entertain, lighten the mood, and make a fool of himself daily. He was the only one not in on the joke. Baseball players being a superstitious lot, the fact that New York tended to win with Faust in attendance got their attention. They took the correlation seriously enough for McGraw to keep Faust around the dugout, entertaining fans with his warmups, absorbing the heckles and pranks of the players. At least, when he wasn’t doing vaudeville or sulking because McGraw wouldn’t give him a contract.

The pride of Marion even got to appear in a couple of late-season games. He hardly lit the diamond on fire, but he has stat lines on Baseball-Reference.com and I don’t. The Giants won the pennant, but fell to the Athletics in the Series. Faust had worn out his welcome and migrated west, giving up on his delusions of big league pitching grandeur but not on a generally delusional nature. This was before Portland and Seattle had come to embrace their quirkiness, and he spent time in asylums in Oregon then Washington. He died of TB in Western State Hospital at Steilacoom, WA, where it seems the original numeric grave marker has in recent years received augmentation from a plaque mentioning him by name. About time.

Schechter tells all this far more effectively than I have summarized it.  His lengthy research shows in the detail he has uncovered about a ballplayer who was otherwise somewhat of an obscure caricature of a ballplayer. He offers just enough personal comment to be witty, but never to slant the narrative. If you like offbeat baseball history, this book is a yes. If you appreciate quality writing, another yes. If you respect deep research, three-for-three.

Secondary market copies go for $20-30 at this writing. I looked for a way to buy them direct from Schechter (who surely has a stockpile given that he brought some as gifts) and did not find one, but affordable copies are available.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: the Entrepreneur’s Survival Guide, by Randy Hayes

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This volume is now available to purchase. At one point or another, I performed in most of the editing modes, but mainly developmental.

Randy and I go back forty years, to when he was a year ahead of me in college. He was always an unconventional thinker, a stand-up guy, and while quite bright, leveraged his natural intellect by seeking out people who knew things he did not. He was never for five seconds of his life at risk of becoming one of those stupid-smart people who get so caught up in all their knowingness that they resist learning unless it comes from approved directions. (Most people with that mentality get Ph.Ds and become professors. Academia is the only place that will put up with that crap because it’s common enough.) Randy is the kind of guy who, if he wanted to learn to skate backward, might just go to the rink and find some kids who were doing that, and ask whether they would teach him. And they would, because he’s very amiable that way.

He won’t tell you the juicy details, but as a businessperson Randy has enjoyed enormous success in some very difficult environments, notably investing. When he brought me this book idea, therefore, I was very glad to be working on it because I have many of the entrepreneurial wrong tendencies and bad habits that the book describes. I have taken guidance from him in ways that I see manifested in his book, and they are very helpful. For example, for five years now I have been carving out an hour a week to do CEO things, which I define as management and planning activities that are not doing the actual hourly paid work that is my main business focus. It has helped me to stay focused, to review a business plan, to recognize my weaknesses. Randy is an authority on this stuff.

Want a sample of the most notable principle of Randy’s that guides me? Very simple. Offer solutions rather than services. Think about what I do. Many editors think that their work is to change people’s use of the English language. No; that’s the car, not the journey. People come to editors because we are industry pros whom they expect to know things we can share with them. Editing a book ms is not the end goal; the end goal is the best possible book or other ms consistent with the author’s objectives. Editing is just one of the ways we can help make that happen.

I knew this intuitively, but I really knew it when Randy codified it. Take websites. No one just wants a website if for commercial purposes. People want websites in order to share information, answer common questions, describe offerings, allow viewers to inquire further, and generally present the best possible marketing and informational face to the world. The website just happens to be an efficient means to those ends. The web designer who believes that her job is to push HTML and scripts around has missed her real job and needs to remember why people hire her. So in this context, I offer clients the best possible guidance (including editing support) to help them achieve their writing objectives. It is wonderful when people want to become better writers, but sometimes a writer just wants it out the door and doesn’t want to learn.

Think that’s lunacy? One of my more recent clients was a nonagenarian with a bucket list book, a wonderful man who was a marvel to work with. My directive was to get the ms from draft to publishable, staying as true as possible to the au’s intent and experiences. I was approached, I believe, because evidence indicated that I understood this. He passed on, sadly, a year after the publication. He never made back his money and did not give a rip if he did. He saw his book in print, looking professional and with the benefits of experienced handling, and had that joy while he could revel in it. Mission accomplished all around, with the helpful intercession and interpretation of one of the best in the business, Maggi Kirkbride (who does not happen to work on fiction, thus the approach to me).

Yeah. Randy has that kind of impact. As I worked through his ms, I saw numerous areas where I could improve, and other areas where I already had good practices but it helped to see them codified and reinforced. This is why his book is such a gift for entrepreneurs.

When the original ms came to me, it needed a fair bit of polish and consideration. Randy began our relationship with as many bad writing habits as the typical college graduate, but the difference is that he has declared war on them and worked to eradicate them. The work has been successful. My task was to take the mistakes (comma splices, excessive adverbs, hyperdependency on parens and em dashes) out of Randy without taking the Randy out of Randy. His basic style is informal, friendly, and approachable. For the most part, anyone at the GED level or higher can understand all of it.

We batted it back and forth. Oh, how we batted it back and forth. Randy’s always coachable, and is one of those clients who wants to know why. Why do we do it this way? What’s wrong with doing it that way? The best clients, and the ones who get the most out of what they pay me, are always the ones who ask me why I did things. Sometimes they will present alternatives and ask me why those options aren’t a better method. Well, sometimes they are. Editing isn’t sitting like the statue at the Lincoln Memorial, a giant gazing down upon the masses. Editing is making written material the best it can become. If my client has a better idea than me, that’s excellent because in the ideal world it would be the author’s creativity that would formulate solutions. So I would toss something out there, and he’d often accept it or come up with a different way of incorporating it. I did the appropriate thing: beam with pride and keep marking.

The last major step was the dignified execution of a Faulknerian darling. Randy wanted to incorporate a marketing presentation that had been very popular. Why it was popular was obvious enough to me, but it also duplicated a lot of information. When I mused about that, the fact that he was readily open to the idea told me that he’d had that same thought. Protip: When your client accepts a fairly radical change idea with surprising readiness, it’s probably because they have already been wondering about it. I left the decision to him with a recommend that he fold it in. He folded it in. With that, the book’s last major hitch was handled. He’d even bent a little bit on one of our longtime factual disagreements; an amiable difference, to be sure, but he did provide enough context that a reader couldn’t just poke a hole in it as presented. Excellent; that was all I’d wanted.

What authors should know is that some of what we do involves review protection. The editing mind looks at what the au did and comes up with the most caustic comment a reviewer might offer (and we have the capacity, if we wish, to be much meaner than most reviewers; we just should not often want to be) if that were stetted. That editing mind then figures out what changes would render the possibility of such review comments unjust; someone might still say it, but importantly, they would be incorrect and probably wouldn’t even think of it because most people at least have a process for not making up crap.

This was a lot of what I did for Randy. I foresaw the spots where readers and reviewers might start to think he didn’t know as much as he purported to (which would be wrong on their part). I got him to make enough changes that those weak spots were no longer present.

The remainder is one of the most important books any entrepreneur could read. As an entrepreneur myself, I can just about assure even seasoned pros that they’ll find new ideas.  Randy is a good guide as well as a good guy, and he will give your fair value.