Category Archives: Editing/writing life

About doing this stuff for a living.

Editing/writing life

New release: Christmas Town, by Shawn Inmon

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Shawn decided to release two new Christmas-themed short stories this year. Christmas Town is the second.

Now, working with Shawn is a little different than working with most writers. A Falstaffian figure and somewhat of a mad-literary-scientist idea generator, he has a great deal of self-confidence. He also likes marketing, and does it very well. His storytelling skill is catching up to both of those important qualities. It is beginning to feel very much like working with baseball great Bill Veeck–and those who know me very well, and who don’t throw up at the mention of sports, will know what a compliment that is. Like Veeck, Shawn knows that it’s all about the public. Veeck didn’t watch baseball games from box seats or owner’s luxury seats. He used to sit shirtless in the bleachers with the fans who had bought cheap tickets. He would drink beer with them, talk baseball and boo the umpires. If Shawn drank (which he does not), and if he owned a baseball team, I suspect he’d do the same.

As an editor, I tend to evaluate a writer by how s/he reacts when you tell him or her of a serious flaw. The less confident and successful writers aren’t sure whether to cry and give it up, or fire me and seek someone to tell them how great they are in all areas. If I tell Shawn that something just doesn’t work, he fixes it. Sometimes I don’t know how to fix it, but he will figure it out. This is why he is making major strides as an author.

His newest release is a winner because, in addition to a good story, Shawn is developing an excellent sense of the moment–and how to handle it. With every new work, there is more show and less tell. Endings become much more difficult to predict. My job is getting more involved, because most of the low-hanging editorial fruit is going away. The task before me grows more invigorating. With most of Shawn’s books and short stories, my initial feedback is qualified praise. Not this time. Christmas Town came to me with great fundamental merit and no tremendous issues to resolve. I trust I helped a bit in resolving the minor ones, but I had good material to work with. If you have a dollar to spend on a very worthwhile Christmas story, this is an excellent choice.

Editing/writing life

What you might not know about writers, editors and proofreaders

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And there’s a lot.

Writers:

  • A surprising number of us are unbearable. Truly. The dirtiest little secret about writers, in my view, is how many of us have some paralytic personality flaw that means we are best off away from polite society. Don’t lament that J.D. Salinger became reclusive; realize that he was probably doing humanity a good deed.
  • What motivates us to write varies from person to person, but one thing is consistent: at one point, we were all terrible, and great irritants to others. Some of us improved.
  • You’d be astonished how much writing is done while drunk. Ernest Hemingway wasn’t so anomalous. I am not convinced James Joyce ever wrote a sober line. Anthony Burgess wrote most of A Clockwork Orange, one of my favorites, through a haze of ethanol. I have sent off work that disturbed me so profoundly that I could not finish drafting it with a clear head.
  • Few of us make any money. That is for several reasons. 1) Most of us cannot market and hate marketing, considering it icky. 2) What many of us want to write is not what many people will pay to read. 3) A lot of us consider ourselves too good to take on the writing that really does pay. 4) In an increasingly less literate nation, we are not exactly in rising demand.
  • Writer’s block, which does not exist unless you author it and dignify it with the name, is not the main bugbear for writers, though it’s a handy excuse for not wanting to write and not desiring to admit that. The main bugbear is ego: the deep-seated fear that one will be exposed as a fake.
  • Pet peeve? People who love to catch me in a simple human error when I’m not in a professional writing situation. “Ha ha! You spelled that wrong!” So petty, so childish, and so lowers my opinion of someone.
  • Writers with no senses of humor about themselves and their foibles are beyond retrieval.

Editors:

  • Editors come in many levels of competency. There are no certifications.
  • When you communicate with us in writing, most of us aren’t mentally correcting your grammar and spelling. People have to pay us to do that. If no one is paying, that means no one wants us doing that. Nothing is gained by doing it for free just to be an ass, or because we can. That’d just alienate people. Some damned smart people are ESL, or have disabilities, stuff like dyslexia, or various other reasons they aren’t great typists or grammarians.
  • Not every editor is right for every writer. For example, I am not a good editor for someone who can’t write and cannot face that reality when presented with tact. I just have to live with that.
  • Editors who take pleasure in hammering stakes into writers’ work are unprofessional and shortsighted. They exist. They are addicted to that self-absorbed jolly they get from a well-crafted misericord run up under the writer’s ribs. Most can’t make any money editing. We call those ‘Amazon reviewers.’ They are competent to point out flaws, but evidently incompetent to help authors remedy them.
  • Editing processes can vary a great deal from editor to editor and from project to project. For example, if on the initial evaluation, I am sent an outdated version of a ms, then an updated version, the value of my work is gutshot because once I begin reading for the first time and thinking, a new version will require me to doubt every ‘feel’ that I gained, for I cannot get a truly clean second set of first impressions. For others, that’s not a problem.
  • Before you snark that the author “obviously didn’t hire a competent editor,” consider this: you have no idea what the ms looked like before the editor got to work. You also have no idea how many edits were rejected by the author. It may have been so bad that the editor asked for Alan Smithee credits and didn’t get that courtesy.
  • Editors without senses of humor about themselves and their work cannot be saved. Take them behind the barn, and return without them.

Proofreaders:

  • We are born, not made. I know of no way to make someone care about precision and minutiae, nor to train them to do so.
  • Our processes vary, as do our competencies. My own is simple: I do it all twice at least. And if on the second pass I find anything of significance, I do it a third. A fourth and fifth, if need be. My credibility and value lie in missing nothing. For a good proofreader, a solitary mistake is unacceptable.
  • Proofreading may at times verge into light editing. The ability to handle that shift with minimal effort is a valuable thing.
  • As with editors, before you snark that the proofreader obviously did the job high on meth, bear in mind that publishers can blunder so monumentally as to publish unedited versions of a given ms. It happened to Allen Barra, a very capable author who could reasonably have expected better from a prominent publishing house. If the product is defective, the publisher is at fault. It was the publisher’s duty to assure that there were zero errors in the publication-ready ms.
  • To be a capable proofreader, you have to enjoy finding errors. To get paid to do it, you have to learn not to spike that particular ball in the end zone. You are in the business of telling people they did it wrong. No one is having fun when that happens, or if you are, no one will want to work with you. You need not apologize for doing your job well, but if you exult in all your catches, people will hate you.
  • Proofreaders who can’t face the fact that even they will miss mistakes are doomed. Do what I do: utter a sentence full of shocking blasphemies and gutter vulgarities, apologize and abase yourself, and move on. And don’t ever miss one again!

But you will.

Editing/writing life

Badverbs

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I’m a convert to the Stephen King School of Adverb Rejection. When I see too many adverbs, I consider that I am seeing amateurish writing. When I find myself using too many, I know that I’m getting lax and need to step up my own game.

It’s not my way to swallow ‘rules of writing’ without question. Before I reached this conclusion, I asked myself: what’s wrong with adverbs? They’re a part of the language, are they not? Parts of language exist for our use, don’t they? In order: they rarely pay their way, they are an overused part, and not every tool in the drawer is right for every repair.

Let’s examine some sentences.

The impact completely destroyed the Mazda. ‘Completely’ is redundant. If ‘destroyed’ doesn’t sound cataclysmic enough for your purposes, how about: The impact obliterated the Mazda.

She quickly reached into her purse to feel for her wallet. If you want to say that she was in a hurry, try: She darted a hand into her purse to feel for her wallet. Any adverb that can be removed with a better verb choice is a badverb.

Slowly, she said: “But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” You can fix this with ellipses, which are easy to overdo in lazy narrative but may be necessary and helpful for dialogue: “But you don’t have to…if you don’t want to,” she said. This is a good time to make a key point: dialogue and narrative are not the same. Dialogue is how people talk. Your characters may abuse adverbs in speech; most people do. That’s perfectly fine. What, did I just do it? Excuse me. That’s fine. Better.

A Garden City man was brutally murdered the next night. As opposed to a nice, gentle murder? If it’s a messy one, are you not about to explain what was so messy about it? If you are, do you need to tip the reader one sentence earlier? Police found a Garden City man murdered the next night, with signs of torture and prolonged suffering.

King says, and I concur, that if you examine most of your adverbs, you will find that most do not pay their way. This is an excellent study for writers, because as we examine our slacker efforts, and challenge ourselves to remove badverbs, we can find ways to replace them with more descriptive writing. Some add nothing, some are just laziness, and a few still have their places.

Fewer is better.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New Release: short story _Second Chance Christmas_ by Shawn Inmon

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Having worked with Shawn on several of his projects to date, I know that I must always be alert for a new one. Sometimes I’ll think it’s genius, sometimes lunacy, and rarely in between. But he’s always fun to work with, so I’m glad to hear what he has going. If I have misgivings about the concept, the way it works is I tell him what I think, he thanks me for my input and tells me he wants to do it anyway, and I do my best to help it succeed.

This was one where I had the misgivings, with some aspects of the early version needing more originality. What Shawn does well is take that feedback to heart, like an adult and a professional, and then address it. He does this better than most writers I’ve known. His success is an example of what one can achieve when one learns from critique rather than simply tuning out anyone who does less than gush over one’s writing, story concept or whatever. Unfortunately, most people seeking critique and input don’t mean it. They mean ‘praise me.’ And when they go forth to hire an editor, they don’t want to hear ‘this needs a lot of work.’ They want to hear ‘you’re so awesome!’

Shawns are rare. I’d have a much steadier flow of work if I just lied to people who couldn’t write and refused to learn. The process would be simple. I’d tell them how great it was, make some minor changes here and there but make sure it remained the same trainwreck they sent me, they’d delight in the praise, and I’d receive money and referrals. All their fellow writers who praised their writing clearly do not know the difference, and would also seek similar praise.

If I did that, I wouldn’t amount to much.

In this one, Shawn even understood what I was trying to say when I couldn’t quite articulate it, not an easy admission for me. Something was wrong with the flow, and I wasn’t sure of the best way to fix it, so I described it in rather awkward terms. I wasn’t sure what I meant. Somehow Shawn understood me better than I understood myself, because in the next draft that issue of flow was completely remedied by changing the juxtaposition of the tale’s convergence. Abracadabra. Nice work, Shawn.

Second Chance Christmas is e-published at Amazon. If you find the holidays grumping you out a bit, its warmth and quickness of reading (9000 words) might help push a bit of the stress aside for an hour.

Editing/writing life

Brainstorming…and a new project

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Recently I had a contact from a longtime, highly respected colleague inviting me to consider co-authoring a book. This was most welcome for a number of reasons: I like working with this author, I know he has the chops, and he is strongest in the areas where I am not.

So, when two people who know the scene set forth to work together on a commercial project they know will make money, how does that happen? And what does that mean?

Obviously, there is the initial approach: “let’s do this.” A thumbnail sketch of the general plan and how the financial aspects will work–because a commercial book is a business deal, never forget that–and some discussion and questions and brainstorming. All of that sounded equitable, doable and enjoyable to me.

When I said ‘yes, let’s do this together,’ then began the preparation phase. Commercial books are planned, not just typed out willy-nilly as Clio or Erato bestows her inspiration. I would develop a given number of topic ideas about which I felt competent to write. So would my co-author. We would schedule a time to discuss these, reach final agreement, and assuming that agreement, get to work. One may safely assume that we will, in the case of that agreement and plan, establish deadlines and expectations. We will hold one another to these.

That is how this works. One is sought out, considered, valued as a partner because one is believed to be a person of his or her commitments and, in the end, one’s word. This is business. In business, much may be done with a handshake, though some of it requires contracts and so forth. As with some collectibles markets, though, the fact that a handshake would probably suffice is what got you in the door. Reputation and professionalism are all, and those are oak leaf clusters earned by performance and consistency.

I mention this because I consider it among the very most important qualities any writer can have: handle your business. Be on time. Do as you say you will do. Back up your words. There is no such thing as ‘writer’s block,’ and you cannot blame anything on it. Most of the money I have earned with my keyboard came about because people believed, with cause, that I would perform. Cast aside all this baloney about ‘just not feeling it.’ I have completed assignments with a bucket adjacent to my swivel chair, or when I was close to using Immodium as a recreational drug. Do your work and do it well, in writing just as in any other profession, and no harm can come to you.

The icy reality of professional writing is that it is full of aspirants who, in the end, can’t or won’t perform. If you are pursuing a literary career, my advice is to offer results and product (and yes, your writing is a product), not excuses and extensions. The world is full of writers and those who would like to write. It is not so full of producers, who take deadlines seriously and will either deliver or perish in the attempt.

It’s work. Treat it like work. The difference between plumbing and writing is minimal that way.

On Sunday, I will have a neat outline of topics and subtopics to offer my collaborator. I will have thought them through, and will be ready to answer any question he might pose about any of them. Are we friends? Absolutely–but this is a business meeting. One of my deepest beliefs is that people do wrongly to shortchange friends and family, ‘because they can.’ No. That is no good; that is unethical and unprofessional. If they are friends or family, they are owed greater consideration and performance, not less. So I don’t care that my collaborator happens to be a friend with whom I have swapped stories, commiserations and so on. Not here and now. What I care about is that my job right now is to show up prepared for the discussion, and to bring my very best to the table. He’s a friend. My duty is greater, not less.

The sooner a writer learns to come to the table prepared to do business, the likelier he or she is to succeed. There are many ways to define professionalism. One of mine is “is willing to volunteer his or her time here and there for the common good, and seeks out those opportunities.” Another is “keeps his or her commitments and does a quality job on time.” All the flighty types, who think business and deadlines are icky, will be frustrating to work with until they mature and adopt professional attitudes. And when opportunities happen, you may easily guess to whom they will happen.

If it wasn’t work, they wouldn’t pay you.

Editing/writing life

Is this a vanity book, or a commercial book?

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So goes one of the first questions I pose to writers who contact me for some guidance about the publication process.  I have to ask it somewhat gently, but I can’t fail to ask it.  I decided that the distinction would make a good subject for a blog post.

A vanity book is not expected to be a money-maker. If it makes money, great, but often the author just wants to say what’s on his or her mind, tell a story or a series of stories, what have you. Grandpa wants to tell his life story to the world. Mom has a wealth of advice for teachers. Jim believes that his Vietnam experience will pass on a message to the current generation. Sue knows more about quilts and quilting than a whole grangeful of Kansas grandmothers. The vanity book is motivated more by a desire to ‘get this out there,’ whatever ‘this’ may be. It’s usually based on a certain level of conceit that one’s knowledge, experiences or ideas are going to be fascinating to the public, but that’s not a negative. Without that conceit, one can’t really put oneself out in the shooting gallery of public comment, can one? The conceit may be fairly placed; it may be misplaced; but it is needed. The writer should embrace it and call it by its right name, at least in private with colleagues.

The main issue with the vanity book is that I so bluntly call it that. Most writers bristle and refuse to acknowledge that; ‘oh, no, no, this is a commercial book, we want to make money.’ The unspoken assumption is that a vanity book is pure frippery, something no one (perhaps including me) takes seriously, making the label intolerable. They are rarely being self-honest, because most haven’t thought too much about finding a way to sell books.. With a vanity book, you market as and when you feel like it. Once you cover your costs–if you do–the rest is gravy, right. Unless you outshine your costs by a lot, it’s not much gravy.

That’s the problem. Suppose after it’s all said and done, you net $2000, which is more than many self-published writers will net. How many hours did you spend on this? 500? You worked for $4/hour, which is barely half the US Federal minimum wage. If your goal was money, you could have earned more asking people if they wanted fries with that. So, in reality, if that’s an acceptable outcome, it is a vanity book because you could have made more money doing something else. You might have enjoyed it less, but remember, you said it was commercial and rejected the label of ‘vanity book,’ right? ‘Commercial’ means a focus on money, revenue, profit, and other yucky non-literary stuff.

Which is why a commercial book, naturally, will have a marketing plan. Yes, I know that marketing is icky to many writers, as is much discussion of money. If I were better at it, I might make more money myself, so I know what it’s like to lag in marketing. However, if you insist that it’s a commercial book, you must support that with motivation, a plan and the willingness to invest some funds. Above and beyond the basic production value issues and costs–a capable editor, quality proofreading, cover design and typesetting–the author must be ready, willing and eager to market the work. ‘Hope it gets discovered’ is not a marketing plan. Neither is ‘but my life has been really interesting, it’d be a really good story.’ They’re fine sentiments, but they are not marketing plans.

Even if you are not going to try the small-press or New York routes for publishing, a query letter and book proposal (for nonfiction especially) are good exercises. Your query letter is how you advise publishers that you have a finished ms that is ready to market, and try to attract their interest. If you can’t come up with a good query letter, can you really market a book? If you find it distasteful to write a simple letter pitching your work, how will the rest of marketing feel to you? The book proposal goes into greater depth, and is in effect the book’s business plan. Both the letter and proposal will make you see your book through the publisher’s eyes as a commercial prospect. If you’re self-publishing, the publisher obviously is yourself, so this will force you to see the commercial side. Who is the audience? Why? What’s the competition, and why is this different/better? How will you get it noticed and purchased? It’s a commercial book–you insisted–thus surely you have thought this through?

If you have not thought your book through well enough to write a book proposal with ease (and the aid of a guidebook to the conventional format), I submit that calling it a commercial project is self-deception. Look, it’s okay to call it a vanity book. That is simple self-honesty, if true. Just admit it, accept that you have no marketing plan and don’t plan to develop one, and be at peace. Your editor will work just as hard either way, since s/he gets paid the same either way. Nowhere on your Amazon page are you required to call it a vanity book. To thine own self, and to thine editor, be true. Others aren’t entitled to know.

I could probably make a lot more money playing along with writers’ conceits about commercial books without taking a moment to give them some honesty, but I believe that would betray the editor’s role. If as a writer, you cannot count on your editor to tell you the truth, that’s sad. What is more, your editor isn’t much of an editor for what you paid him or her. The idea behind hiring anyone for anything in life is that the person knows more than you do about a specific subject. Would you hire a plumber who didn’t know more than you about how a household water piping system worked? The other idea behind that hire is that the person will trade their knowledge and expertise for your money. Failure to offer that equals failure to deliver value. Failure to deliver value equals ‘no point in paying you.’ Third rail.

And since my editing and proofreading and freelance writing work is definitely commercial in nature, what I may not do is touch that third rail.

Editing/writing life, Social comment

Moneychanging in my temple

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The journey of the English language is much like a walk through modern Detroit. It evolves, but never comes through history unscathed. However, of late some of the scathing is beginning to offend my delicate sensibilities.

I’m pretty disgusted at some of what the Oxford Dictionary people have now decided is all right. They have evidently decided, for example, that ‘literally’ (a word we very badly need to separate wild metaphor from candid description) really does also mean ‘very,’ since enough people misused it long enough. That’s basically the equivalent of deciding that if men can’t hit the urinal, we’ll just remove the urinal and let them miss the toilet instead. However, they aren’t the most annoying abusers of the language. Even the text generation, with ‘ur’ for ‘your’ and ‘lol’ used as a comma, aren’t the worst. They are like copious spitters on the sidewalk, throwers of chewing gum on it, and occasional urinators in the alley. They make English gross and crude, like the floor of a baseball dugout, but they aren’t really doing much damage.

The business-speak word coiners aren’t even the worst. I hate to say it, but they aren’t even that awful. I’m talking about stuff like morphing ‘downsizing’ to ‘rightsizing,’ or addiction to words like ‘best practices.’ Most of it is baloney, but the baloney is mostly heard and believed by its inventors, who do not usually take it out into polite society where it could offend cultured persons. This is like butchers putting filler into the ground meat products: it lowers the overall quality of English a bit, but rarely poisons anyone.

No, the most irritating is made-up vaguely positive-sounding terms used as the actual names of corporations. Thrivent. Meritage. Exelon. Centene. Qwest. Visteon. Agilent. Actavis. Exelis. Altria. Viacom. Aramark. Meritain. Verizon. Navistar. Celgene. Entergy. Taligent. Cingular.

Credit to JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Electronic Arts, Monsanto and even AT&T, a rogues’ gallery of the vilest: at least their names are real words that refer to some real thing, person, etc.

These invented words go into the public mind and manipulate it, and cannot be extracted. They are goosing English in the crowded bus when they know there’s very little she can do about it, molesting her dignity and personal space. They are created by people who want to create a fiction in the public mind, hopefully one at variance with the truth (that the company only cares about quality and service if faults in those areas cause corporate harm). Don’t think that corporate invented-names are picked by employee contests. No, some very sophisticated psychological and literary sellouts get involved. Above a certain level of social control, accidents become very few.

This is crap. ‘Cingular?’ Really? ‘Thrivent?’ Seriously? ‘Meritain?’

I want to say “They cannot be serious,” but I’d be wrong. They can. They are.

Editing/writing life

25 Bad Writer Behaviors: commentary

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The subject article is by Chuck Wendig of terribleminds.com, and each point is amplified therein. Since I’ve long found a lot of fault with the way writers and authors behave, what I plan to do here is repeat the points (all of which are taken nearly verbatim from Wendig’s post, thus credited to him) and offer observations. Note: Wendig swears a lot, and some of it is gratuitous. If that bothers you, don’t go there. He’s a noteworthy science fiction/horror/thriller author with a long list of credits, and you can check out his work at his Amazon author page.

Here are Wendig’s bad writer behaviors, and what I had to say about them.

1. BEING AN UNPROFESSIONAL F’ING A-HOLE

This is pretty important, though I find it ironic that Wendig seems to consider terms like “cock-waffling” not to be unprofessional. He has a point, though. Even when you’re off duty, in public, you need not to damage your ‘brand’–a word I dislike as business-speak, but can’t avoid.

2. RESPONDING TO NEGATIVE REVIEWS (WITH MORE NEGATIVITY)

Writers who submit their work for public comment will usually receive it. Some of it will be stupid. If it’s stupid, ignore it. If it’s critical yet intelligent, you might learn something.

3. FIGHTING WITH OTHER AUTHORS

In addition to making you look insecure and unprofessional, it makes you look jealous. Don’t fight with other authors, but especially don’t fight with your readers.

4. NOT READING SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

That is, of course, assuming that you’re still buying into the model of begging for notice. But if you are, then at least show that you could and did read their guidelines. Acq-eds get a lot of material, and whatever makes it easier for them to winnow it is what they’re likely to do. They can start by throwing out everything from everyone who didn’t read what was asked of them, or didn’t care.

5. QUERYING AN UNFINISHED MANUSCRIPT

There’s a greater problem with this than the half-cooked chicken analogy: what if they say “Yes! Send us the whole thing! This is the best idea we’ve had all year and we have plans to release a book like this!” What would you say? “Uh…welllll…sorry, but I’ve only written four chapters. But it’ll be really really great when I get it done!” There is no logical reply to this on the part of acq-eds except dismissal.

6. ANNOYING EDITORS AND AGENTS

Again, the piece somewhat assumes that you’re still following the ‘beg and hope’ model. However, it’s a valid point outside that model. I did a lot of literary mercenary work, in which I worked for/with quite a few editors. At any time, they could have stopped sending me more work. They kept engaging my services. Since I’m not a lights-out writer, I suspect that I kept getting hired because I made their lives easier rather than harder. I didn’t bother them any more than I could help. Instead, I did my work.

7. RESPONDING TO REJECTION WITH RAGEFACE

If you can’t take rejection, you’re not ready to submit anything to anyone. In fact, you’re not ready for life. Applying for jobs entails risk of rejection. Asking people on dates, same. Playing a sport. Anything that is competitive. You can’t befoul your panties and lose your mind over rejection.

8. RAGEFACE, PART II: REVISION TIME

As an editor, I deal with some of this. It’s fairly common for someone to send me a portion of ms for a sample edit. Often the sample proves that the person a) can’t write, and/or b) is over-enamored with his or her prose. I fix it and send it back. They like their own version better, and decline to hire me. Am I enraged? Nah. It really isn’t that much fun to have to rewrite something lousy. And if the individual has shown that s/he is not interested in improvement, it would be a contentious relationship in any case. I prefer a collaborative relationship in which I help, teach, discuss, support, and advise.

9. DRUNKENLY TWEETING AWFUL THINGS TO PEOPLE

Not sure this needed to be on the list, but Wendig saw it happen. If your basic personality is rude, alcohol probably won’t improve it.

10. SPAMMING ANYBODY WITH ANYTHING EVER

A lot of this comes from authorial narcissism. Seen a ton of that. It says: “To me, there are two categories of humanity: the believers and the infidels. Believers are those who accept my writing as the center of the literary universe, buy my books, push my books, praise my books, adore me, and otherwise embrace the True Faith. The infidels are everyone else, including those who respond tepidly to the True Faith when its light first falls on their faces. Because mine is the True Faith, anything is justified, and if it annoys anyone, well…why don’t they pull their heads out and convert?” Amazon reviewers of any note will encounter this at some point. Several have spammed me, ignoring my polite “I”m just not interested.” This was not to their advantage.

11. ACTING RACIST, SEXIST, MISOGYNIST, ANY OF THE HATEFUL -ISTS

Also, bear in mind that your own definition of an ‘-ist’ isn’t what matters. It’s the public’s definition. That’s pretty unfortunate, because these -isms have warped definitions in the public mind. Reality: ‘redneck’ is a racial slur, for example, and thus should be objectionable. The public doesn’t object to it. Even though I’m right, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I (and other authors with public presences) do not say things that the public might interpret as racist, whether they truly are or not. Same for other -ists. Vile terms for the penis and testes are just vulgar in the public mind, but acceptable to deman a male; vile terms for the vulva and vagina used to demean a female are not merely vulgar in the public mind, but tend to draw accusations of sexism. If one is, both are…but in the public mind, they’re not. You can’t win this with logic. You can only refrain from doing yourself professional harm. Or don’t refrain, and see where it gets you.

12. THE AUTHORIAL MELTDOWN

Remember that you can always melt down in private. It’s much better for your career.

13. PLAGIARIZING SOMEBODY ELSE’S HARD WORK

It’s one thing to cite, attribute, quote and otherwise credit another author, as I’m doing here with Wendig. It would have been another to jack his piece. One is easily caught these days at all forms of plagiarism. Even if you do not refrain from it out of pride, refrain because you aren’t a professionally suicidal idiot. At least, I hope you aren’t.

14. BLOWING OUT YOUR DEADLINES

Professionals are timely, and that makes them pleasant to work with because they’re considerate of others. It also may mean some bleary-eyed late nights, early risings, and other minor hardships. But professionals produce on time without excuses, often enough that a real emergency or disaster will be pardoned as the exception. Amateurs always have an excuse: their computer broke down, the cat got sick, the kid threw up, car wouldn’t start, books didn’t arrive, etc. Professionals get the job done anyway–on time.

15. IGNORING YOUR ASSIGNMENT

Absolutely. Wendig is dead-on. One time, I made the mistake of failing to read my guidelines with great care. I ended up sending in work in a style completely at variance with what I’d been hired to do. So I’d already worked on twelve projects of the (in this case) mistaken style, to great acclaim and encore. That didn’t absolve me of the duty to read them afresh this time. Happily, my acq-ed pardoned this brain spasm and let me rewrite them. And I did, real fast, and with very great care.

16. MAKING A BUTT-TON OF EXCUSES

This might be Wendig’s best point. Amateurs are full of excuses. Professionals produce.

17. WRITING WITHOUT EDITING

This applies even to writers who also get paid to edit. Your first readers (I hate the term ‘beta reader’) are not editors. Your spouse is not an editor unless other people pay him or her to do so. I have an unpublished travel manuscript I may one day publish. It needs extensive revisions before I’d consider it worthy of publication. When I consider it worthy of publication, it’s ready to go to an editor, who will show me why it wasn’t yet worthy, and help me make it so.

18. SELF-PUBLISHING YOUR WORST INSTEAD OF YOUR BEST

I guess some people do this. I think it’s foolish, as does Wendig. I admit that here, at times, I don’t bring my A-game. I do bring my A-minus game. I’ll let myself get away with an occasional clunky wording usage. Then again, this is free content to the reader. What I’d never do is self-publish a dog of a book, thus making me look incompetent while proposing that people pay me. Unacceptable.

19. FIGHTING IN THE TRENCHES OF THE ANY IMAGINARY WAR

Yes. While I think trad-pub has cancer and that the radiation and chemo won’t take, I have nothing against anyone going that route. I question what they are likely to gain, but we all define gain differently. Same for all the other battles.

20. FLINGING SOUR GRAPES AT AUTHORS MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN YOU

Nicely positioned by Wendig in sequence, and addresses an elephant in the room: self-published people who secretly wish they were traditionally published and resent that it didn’t happen. Don’t envy or resent. I knew Cornelia Read and David Abrams back when they were writing at Epinions. They’re now traditionally published, and to significant acclaim. They’re great at what they do and they seem happy with the result. I’ve read books by both and I hope they keep enjoying the success they deserve.

21. BLUDGEONING FOLKS WITH YOUR EGO

This relates to several previous points, since it is often the source of bad behaviors. You need a certain amount of ego in order to think you can write something that people would pay to read. Just that much, and no more.

22. ACTING LIKE A BULLY

Is always contemptible.

23. “HEY, WILL YOU READ MY MANUSCRIPT?”

The biggest problem with this is that most people aren’t self-honest about what they want. Most will say they want honest feedback, when in reality they want praise. As Wendig points out, it also leads to intellectual property concerns. There’s a reason Weird Al Yankovic doesn’t even look at song ideas sent in by fans. He can’t afford to, even if he didn’t have plenty of ideas of his own. If you want a reader for your manuscript, don’t seek out an editor or author. Seek out a reader, someone you know and trust who might buy the sort of thing you propose to publish.

24. FAILING TO APPRECIATE YOUR AUDIENCE

A big one for me. I always say, “Like your reader.” Much follows from it. If you like your reader, you will be motivated to write things s/he will consider worth his or her time. You will respond courteously to him or her. You will treat him or her with respect. You’ll enjoy writing more, because you’ll be thinking of how you might entertain, educate, uplift, encourage, or some other positive verb.

25. TALKING ABOUT WRITING WITHOUT ACTUALLY WRITING

Why I’m not in a writers’ group, and don’t go to writers’ retreats. If I want to talk about writing rather than write, I’ll go to a themed convention with panels where I can pick what I’d like to talk and listen about. I have often said that at any given time, you want to write or you do not. Right now, I want to write, and am doing so–I’m writing about writing, which counts. (Wendig also was, though he doesn’t consider it writing; we differ there.) Later tonight, I will probably not want to write. I will probably watch a trashy reality TV show and a crime drama while hanging out with a dear friend who is visiting us. One reason to have a blog is to have a place to write when one wishes to.

In short, Chuck Wendig said a lot of things I might also say, though our styles would differ. If you think you want to write, I can’t see how any of his guidance will do you anything but good.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life, Scumbag studies

SS: Roll of Infamy by Christopher Ailsby

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I’ve had this encylopedic/coffee table book for a while. The subject alternately interests and repels me.

Some people may need some background. In Nazi Germany, the Schutzstaffel–the dreaded SS, emblemized by the twin S-runes that looked like lightning bolts–was nothing less than a state within the state. The Waffen-SS, or armed SS, was the military formation. Its units ranged from ferociously brave and competent to mutinous and cowardly, and from decently fierce to culpability in some of the most loathsome atrocities of the modern era. Quite a few were hanged or shot after the war, the vast majority of whom had it coming. What is less known about them can be summarized neatly:

  1. The SS was much more than an armed force. It was an industrial conglomerate, which one might also call a greed machine. It generated many billions of fiat money Reichsmarks that would become worthless upon the defeat of Nazi Germany, whose war lasted about as long as it takes most people to get a BA and MA. And yes, a great percentage of that wealth was gotten from means such as slave labor, robbing the murdered, blackmail, ransom and so on.
  2. For all its Teutonocentrism, it found excuses to include a lot of non-Germans and even non-Aryans. There was a British Free Corps, the only SS unit with a cuffband in English. It had a Turkestani unit. There were whole divisions of Bosnians, Croatians, Galicians, Latvians, Estonians, Frenchmen, Russians and more. Performance varied from valiant to awful, from honorable to the very worst of the German military (and in World War II, that worst was the type of thing decent people have a hard time imagining). You had the 9th SS Panzer Division “Hohenstaufen,” for example, a capable formation not implicated in any atrocities. At the other end, units as despicable as what became the 36th SS-Waffen-Grenadier Division “Dirlewanger,” the SS penal unit commanded by an alcoholic child rapist and guilty in numerous appalling deeds.
  3. The SS were not the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), although the SS-SD intelligence service was surely as terrifying as the Gestapo. This confusion is common.

Ailsby treats noteworthy SS personalities in encyclopedic format, which makes lookups easy. In many cases he has located worthwhile minutiae, such as most entries’ Party and SS numbers (it was hardly rare for an SS soldier to be a member of the Nazi party), and for winners of very selective decorations, the number of the award. What I don’t grasp is the number of entries for highly decorated individuals implicated in no vile deeds. The author can’t cheat with his title. An SS corporal who died earning the Knight’s Cross, for example, was indeed part of a force that has earned infamy for may good reasons, but that’s not enough reason to list him in a book whose title suggests that it’s full of cutthroats. Odilo Globocnik, Alfred Naujocks and Joachim Peiper belong here, among quite a few others. A few highly decorated enlisted men with no record of atrocities really do not.

I also find some of his research sloppy, seemingly hasty. There are a few SS personalities I have researched as extensively as my resources would allow, and I used them somewhat as benchmarks. Terms are misspelled; details are at times glossed or inaccurate. I don’t lack empathy for the effort involved in the book, and the shortcuts it might require. Shortcuts will mean missed details, errors and such; I have made some myself in my own historical writing, not that I pardon myself for them. I see this book as someone who might have written it: hundreds of individuals to include, with a limited amount of time to spend on each, and without the resources to do academic-quality work.

That, friends, is the reality of historical writing. Academic-grade work involves the kind of research that the book’s proceeds cannot possibly recoup, and that’s why the books cost a lot, and why they are credible as sources. Mass-market-grade work is profitable, but will vary in quality. In the historical writing I have done, I’ve prided myself on coming within perhaps 90% of the credibility of academic grade, without the travel costs and months of focus needed for the latter. But I’m no expert on WWII, and to write the book, Ailsby must fundamentally purport to be such. If he is, it follows that I should not catch him in many, if any mistakes. I do. That leaves me no choice but to find this fault.

In the end, Ailsby has produced an okay book, but no better, even allowing for the research practicalities. He has collected a fair bit of good information, gotten some wrong, and misnamed the book with a misleadingly lurid title.

Editing/writing life

A library book’s long strange trip

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When it comes to library books, I’m a borderline fascist. Woe be unto he who sells me a used book on Amazon and it turns out it’s a stolen library book. If there’s any doubt, I’ll hunt up the library and call to check. I don’t give a damn if it’s thirty years old. If it doesn’t say WITHDRAWN or DISCARD, or have some other official thrown-out stamp, I assume it’s still theirs. I’ve mailed them all the way across the country. I have also made more than one Amazon seller refund my money–in one case, presenting the alternative of charging him with trafficking in stolen property. It’s their job to inspect their merchandise before they market it. If it just turns up, and the library tells me it’s thrown out, I’ll write the date of the conversation inside.

My library is large enough to qualify as a very small, specialized bookstore, so at times I’ll find an old library book whose markings I never noticed. This happened as I was unpacking one of about thirty boxes of books here in our new home in Idaho. It was The Second Ring of Power by Carlos Castañeda. It had been in my religion/metaphysical section all this time. I saw the stamp on top of the dusty pageblock: BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY.

Well, how about that. I remembered this book. Back in the late 1980s, I was eking out my low-paid existence in a studio apartment on the third floor of a building at NE 50th St and the Ave (aka University Way NE) in Seattle, and I was sort of the apartment manager. That wasn’t fun and didn’t pay well; I was responsible for cleaning out storage lockers, running the trash compactor and kicking bums out of the stairwell. One abandoned storage contained a motherlode of interesting books, many of which were college texts on archaeology and ancient history, ancient drama, and some literature. Among them was Castañeda’s book, which I thought I might read someday, or maybe not. I’ve been carting it around for a quarter century, give or take.

By the time I got it, it was some eight years gone from its proper location, as I learned when I opened it up to check for information about discard status. Nothing. In back was an old school checkout card in its manila sleeve, with date stamps from the late 1970s, the last being in 1980. Students had signed with their student ID numbers. Children, this was before bar codes and scanners and databases ruled the library. Libraries had big batteries of drawers containing what was called the card catalog, enabling you to look up books by author or subject. Librarians would help you; they knew where to find stuff.

And any time some elder (the PC term is ‘senior citizen,’ but when I reach that age, I think I’ll prefer ‘old person’) tells you how much better the old days were, ask him or her about whether the old card catalog was more efficient than a search through a modern database. There was college before an Internet; everything just took a lot longer, with a lot more dead ends and lines for registration, checkout, and such. It was more tactile. By my college days (1981-86), some fortunate students had computers, and some went to a computer lab to do stuff, but the rest of us typed our papers on electric typewriters. Often three drafts. No. That was not better. Anyone who thinks it was, I assume, never had to write a college paper.

So here I am, just moved to Boise, and one of the first books I unpack is a BSU library book thirty-three years gone from its proper home. Every student who ever checked it out is now over fifty, as I soon will be. A few have probably passed on, too young. Anyone who cataloged that book is probably retired by now, if even still with us.

I sent it back with a nice young BSU student who lives in the house/room where Deb lived for six months before we made our relocation complete.

Wish I could see their faces when they pull it out of the return bin.