Tag: editing

Typos matter

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I cringe at “speciality.” I groan at “reigning them in.” And when I see “traveling though the town,” I want to throw things.

I see errors like this constantly: in newspapers, in published books, on restaurant menus, on product packages, in the tickers across the screen on news channels, even on storefront signs. I can’t switch off my editor’s eye, so I get regular reminders that people don’t write or type as well as they think they do. (Or that they need to hire an editor.)

Does it matter? Of course it matters. For one thing, people might judge you by your typos. Check out this study by University of Michigan researchers that found people reacted more negatively to emails with errors in them. A good part of my job consists of emailing people about being interviewed for an article or setting up a photo for that article, or else emailing writers about possible editing work. These people don’t know me; all they have to go on is my email, and if that email contains misspellings or poor grammar, they have less reason to take me seriously.

For another, errors and unclear language can cause unnecessary confusion and even cost money. Just ask the dairy drivers in Maine who won a labor dispute case over the lack of an Oxford comma.

You can absolutely be a good writer and still commit typos, or be a terrible writer who spells and punctuates everything correctly. (I’ve dealt with both.) But if the entire point of writing is to communicate with other people, shouldn’t you want to do that as clearly and as accurately as possible—for your readers’ sake, as well as yours?

If nothing else, you’ll have my undying gratitude.

Why I freelance

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At the end of October, I had eye surgery. I was supposed to be resting afterward.

I did, sort of, until I got a developmental editing project, a bunch of articles to write and edit, a few rush-job editing projects, a health care communications project …

And in the middle of all that, I finished a rough draft of my novel-in-progress.

So, November was busy. My eye hasn’t exploded, fortunately.

I’d always rather be busy than unbusy, so I’m not complaining (but don’t tell my ophthalmologist what I was up to). Theoretically things have slowed down for the moment, but sometimes the freelance life means not knowing what your day is going to look like until you switch on the computer that morning.

Turns out I like that freeform sort of flow, since I can also, say, duck out to volunteer at my daughter’s holiday boutique (she demanded I look the other way while she was shopping for me) or take my son to Cub Scouts, while still meeting deadlines. Or run over to the farm during CSA season to pick up our share of produce. Or meet a friend for lunch and a write-in. None of that was possible when I was stuck in an office for eight-plus hours a day, then stuck in traffic for another hour-plus, so I do appreciate the freedom. (Especially considering how many hours I also spent last month sitting at the eye doctor’s office.)

It’s not the life for everyone—you have no co-workers to gossip with/about, and if you’re having computer problems you can’t exactly call the IT department—but I concentrate better when it’s quiet. This sounds like a paradox, considering I spent 20 years in noisy newsrooms, but I got pretty good at tuning out the phone chatter, TVs perpetually blaring news updates, and other assorted white noise; now, I don’t have to. I can just focus.

So I’m not sure yet what December is going to be like, but it’ll be fun to find out.

What I’m reading: I’ve gotten slightly obsessed with “Giant Days,” the off-the-wall, goofball story of three friends and roommates trying to survive both college and romance troubles, which is both hilarious and beautifully illustrated. (Side note: Apparently I’m going to read every comic book Boom! Box publishes because that’s how it is.)

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I don’t let the kids read this one, because there’s a fair amount of sex- and drug-related humor—the characters are in college, remember—and even though the dialogue does an amazing job of hinting at what everyone is talking about without ever being graphic or explicit, I’d rather wait until the kids are closer to YA-level age. Still, so few TV shows, movies or books really get at the sort of confusion, questioning, and small steps toward adulthood that happen in college; this comic comes pretty close. And bonus, it’s set in England, so you get to imagine all the dialogue with British accents.

And I just finished “Posted” by John David Anderson, which unsurprisingly is amazing, because “Ms. Bixby’s Last Day” was also amazing and made me cry. Anderson is great at detailed, lyrical storytelling that somehow still sounds like it’s coming from a tweenage boy.

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It’s about what happens at one middle school after phones are banned and kids grab sticky notes to send messages to each other instead, and how even that low-tech system spins wildly out of control when kids start to use the notes for attacks and insults. It’s also about how a change in social status can wreck a solid-seeming friendship. Plus plenty of Dungeons & Dragons jokes for this former D&D player. My one note, and it’s a minor note, is that when Frost, the main character, describes himself as “part of the chorus” in the beginning, it’s a little too accurate; he’s a thoughtful observer of everything happening around him, but he isn’t exactly driving the action until close to the end, and the main drama centers around two other characters. Still, the book is well worth reading, especially for kids who’ve had their own experiences with bullying, online, offline, or through mean little notes.

Talking to writers

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For the first time, I set up shop at a writers conference as an editor-for-hire, claiming a table at the recent New Jersey Romance Writers’ Trade Expo. And it was fun.

I wasn’t able to attend the actual conference (next year!) but looking over the schedule, I was struck by how similar the workshops were to what I’d seen at other conferences: focusing on plot and characterization, marketing your work, learning the ins and outs of the publishing industry. And the other conferences I’ve attended have been either general/all genres, or kidlit-specific.

I opted for candy over swag, per the suggestion of Jennifer Lawler, whose developmental editing classes I’ve been taking through the Editorial Freelancers Association (I highly recommend her classes, and she’s fun to follow on Twitter, too: @JenniferLawler). But I decided to have some fun with it and set out three bowls: regular candy, nut-free candy, and sugar-free candy, with the sign “An editor checks the details.” It got a couple of laughs, which was what I wanted. (For the record, no one took the sugar-free candy.) I had leftovers, but conveniently it’s Halloween, and we get a crowd of trick-or-treaters.

I did worry that I would be sitting there the whole time staring nervously into space, but a steady stream of people stopped to say hello and take my info. And it struck me all over again how universal the conference experience is for writers. I asked everyone how the conference had gone for them, and I got the expected range of answers. One attendee pitched a few manuscripts and had gotten five requests, which is amazing. Another was at her first conference ever and had developed a bit of a deer-in-headlights look; I told her to go relax and take in everything she’d learned. I loved hearing about everyone’s successes, what they were working on, what they were doing next.

The whole experience was a useful reminder that we’re all learning the same things, no matter what we write, and no one is going to understand the process better than another writer.

It was a nice time, and I do appreciate the NJRW for having me. I hope the attendees have success stories to share next year, and I hope to be there to hear them.

Notes from an editor

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A newsroom colleague asked me once why I would want to run a newspaper. “To make it better,” I said. He nodded respectfully.

I’m not much interested in running newspapers these days (though I do still write for them on occasion), but I think my answer still applies to editing in general. Why be an editor? To make something better.

I’ve been editing professionally for a long time—copy editing, proofreading, and now moving into developmental editing. I’ve edited breaking news on deadline, fiction and nonfiction manuscripts, movie reviews, and obituaries. I get equally annoyed by typos in books, on restaurant menus, on shoebox packaging, and in TV news crawls. (Every single news channel has typos. This is a bipartisan aggravation.) I analyze while reading. It’s a habit.

I’ve worked with a lot of writers, and in my experience, these are the elements crucial to the success of the writer-editor relationship.

Trust. Though that trust can be unnerving. Frequently I’d tell a reporter I’d tweaked parts of their article and offer to show them the changes, and they’d just shrug and say, “I trust you.” Then I’d neurotically wonder whether I should make them read the tweaks anyway.

They trusted me because they knew I wanted to help them produce their best work. They knew I wasn’t going to change things that didn’t need changing or throw in words they would never use (every writer has a “stable” of words they use most often; if you add words that don’t blend with the rest because they’re too flowery or esoteric, you’ve muddied the voice). They knew I was keeping their viewpoint in mind. And they knew I was neurotic enough to make them read the changes.

Understanding. It’s not just doing your job well—it’s understanding how the other person does their job. When editing a newspaper or magazine article, I knew the reporter had spent hours, sometimes days, collecting enough research to put an article together, and even more hours figuring out the puzzle of arranging the article. When I’ve beta read or critiqued fiction, I’ve kept in mind how much work went into planning out the elements of plot, character, voice, and theme. I respect what it took for the writer to complete their work, and I respect that changing that work might not be easy.

At the same time, the best writers I’ve worked with understood that it took time for me to do my job and that I couldn’t just skim something, run spell check, and call it done.

Knowledge. If I’m not familiar with the writer’s subject matter, I’ll take the time to get familiar, because I think research is fun. (Yes, I’m nerdy. And?) I know what it feels like when the person editing or critiquing your work hasn’t done their homework. During a writers conference held at my college, the critiquer admitted that he wasn’t familiar with science fiction, and proceeded to mumble his way through some vague commentary on my short story. Was my story any good? Probably not. But the critiquer didn’t offer any suggestions for making it better, and I felt out of place for even asking.

I don’t think there’s any shame in looking up something you don’t know, whether it’s about a specific subject or about the conventions of a particular genre. If I don’t have that knowledge, I can’t help the writer.

Ultimately, the writer needs to remember that the editor is looking out for their best interests, and the editor needs to remember the writer is the one whose name is on the story. Egos need to stay out of the process. If the writer and editor work together, they will make the work better.

Hurry up and wait

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So here is where my day job conflicts with my fiction writing.

My day job currently consists of writing news and features articles, and editing pieces for various companies. I’ve done the newbie-reporter gig of covering municipal meetings and county fairs, and logged a number of years as a newspaper copy editor. The copydesk edits all articles in the paper, writes the headlines, fine-tunes (or fully creates) the page layout and clears everything to go to press. What does all this have in common? It needs to be done right now. Or ten minutes ago, if you can swing it. Deadline waits for no one. Missing deadline and making the paper late invites capital punishment. Think I’m kidding? Here is the original definition of the word “deadline.”

When I started seriously writing fiction and researching the kidlit industry, imagine my surprise to discover right now is not how it works. Agents and editors don’t want you to rush. They want you to put the story down, give it time, then pick it back up with new eyes so you can revise it properly; if you send them a revision too quickly, they’re liable to decide you took too little time on it and reject it. I was at first baffled by this, then slightly tearing-my-hair-out about it. “But don’t you want it to be done? Isn’t it done now? How long should I be taking to make it done? Arrrrrrgggghhhhhhh.”

It’s taken some practice. But I’ve been getting better at allowing time for breathing room, and letting the story be done when it’s ready to be done. So, don’t make my newbie mistake. Put it down. Give it time. Breathe.

(But if you’ve got a firm deadline, please, don’t blow it.)