The Editor’s Annex

Our society is concerned with “specialists” these days or so it seems to me. When I’m not editing books or attending publishing classes, I work as a Graduate Assistant in the University Studies program at Portland State University. (It’s basically the general education program.) In my time teaching, the most common complaint I encounter is, “I shouldn’t have to be here. This has nothing to do with my major.”

What happened to the value of general knowledge? It horrifies me when a student makes such complaints specifically because it makes me ask that question. Since when have we as a society forgotten the importance of a broad base of knowledge? Now, I’m not bashing people who know the minutiae of their subject. I think having a specialty in a world where one area of knowledge encompasses so much is a worthwhile endeavor, but why limit yourself as if no other subject matter is worthy of your time?

For writers, having a broad understanding of many subjects can be helpful. Whether you’re a fiction writer or a writer for a scientific journal, being able to step outside your area of expertise can only help you further inform your writing. Obviously, nonfiction requires some specialization, but the ability to see and understand how other sciences, disciplines, or modes of thought impact your own is infinitely valuable in being able to address your own subject in context of the larger world.

So is the idea of the “Renaissance Man” (or woman) antiquated in a world of advanced technologies or is there still a place for liberal arts education? What are your thoughts?

A great opportunity for writers to get out and practice their craft and maybe even get published in the process. 

Indigo Editing & Publications introduces a new approach to shattering writer’s block: create teams, run around Portland gathering writing prompts and write a story … all within 36 hours. Authors will head out several locations around Portland to gather all four writing prompts and then write the best fiction piece they can come up with within the allotted time. The victorious team takes home the prize package worth $3,000 and will be scheduled to read during Wordstock, held November 8 and 9 at the Portland Convention Center. Prizes include a bike tour of Hawaii, writing classes, writing community memberships, books, gift certificates, magazine subscriptions, T-shirts, editing services and much more! The winning piece will be distributed in print at Wordstock and online at www.indigoediting.com/sledgehammer. For further details, please visit their site.

I look forward to hearing the winners at Wordstock where we at the Mighty Pen will be holding a table again this year. Best of luck!

by Nancy D’Inzillo 

Mighty Pen editing client Carol Stanley shares her savvy marketing advice.

Carol’s new book, Kids 59.99 and Over (Morgan James, 2008), has just hit shelves! Carol self-published her first book, which became so successful due to her marketing efforts that it was picked up by a publisher and went through five editions. Here, Mighty Pen editor Charity Heller Hogge gets the scoop on Carol’s book-marketing secrets.

Charity: As a successful, veteran self-promoter of your own books, what piece of marketing advice would you offer to first-time authors?

Carol: There are several things you can do as a first-time author. First of all, purchase the book 1001 Ways To Market Your Book by John Kremer. It is filled with easy-to-follow information. If you want to be successful as an author, realize it is a major effort and it will not happen overnight. Be sure to network with others. Always ask people who they know. This is an amazing way to connect with helpful people. Try to help others.

Charity: When marking your book, Kids 59.99 and Over, is having a Web presence important? What else can authors on a budget do in order to get themselves “out there”?

Carol: Having a Web site is of prime importance, and getting traffic is really important. Since I am on a budget, I can really relate to this question. There are some pretty amazing book marketers out there, but I personally have been doing everything myself. The more savvy you are on the Internet, the more successful you will be. I write articles, I comment, and do a lot of social networking. I have joined at least 150 sites. There are also many on line newspapers that accept reader blogs.

Charity: Your book targets the generation entering into retirement. How do you suppose the demographic of your readership affects your marketing approach?

Carol: This is a great question . . . and easy to answer! Get Google alerts to send you all the blogs, articles written on your subject. If I worked 24/7, I couldn’t touch all the thousands of sites that relate to baby boomers, retirement, seniors, etc.! Once you have your audience—go for it. For off-line marketing, find magazines that feature your subject, find a great topic, and submit an article for publication.

Charity: Kids is non-fiction. How might the same rules for marketing non-fiction apply to fiction authors?

Carol: Non-fiction is totally different, but many of the marketing ideas are the same. You have got to get your book read. Non-fiction is often self-explanatory, but fiction has to described to be read. Offer excerpts free on your website and make sure these chapters are your very best. There are many author sites where you can get your book reviewed and get support from other authors. I have not explored this arena as yet since my books are basically non-fiction.

To sum: stick with it everyday. If you have limited time, be sure you have several daily marketing activities. Don’t get discouraged because only a percentage of what you do will work for you. The constant effort will pay off.

Thanks for the insight and encouragement, Carol!

Carol can be reached at www.CarolStanley1.com, and be sure to check out Kids 59.99 and Over here at Amazon, and in bookstores.

We all have the list of excuses why we haven’t written this week. We’ve been working over-time, the laundry needed doing, and we have to spend time with our families don’t we? Indeed, all these things do need doing, but for serious writers, making the time to write is just as important as any of these things. Yet many of us still struggle with how to juggle all of our responsibilities and still have time for creativity.

I’ve found several solutions to this problem. Some may work better for you than others, but why not give one or two a try when you feel like you’re in a pinch but just have to get that one great idea on paper.

Have a notebook with you at all times. This allows you to jot down your thoughts even if you’re in the midst of doing something else. I remember reading an article about how one of my favorite authors got started—she wrote down her story ideas while waitressing. If someone who has to multitask as much as wait-staff does can do it, so can you, right?

Chisel a block of time into your schedule (as small or large as you choose) that’s meant just for writing and use it. It doesn’t matter if you have writer’s block that day, just force yourself to push through it and write anything. The more you use the time, the more accustomed you’ll be come to being productive in that time.

Learn how to manage your time effectively. The more you can reduce the rest of the clutter in your schedule, the more easily you will find the time to let those creative juices flow.

Refuse yourself the permission to procrastinate. The moment you find yourself with extra time on your hands, sit down and write. This is where that notebook is a great chance to tap back into those ideas you didn’t have the time to expand much on earlier.

Above all, place writing as a priority. The published authors have cultivated the skills to do this already. They didn’t make writing their career the moment they got published, they committed to writing well beforehand. If writing is your passion, why shouldn’t it be just as important as that dinner with your loved ones?

What methods do you use to make time to write? Please feel free to share.

All hail punctuation!

National Punctuation Day (click for link) celebrates “the lowly comma, correctly used quotes, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipses.”

Seriously, this is a great thing to celebrate. We English speakers have all the tools we’ll ever need to say the most interesting, shocking, subtle, beautiful, terrible things our minds can conjure–and our words are made all the more smooth and effective by using these semantic tools properly.

Consider taking a minute, in celebration of this day, to stop by www.nationalpunctuationday.com, click on the site’s list of marks and their usage–those old nemeses of seventh-grade grammar-haters–and learn something new that you’ll put to use every single day.

(Thanks to the Mighty Pen’s Karli Clift for bringing this to our attention!)

Don’t Discredit the Small Publishing Houses

In my work and for my own vindication I often end up browsing publishing-related blogs from editors and agents. Recently I was browsing Nathan Bransford’s blog and reading the entry, “This Week’s ‘End of Publishing As We Know It’ Article Brought to You By. . .” about a recent article in the New York Magazine about the changes the publishing industry is undergoing (including the mounting fear of Amazon staging a hostile takeover of the industry once its monopoly is complete). The thing I kept thinking of was, why don’t they mention the impact on small publishing houses?

Most of the blogs I read lately about “the end of publishing as we know it” often involve the big publishing houses and their problems, but speak very little to the impact on (or of) small presses. Albeit, I respect the big publishing industry for all it has achieved in the past and in the present, but I continue to wonder why small houses seem to get so little street credit.

I am currently unaffiliated with any house as an editor, but I’ve worked for a small press before and therefore know that they have great value. Small presses offer a personal approach to publishing that the big houses often can’t. The small publishers can afford to lavish attention (even where they may be lacking money), because they are counting on all their books to sell at least moderately well, unlike the big presses that can afford a few flops and often must focus all their marketing power on only a few of many books they acquire in a year.

As an author, it’s obviously up to you to decide what press offers the best fit for your manuscript, but don’t discount the small presses. Sometimes they are an excellent place to get your start.

by Nancy D’Inzillo

I’ll be at the Pacific Northwest Bookseller’s Association Trade Show, September 15 - 16! I’m volunteering around the show (autograph party Monday night, working the doors Tuesday morning). Please look out for me, if you’re going, and come say hell0!

Editors the world over have seen many projects with formatting issues; and believe you me, they are a real headache. The biggest trick in formatting a document correctly is to ensure consistency. When are italics, bolding, and/or underlining used? What are the margins throughout the document? Is your indent length the same throughout?

Here’s a few pointers to keep in mind when formatting your document.

Italics are a style choice sometimes relative to the editing house or publisher you are working with. They are often used to imply emphasis, and sometimes used to indicate thoughts. That said, if you’ve chosen italics to indicate either of those things, you don’t need to then bold and underline those elements for further emphasis. Generally, the convention in adding emphasis to a word or phrase in an italicized statement is to not italicize that word. Ex: She’s such a wretched cow of a woman!

Bolding is appropriate mostly for chapter headings, for section headings, and, in academic texts, to indicate an important word or term (usually defined in an index of some sort later). It can also be used to set off a term that is about to be directly defined. An example would be (if you’ll forgive my made-up definition):
Spit: the liquid excreted by one’s mouth.

Underlining is rarely used anymore, and mostly specific to certain cases of citation. The reason it is used less often now is because originally, underlining was the typesetters way of indicating what should be italicized.

As to margins and indent length, they are tricky buggers and, depending on your other formatting choices (and the occasionally wretched intervention of autoformatting), can become a real pain. Just be sure as you’re working to keep an eye on your margins so that they are where you want them to be. If you do have reason to vary your margins, make sure it’s obvious to the reader, and consistent with your chosen style.

Whatever you do, remember, consistency is key! While we’re happy to work on your formatting, it’s a blessing when there’s less chaos than we’ve been known to occasionally encounter.

By Nancy D’Inzillo

“Write what you know” is a euphemism writers hear a lot.

But real life doesn’t always translate to writing. Here are some things to avoid:

Pretentious language/jargon: In real life, people say things like, I am of the opinion that . . . and Presently, the situation is thus that facilitating the augmentation of . . . But just because people say things like this doesn’t mean you need to write them. In fiction these words come across as pretentious.

Some other words/phrases that alert my Sixth Editor Sense:

• ameleorate
• such that
• deceased
• commence
• facilitate
• utilize
• parameters

Curse words are fine . . . if you’re using them in dialog, for the purpose of characterization. Remember that the effect the F-word has in real life (not much, these days) is exaggerated ten-fold in writing. Those words stand out! Use them wisely–that’s all I’m saying.

“Filler” phrases:

It goes without saying that . . . (If it goes without saying, don’t say it. If you need to say it, then it doesn’t go without saying.)

Such that . . . (You can substitute this gem with a smile of satisfaction and nothing else; it has virtually no meaning.)

In the case of . . . (This is seen in formal writing, but it doesn’t belong in fiction narratives. A simple “if” works just as well.)

In the event of . . . (Again, try “if.”)

Functioning in the capacity of . . . (What does this mean? If you can’t answer that question in five seconds, take ‘er out. )

by Charity Heller Hogge

I was just reading a blog at BookEnds, LLC called “The Futzing Stops Here,” which asked writers to stop revising once they have submitted to an editor at a publishing company.

Why? Because a text should be at its absolute best before being sent out to a publisher or agent.

There is noticeably some anxiety among writers on this subject: when do you stop revising? I agree with Jessica’s point at BookEnds that it’s not appropriate to revise once you’ve submitted a copy to someone officially, but I also fully understand writer’s having doubts about their work and wanting to change “just one more thing.” That’s why I stand by the fact that it’s important to revise as many times as possible before sending a work to an agent or publisher.

But what are your options? The common (and free) practice is to go with a writers’ group. There are both benefits and drawbacks to this. First off, it’s difficult to find a good writers’ group. I know I’ve struggled with that myself as a writer. It’s important to look for a group that is fully aware that constructive criticism is imperative to improving a text. You need the group to be comprised of people who are not simply writers, but also strong readers and critics. Finding that and maintaining it can be tricky. Not to mention, you have to manage to juggle a bunch of people’s schedules, and that can get difficult. That said, when it works, you may find you’re at one of the most productive periods of your writing career, growing a great deal and learning from those around you. If you’re not big into groups, you can always solicit friends or family you trust, but ultimately a group of strangers will be more honest, because they won’t be as worried about hurting your feelings.

The other option is to get an editor who isn’t attached to a publishing company. There are plenty of us freelancers out there, at varying price ranges, all looking to help you improve your writing. While you may have to pay for our services, it’s our business to know things that people in your writing group may not. We make it a point to know the ins and outs of style guides such as the Chicago Manual in order to help make your text look as professional as possible. Because of our experience, we can often lend a polish that even the more experienced readers among your writing group would be unable to. And, as editors who aren’t attached to a house, we are more involved in getting your writing to be the best it can be rather than worrying about whether or not it will sell.

The needs of your text(s) will vary undoubtedly, and it’s important to know where your preferences lie concerning which mode of revision you choose. Whatever you do, be aware that you can revise all you want until the time comes that you’ve submitted it to someone. Only bother to submit what you consider to be your best, polished work. Do whatever you need to do to get it there, then let it go.

If you’ve done your homework, you can be confident it’s ready!

By Nancy D’Inzillo with Charity Heller Hogge