Category Archives: Editing/writing life

About doing this stuff for a living.

Editing/writing life

Literary collaboration: adversarial?

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I have a friend who’s a real smart fellow.  Can’t see his blind spots, but is fundamentally a good man and a capable writer.  Some years back he was thinking of publishing a book about this or that. I talked to him about it a bit. He was eager to work with an editor so that he could fight with the editor. Evidently my friend was not so excited about printing his book, but about engaging in debate with his editor. He was eager to be toe to toe, at drawn blades, battling for every word.

Pardon me.  What the hell?

I thought about that recently as I entered into a proofreading project with a first-time author. His work was unpolished but honest and passionate.  Early on, he expressed a strong ability to withstand harsh criticism. Bring it on, he basically said. Good attitude. (It’ll stand him in good stead when the Amazon reviews arrive, and people totally miss his point, saying mostly stupid things, and he has to refrain from answering them at all, much less with “You vacuous cretin…”.)

That writer lacked much ego, and had a desire to improve. Respect for that. But having not really worked with a lot of editors, evidently, a part of him assumed that the critique process would be serrated and twisting the blade. At least that’s what I made of his statement.

The author had a surprise coming. Why would I do that? Only very weak literary professionals hurt your feelings for fun, and thus are questionably even professionals. I never had a real editor treat me that way. I had them send my stuff back for rewrites, ask for clarification, bluntly tell me what I needed to fix. I never had a single one set out to hurt my feelings. Pros don’t have a need to stomp on your soul. They’ll just tell you, this must be fixed. That’s it. If asked, they’ll explain why. They know their trade well enough that there isn’t going to be a bunch of debate.

His surprise: literary collaboration wasn’t adversarial. It was fun. Everyone wants the end product to be its best; if not, they don’t belong on the job. Everyone wins when the end result is something great. Trust builds through working together. You can have a good time while writing a good book. You can banter, kid, laugh, jest. That’s not unprofessional. That is simply making work fun. Writers should like to write. Editors should enjoy editing. Proofreaders should adore catching typos. The relationship should be congenial and collegial. A relaxed attitude is simply the literary equivalent of the special shine on weapons that are obviously in regular use by people who get paid to pull their triggers. If you’re really capable, you can do it without sweat beads popping out on your forehead. You can take time to smell the red ink.

If anyone’s pissed off, You’re (plural) Doing It Wrong.

Editing/writing life

My proofreading jackboots

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Current gig, a small but enjoyable one: proofreading again. (I can talk at length about the book once it’s published, but until it is, it’s my basic obligation to keep any comments very general.) I like proofreading, as it appeals to my closet fascist.

This book is a true-life love story, one to which I relate on numerous levels. It begins in small-town Washington, in a time when I was also in school in small-town Washington. It passed through UW, enabling me to offer obsessive nitpicks on places, distances and such. The author and I had some similar youth pastimes, such as Strat-o-Matic sports games. The connections often border on the eerie.

What is eerier: I’m seeing the very intimate details of the histories of people I will likely one day meet in person. It makes me feel a little creepy, which it should not. I’m hired and paid for this, and it is work. It’s not like I set out on my own to compile a dossier of two people’s lives I’ve never met; I just read the dossier provided by one of them, and provided feedback. Even so, I can’t escape feeling like I’ve somehow stalked them. I know much of them and their lives; they of me, in one case a modest amount–in the other, far less. It was above board, with full informed consent, even invitation. I still feel a bit as if I have been nosey. I shouldn’t; it’s unjust to myself. I do anyway.

It makes me marvel at the author’s  guts in publishing the story. I had never before considered that, despite all the autobiographies I’ve read. Be it Churchill, Malcolm X, or a relative unknown, they had the sand to put their lives’ details out there for public examination. I certainly haven’t done the same (and there is no way). This has brought me close and personal with the question. If I feel voyeuristic just working with the author to tape, mud, sand and paint the drywall, how must he feel knowing that my reading is one of the first few of many? I may just be such an intensely private person that this rocks my world more than it would other people. (So naturally, what do I do about that? Why, blog it to share with the world! That’s like worrying about Treasury defaults, thus fleeing to a financial safe haven–Treasuries! D’oh!)

The project has gone beyond simple proofreading, which is fine by me. Someone comes to you and says, “I want to work with you because I think that will make this the best possible book.” Are you going to cruise idly by something you know is incongruent with that goal? I don’t see how anyone can. I can’t. It’s one thing if I’m ordered to: “I’m happy with every word. Just catch the spelling and punctuation, doubled words, missing words, and so on. Otherwise shut up.” I’d comply. However, only a very foolish first-time author would give that direction, and my client is not a fool. As a result, I’ll walk away from the finished job feeling that it’s better for my input, and that’s my real payoff.

One perception my client had, I think, is that I’d spend a lot of time skewering him. I think most people who have never worked with editors or proofreaders have the vision of us as people you argue with, people with whom you’d better have an alligator skin because they’ll cut your work to doll rags, people who wield their eloquence like a hot poker against your psyche. Maybe in some cases that’s how it goes down. I never had an editor treat me that way, not a single time. I had them send back things I didn’t feel they should; I had them ask me to rewrite things; I had them ask me dumb questions; I had them screw up their own recordkeeping and then send me snippy messages asking if I was ever going to turn in any work, when I’d been patiently awaiting assignment. I never had one critique me in a way that was meant to discourage me.  I never even got a rejection letter that was meant to harm. I had some tell me they didn’t like my material, but I’m still waiting for the first literary professional to make a deliberate effort to be a jerk. Fact was, I came to like most of my editors. Literary collaboration–described here as any process where two or more people are actively contributing input to a publishable work–should be as fun as you can make it.

If not, I think someone’s doing it wrong.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

On Stephen King

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Reading on Salon today, I came across Stephen King: You can be popular and good. Author Erik Nelson is much perturbed by another article by a chap named Dwight Allen, which Nelson considers…well, let’s let him say it:

“Allen’s article isn’t just a bile-drenched, meandering hatchet job, it is a hatchet job with a rusty, dull blade, devoid of insight into anything other than the insecurities of its writer.”

Careful when you drop the gloves. The disagreeing side also has guys who don’t hesitate to do so. I had to learn that myself, writing reviews at Amazon. Nelson is good on his skates, has a good jersey grab and throws hard. Plenty of accepted adventure classics were not great successes in their time, and did not grab the literati of the day. It is later generations who start ‘rediscovering’ your literary merit after you are gone, in some cases. I like that Nelson got this hacked off; he writes like he means it. It’s a fun read if you like this sort of thing.

This voracious reader is not enamored of King’s books. We have a good percentage of the full set (all but one volume now for sale on Alibris) and I have only been able to finish one Stephen King book in my life. That does not make him a lousy writer, merely means his genre and style do not attract me. It’s possible to write bestsellers and truly suck as a storyteller (hello there, Dale Brown and Fatal Terrain). We can bring up all the old stuff about how you do not make money writing to please literati, but rather, by writing to please Visigoths who read trash. We can bring up the free-market paradigm, which says that financial success by virtue of crazy sales volume speaks for itself. We could argue about that all year, none of us walking away convinced and none of us changing our habits. We also won’t make one dent in King’s pocketbook. He could buy us and sell us into slavery if he were the type. If I were him, I doubt I’d care too much what the LA Review of Books thought. I might even send Allen a $500 check with the memo line “to help you make rent next month; thanks for the pub.”

While I may not fancy King’s fiction, he wrote what I consider the most worthwhile book on the craft of writing that I’ve had the good fortune to read. I would be many kinds of a dolt if I dared ignore whatever wisdom King had to offer about this pursuit. You may call the title On Writing frank and descriptive, or you can call it generic and uninspiring. Your judgment won’t change the value of the content, which is a Polar Bear Plunge into the way King creates a novel. Deb bought it for me one Christmas. I smiled politely, thanked her, pretended enthusiasm, groaned inwardly, then started reading. The enthusiasm ceased to be pretend. So many novice writers’ Frequent Mistake Points, all disposed of with such candor.

If you are trying to break into fiction writing, and you ask me for guidance, that book is my first recommendation. Most of the time, when people ask me about writing, they don’t really want advice. They want approval for their process. If they don’t get it, they get miffed: “Well, that’s my creative process.” Wonderful–best of luck and success! But please don’t get all chapped because I didn’t bless your creative process, or even told you I thought you were doing it wrong. Just disregard me and do it however you want to. I neither gain nor lose from what you do with the guidance you asked for, but you did ask for it. Remember?

When you no longer try to get everyone to read your stuff even if they show dubious interest, and you no longer argue with authors whom you ask for advice–in short, when you stop needing a steady flow of validation in order to continue–you level up as a writer.

Editing/writing life

Dear every reader

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It always surprises me when I read something by a writer angry with his or her readership. There’s been some buzz about Laurell K. Hamilton’s post ‘Dear Negative Reader,’ which she put up several years back. It has become a trope. Thus, I address this post not to negative readers (I know I have some, based on Amazon reviews), and not to positive readers, but to all readers, because I value and respect you all.

(Digression: how many times have you heard author types use the term ‘trope’ and you still can’t figure out what it means? You’ve looked it up three times and the definitions still don’t make sense? (Guess who else did that.) Because I believe in liking my reader, in no wise do I plan to fail you. A trope is a figure of speech, essentially, such as a common phrase that has become a metaphor in its own right–something not necessarily taken literally. The idea is that you are familiar with it, it means something to you.  For example, talking about women and society, when we refer to the Madonna/whore trope, the meaning is clear: it speaks of the mentality that admits of only two roles for a woman, the virgin–>virtuous matron or the promiscuous tramp. Most of you probably agree with me that this trope is a plague, but you understand it.  That’s why it’s a trope.)

Thus, when I heard of the trope, I looked up Hamilton’s post and asked myself what wasn’t right with it. She isn’t the first author to write an annoyed letter to her readership. The fact that she wrote it tells us she was annoyed, and she annoyed her public in turn. There’s some irony in the fact that many of Hamilton’s characters seem to dislike one another, but seem to need each other. The readers have a point: Hamilton has taken the Anita Blake vampire series to a strange place, and they lament this. Hamilton also has a reasonable point: “if you don’t like it, stop reading. My sales figures tell me someone does.” Of course, not all reasonable points ought to be made. Suppose you have a control freak boss. You catch him in a complete contradiction where he cannot admit error. His hubris will permit no reaction except to sit there in humiliated rage, while plotting to get you for it. I hope it makes you feel better that you got to wear the mantle of rightness and score a point, because he’s about to make you regret it. Maybe it would have been smarter to shut up. Tact is knowing when to shut up.

Tact is good for public figures.

I understand Hamilton finally reaching the point where she cut loose about it. I do not understand the way she did it. Everyone who says they no longer like the series, almost surely once did. I have never walked a literary mile in Hamilton’s heels; I have no way to know what it feels like to write books that are guaranteed sales, nor to read screenfuls of vituperation against those books. But I’m pretty sure that it’s much better to have a lot of happy readers and some haters than to lack a readership. If no one is slamming your book, it’s because no one cares. Slamming the book is buzz. Buzz helps put your book on the endcap. The endcap is the only place you make any money working with New York’s big houses.

All that said, there’s a basic problem with the mentality. I think that how writers feel about their readership truly affects the quality and value of how they write. I know it’s true of me here on the blog. If you’re annoyed at your readers (those would also be your customers and free advertisers, just to put this in perspective), then your writing may show it. Perhaps you won’t be able to notice; they may not spot it outright, but they will feel it. Ask any women about guys who gave them a creepy feeling; couldn’t place why, couldn’t say how, just something about the guys made them want to take a shower.

The remedy is for the writer to like his or her readership.

You can tend to disagree with your readers and still like them. I worked on a Bible book. We all know I’m not a Christian, and mostly we all know how strong are my feelings about some of the church/state separation issues in US society today. Did that mean I was writing for readers I didn’t like? Quite the contrary. The reader comes to such a book seeking to learn, to grow, to expand understanding. I respect those goals no matter what the subject is. He or she may come bearing a friendly challenge: “I already know a lot about this. What can you tell me that will be new and fresh?” I like that challenge. If I didn’t, I’d have had no business writing about it. Part of liking your reader is to presume the positive, which is fair; by taking time to read your material, the reader may be said to have done the writer that courtesy. The writer owes its return.

I didn’t presume that my readers would loathe me if they knew about my own religious beliefs. I presumed they, as literate people seeking to learn by reading, might find a far kinder interpretation (pick one of many). They and I might have been different, but what united us was a love of reading and a wish that writing be well researched and competently executed.

Were I to give aspiring writers any guidance, it would first be three words: like your reader.

Editing/writing life

Setting up a blog

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There are lots of reasons to do this.  Check all that apply:

  • You just want to spout about world affairs, or whatever else you care about.
  • You want to practice writing regularly.
  • You want a diary you can share with people.
  • You travel and like to share as you go.
  • You take a lot of pics and like to share.
  • You don’t trust Faceplant with that stuff any further than you can throw a cheesecake under water.
  • Other odd reasons I never thought of.

I haven’t tried anything but WP, recommended to me by the highly esteemed CJ Cherryh.  There’s Blogger, Blogspot, Tumblr, and more.  What I like about WP:

  • It’s pretty easy to get started and figure out all the doodads.
  • They make it easy to get a domain name.
  • Customer service is friendly and honest.

What I don’t like, so far:

  • Gallerys are a mess.  If the gallery gets screwed up as you are creating it, you can’t fix it; you have to delete all the photos and start again, losing all the captions, sequencing, all that other work.  We had that when I posted the Alaska pics.
  • When you make a post, it puts up a sidebar congratulating you for the number of posts.  The sidebar does nothing useful, nor can you make it stop.  And if I try clicking on it, my browser crashes.  In the first place, I don’t need a brownie button for achieving 175 posts.  In the second, I like to be able to make stuff like that shut up.

If I were looking over blog software, I’d try the basics of all of them and then just keep the one I liked best.

Editing/writing life

_In Search of Gentle Death_ now in print!

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And now, with the book safely on dead (hopefully gently euthanized) trees, I can tell the story of my small part in this important project by my friend and colleague, Richard N. Côté.  In Search of Gentle Death is a history of the modern right-to-die movement as it has evolved in many nations. I served as the final proofreader in a whirlwind, crash process earlier this year that had me seeing strange things due to eyestrain–and it was worth every moment.

I’ll skip the synopsis here, since the link provides one, but my enthusiastic endorsement of the book probably won’t stun you. As a participant, I can’t ethically put up an Amazon review.  I can tell you that Dick is a dedicated researcher and social historian, and he hasn’t failed us here.  Not one bit.  For some samples of his best previous work, I commend to you Strength & Honor:  the Life of Dolley Madison, and City of Heroes:  the Great Charleston Earthquake of 1886. If you are at all interested in the right-to-die movement, Dick talked to all the right people, which isn’t as easy as with, say, the quilting or racquetball communities. To a certain degree, the movement exists on the ‘down low.’ In many countries, helping a terminally ill person end life on his or her own terms can mean jail time. Even providing or publishing the information is illegal some places. Therefore, not everyone has these folks on speed dial, or can get them to speak frankly. Dick will tell you where the movement has been, is and is going.

For the project’s first five years, specifically until its final month, I wasn’t part of it except as a projected advance copy reviewer and general waver of pompoms. I’ve known Dick for some years, and he’s given me heaps of helpful guidance. Now and then we’ll have a fine chat on the phone, usually about our current projects and/or the current state of the literary markets. That’s how I knew about his progress with In Search of Gentle Death. So happened, at about the typesetting stage, Dick sent me an advance galley of the front material and first chapter of the book. After typesetting is supposed to come final proofreading. What Dick hadn’t known is that proofreading is my wheelhouse, one of the very few things in life I do well enough to have an unbearable ego about. I spotted a misspelled name and reported it to him. (Amusing side note:  it was that of the infamous Tim LaHaye, author of some apocalyptic religious novels.) I offered to be the final proofreader, knowing that if I saw that one on a cursory read, there’d be more. After I reiterated the offer a couple more times, Dick advised me in his trademark jolly way that I’d made the mistake of offering too many times, and as my punishment, he was accepting my service.

It would be a fast-paced, demanding job, and I was looking forward to showing my stuff. Editor Diane Anderson and editor/typesetter Betty Burnett seemed to have fine chemistry with Dick from the outset, so I’d be coming onto a team that was all business and tightly focused, with some work to do in order to show that I belonged. I’d also be pointing out people’s errors, which demands a certain degree of tact. In this world, no one hates you for doing that, provided you do so with professionalism and good humor. A license to nitpick.

My pace was about a chapter a day, sometimes a little more. The only work I did on the computer was compiling and e-mailing the list of items needing editorial attention. The actual proofreading involved printing the chapter, taking it upstairs, reading it, redpenning it, and slapping post-its on the pages. Dick told me I didn’t have to look up all the names. I ignored him and did it anyway, and glad I did–found a fair number misspelled, but as a whole the book was not heavily littered with typos. After my initial pass on a chapter, I set it aside for about eight hours, then came back and proofread the whole thing a second time with tighter focus. This typically turned up about as many items again as my first pass. In a couple of cases, when I saw a suspiciously low typo count, I presumed I’d been phoning it in, snarled at myself for slipping, and read it all a third time.

It was a mentality not alien to a totalitarian regime’s interrogators: everyone is guilty and must confess. Thus, the typos were there to be found, in my mind, and by the gods I had better get every one.  Ninety-nine out of a hundred was not satisfactory. If I needed additional motivation, I could always consider that Dick had been working on this for five years. Five years of a man’s life, great effort and expense invested. Yeah, I’d say that merits doing whatever it takes to do the job justice, even if not for the need on my part to justify a ginormous ego and some fairly loud boasting, to say nothing of simple professional pride.  Yeah, I was going to bust ass on it.

I did this work for about three weeks until I caught up on the previously typeset material.  About that time, I began seeing strange things in my lower right field of vision and went to my ophthalmologist, who told me my eyes were fine but sent me for a carotid ultrasound and (when that proved normal) a brain MRI. Of course, my friends all razzed me that they hoped the MRI found something. It did:  that I did have a brain, it was functioning as designed (for good or ill), and that nothing was wrong. I put it all down to eyestrain and stopped worrying about it.

Dick was still writing the last two chapters as my proofing caught up to him.  On those, when I got the galleys (literary-speak for edited but unpublished manuscript), I would be the bottleneck, the whole project waiting on what I might find. I think he was fully booked out by then, at utmost strain of effort to finish, though still keeping amazing good humor considering he probably wanted to just knock back a bottle of Chardonnay and sleep for three days. What I hadn’t told him at the outset was that in real crunch times, I have another gear. Can you imagine what kind of lunatic gets an adrenaline rush from proofreading under pressure? You’s lookin’ at him. I got both chapters turned around in about two hours each as they came to me. It felt like being the setup specialist in a baseball bullpen:  come in, throw a double-play ball, fan the next batter on two sliders and a knuck, put out the rally and hand it off to ace closers, lefty and righty.

Most of my interaction was with Dick and Diane, only much later in the project with Betty (with whom I’d have liked to get better acquainted, but we were, well, busy as hell). I’ve worked with a couple dozen editors, and most ranged from good to superb. This crew can all take their places in the top tier of that listing. Our relationship was bantery when it could be and frank when it had to be, such as if I was marking up something the author/editors had already decided needed to stay as given. (Editese: ‘stet’ is the term for this, short for ‘let stand as set,’ meaning “don’t change it.”) Probably 1/4 of my catches ended up stetted, I’ll guess. That’s perfectly fine. My work wasn’t to change anything, simply to notice and pass everything on for the team to evaluate. It was a wild literary ride, but a happy rollicking one, livened by Dick and Diane’s cheerful wit and a sense of socially productive work.

Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Glad I didn’t shut up about it in the pre-beginning! Dick, Diane, Betty, thanks for having me. Truly an honor.

Buy the book direct from Dick

Buy the book from Amazon (when it gets into stock there)

Editing/writing life

Needy writer syndrome

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This is not so much a condition as a phase most writers pass through.  It’s the phase where you are bugging anyone and everyone to read your sonnets, screenplay, novella, or whatever.  If you have matured somewhat in your writing, you may want honest critique.  If you have not matured in it at all, you just want them to tell you it’s great.  My own travels through this phase lasted longer than I am glad to report.

Unfortunately, most people don’t want to read it, and they really don’t want to give you honest feedback, in case it completely blows.  Take it from me:  if you give something to someone to read, and you don’t hear back, either they just kinda didn’t do it because they really just didn’t want to, or it was a terrible piece and they are afraid to tell you so.

If you were going to be really smart about it, you’d pick up a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing, digest and absorb its lessons, and then you wouldn’t benefit from this blog post.  However, you probably won’t buy and read that book.  In that case, what you need is a writers’ group–and I don’t say that very often, because I have had very little luck with those.

The benefit of the writers’ group is they are going to read your work and critique it.  Their critique may be fair or unfair, smart or dumb, but they will read it, and you will likely improve.  You’ll get past Needy Writer Syndrome faster because you won’t be after everyone to critique you, and that’s all to the good.

Editing/writing life

Grammar trolls, bad grammar and spelling, and ye Impperfectiones of ye Englisch

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This blog’s basis is the life and situations of writing, professional and non-professional.  I find that area not well understood by most folks, but I can’t often put my finger on the right topic.  This is one.

Q: When I have bad grammar, do you look down your snout at me?

A: Mostly, no.

Why not?

Turn it around:  why? What can I gain from that? Maybe you’re brilliant but dyslexic.  Maybe you just suck at English. (If I can suck at math and be good at English, I’m sure others can arrange to suck at English and be good at other things.) Maybe you’re partly disabled and doing your damn best. I can’t know why you have bad grammar.  But the answer is the same:  why would I care? What can I gain from looking down my snout, picking on people for something they can’t help? That would benefit me how? Would I win friends and influence people? Would I effect change? Would it do any good, or would it just make me a snob? Surely there are enough literary snobs out there, and we don’t need another one in me?

When people deliberately or lazily use bad English, do you break into cold sweats of outrage? Start breaking stuff?

No.

But you should!  Why not?

For the same reason I don’t die of a massive stroke if they find a new source of spilled radioactive contamination at Hanford.  It already has so much mess that they can keep forever pretending to clean it up, a multi-generational non-work job they’ll assure that they never finish.  How does it matter if they find a little bit more? What will they do, get non-busy non-cleaning that up also? If your English isn’t good, oh, well; neither is most people’s.  Big deal; no one’s perfect.  Even if you hate smoking, does every discarded cigarette butt on the ground cause you to write indignantly to your Congressthief/MP/etc.? Do you accost every cigarette butt litterbug in anger? No? Why not? Is it because you have better things to do with your life?

Do you always strive for perfect grammar and spelling?

No.

But YOU’RE A WRITER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You noticed! (insert forty dippy emoticons and heart variations) Awesomecoolbeansaucelulzroflcopter!

Surely you want to sound as articulate as possible?

Why? This implies that I must care what someone thinks of my writing. Unless it’s an acquisitions editor in a position to hire/publish me, why? I take special care here, but not on a message board or in chat.

But it’s the principle! It’s your professional presentation, isn’t it?

Not always, it ain’t.  Sometimes I’m just being a person and don’t worry about it.  I live in the same world you do, with the same people and their (and my) English imperfections.  I do not work every hour of the day.  I sometimes sleep, watch TV, mow the yard, cuddle my wife, and at those times I do no work.  If you were an auto detailer, would you spend all your leisure time obsessively washing, waxing, vacuuming, q-tipping, armor-alling and spit-shining your car? What? Why not? Don’t you care what people think of your car? It’s your professional presentation! Surely you are too busy obsessing about its perfection to actually drive it anywhere?

But cars are for getting somewhere! Of course I would drive it!

And writing is for communicating.  Of course I would use it for a practical purpose.

You aren’t biologically compelled to proofread every word of English you see?

Evidently not.  Would anyone want to live that way? If you want me to proofread your English, please e-mail me and I’ll quote you my rates. (I am a really, really good proofreader.  Ask those who have worked with me.) Or, if you are a good friend, maybe I’ll give you a freebie. Some writers are not only not grammar and spelling snobs, but can be rather nice and helpful friends, just like your attorney friends will sometimes give you free guidance, or your computer nerd friends might help you figure out why your screen now looks all wrong. We might just be actual, average people.  Writing may just happen to be our line of work; we may be otherwise normal.

People often post deliberately contrived examples of English that is comically faulty.  Surely that, at least, must grate horribly on you?

No.

How can it not?

Because it’s generally lacking in comic merit, simple trolling. At what point in time has it ever made sense to encourage Internet trolls, especially when they don’t even amuse one?

Okay.  What DO you hate?

Stupid expressions and text-speak.  “Awesome sauce” inserted into decent English is like urine poured on otherwise good pizza.  And when you want to wish everyone a good night, ‘hagn e1’ is a lousy way to do it.

Sweet! I have found an area where I can taunt, tease, troll and provoke you over English!  Awesome sauce lol! Cool beans lol! R u mad @ me yet lol?

No.

But you have to be! You simply HAVE to be! I need a way to troll and annoy you!

Fortunately, you’re a good person in enough other ways and are allowed faults, just as I hope you’ll allow me my own (and they are plentiful).  As for this need to troll and provoke, that need is not my problem, so I should not take ownership of a problem I don’t own.  Do it deliberately once, I shrug my shoulders, hope it’s a flier.  Do it deliberately twice, the fuse’s wire burns through and I’m no longer paying attention to it.  Safety feature. Do it repeatedly, and I may wonder idly how this brings you joy, but I don’t wonder very hard, because wondering implies an interest in why you’d do that, and that wire burnt through.  If you want to sound that way on purpose just to try and make my day worse, do so.  When you stop, I’ll replace the fuse, and we’ll talk about something productive.

I simply don’t believe you.  Some aspect of all this must surely drive you insane.

If that were the case, I’d be insane by now: both passively from what people cannot help, and actively by both friends and enemies with a strange idea of fun.  If it drives you insane, well, I don’t blame you, but I suggest you refuse to allow that.  It worked for me.

It got you to write a long blog post on the subject. It did bother you! Neener, made you look!

No. It inspired me, made me want to write, explain, share. It motivated me to do some useful work, organize my thoughts a bit, think critically. It helped me realize that people can see why a mechanic doesn’t come home and immediately begin working on his or her own cars, but cannot see why a writer doesn’t necessarily critique everything he or she reads.

I think some writers do.

Then I’m sorry for them, but as I said before, we all have to own our own problems.  They’ll have to own that one.  I don’t want or need it–it would just be a hindrance to joy.

Editing/writing life

Old Hastings labels are the enemy, and Googone is my friend

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If you’re going to sell a lot of books–especially in Fine condition, as are many of mine–you want to be able to list as few defects as possible.  If you are a brick and mortar bookstore, you want to make it as annoying as you can to remove your price tags.

These interests conflict in many little puddles of Googone.

If you’ve never used it, Googone is an orange-smelling solvent that dissolves the gumming on labels.  It’s not harmful on your fingers, though I sure wouldn’t drink it, huff it like some kids do with airplane glue, or use it as a personal lubricant.  It is volatile, meaning that its will evaporate without a trace.

So what I do is this:  lay out a row of books, offending stickers up.  Drip Googone onto each sticker one drop at a time, being sure to soak it completely.  Some will often run down the spine or into the pages; don’t worry about that, as it won’t deform them like water would.  It works best on matte tags stuck to glossy dust jackets and covers, and worst/messiest on glossy tags adhering to matte dust jackets (they soak up the Googone and you must keep wetting the sticker down).  Let sit for about four minutes.

Start peeling up stickers, with great care.  In the best cases (B&N 30% discount stickers), a single peel, a wipe, a couple hours set out to dry fully, and you are done.  In the worst cases (small segmented Half Price Books tags, fossilized tags from the 1980s, and Hastings tags), you have to keep it soaked until the gum or fossilized gum finally starts to dissolve.  You could just keep doing that until it all dissolves, but that takes longer.

Once you have the paper up, you want to remove any gum residue.  If you were patient, or mopped behind the label with a Googone-wet finger, it’s moist and will wipe up.  If you were not, moisten it, give it a moment and then wipe.  Keep wiping with fresh Googone until all you can see is a light sheen of the stuff and all gumming is gone, clean up around the edges where it ran down, and set out to dry.

The biggest annoyance is the mess, that and the spreading stains which your instincts tell you have just made the book several times worse than if you’d left the tag in peace.  It evaporates (though I wouldn’t use any more than I needed).  Oh, and one more:  if your computer keys are marked with sticky labels rather than inset labels, you will very much wish to do a good job of washing your hands before you sit down at your machine.  I made that mistake once, and it’s a good thing I can remember which is N and which is M.

Editing/writing life

How not to get a book review

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First, allow me to direct you to a very good article by Jon at Crimespree magazine.  I’m not much into Jon’s genre, but I’ve been a reviewer at Amazon for quite some time.

Before Amazon changed its ranking system, I was high enough on their rankings that I took some pains to keep my local media from finding out (lest they bother me).  The majority of my review solicitations were quite faulty.  To wit:

  • Many wanted me to review galleys.  Uh, no.  If my only compensation is the actual book, you expect me to forego that?
  • One spammed me weekly about her children’s fantasy until I finally reported her to her provider when “no” and “get lost” did not suffice.
  • Lots paid no attention to the sorts of things I had reviewed in the past.  Does my body of work look like I read a lot of Christian-themed murder mysteries?
  • Some wrote so badly they unsold themselves.  If this is how you write when you are trying to get my attention, what kind of book did you commit?
  • A number wanted to send me e-copies.  While I can accept offering me the option, what that essentially says is that I wasn’t carefully selected–I was spammed, along with many others, as there is no cost to sending e-copies, thus no reason not to mailbomb the entire Amazon reviewer base.
  • Few sent me anything with even a hint of personal touch.  I wasn’t looking for flattery (and in fact was turned off by it), but some sincere reason:  why me, and not someone else?

Most radiated one of the greatest turnoffs about authors (and you’d be surprised about some well-known names who resemble this remark):  dividing the world into two groupings, a) those prepared to buy/promote/fanboy their work, and b) useless individuals.  I don’t go to writers’ retreats and after several tries, I’m not interested in local writers’ groups.  There is just too much of this, and the pain is not worth the gain to me.

So how do you get reviews for your published work? Realize:  you’re asking someone to commit to a thorough read of a book that 80% of the time will be mediocre (that’s just the average).  See it through his or her eyes, spending several hours of life in what the odds say will be suffering.  Explain why s/he should believe that it will not be suffering–not everyone, just that person in particular.  Not with flattery but with examples of your book’s merits germane to what the reviewer seems prone to review.  Do it professionally yet personally, conveying the message that you will gladly accept even a criticism-filled review.  Act like a credible professional contacting another credible professional.