Uncategorized | Words on the Page

Back to the Wall

Posted on April 19, 2010 by lwidmer

I’m back – miss me? Great week with the family members. We did a lot of day trips, one overnight trip, and plenty of restaurants, all filled with laughter, stories, and new memories. I knew myself enough to plan some “me” time alone in front of the computer. But the weirdest thing happened – I…

Taxed

Posted on April 16, 2010 by lwidmer

Between lovely company and taxes, it’s been a full vacation. I managed all the tax returns by yesterday, including payments for this year. Fortunately, January through the end of March were fantastic months earnings-wise. The money was there to pay everything with a little left over. Even with company here, I took my time through…

Things I Can’t Stand (Part Two)

Posted on April 15, 2010 by lwidmer

A late post, but blame it on April 15th filing deadlines….. Still on vacation, though it’s feeling more like I’ll need a rest afterward! More things I can’t stand. Feel free to add your own: Estimated taxes. I don’t mind paying them, but the entire estimated tax system is based on one thing – your…

Hitting the High Note

Posted on April 14, 2010 by lwidmer

Yesterday was about low prices. Today, the opposite – the best you’ve ever had. What’s the top price you’ve ever received? How does that figure out per-hour? Was the job harder? I had one job that paid a phenomenal rate – $12K. It was a collaboration with a company whose big-name client was paying for…

How Low Will You Go?

Posted on April 13, 2010 by lwidmer

Still on vacation, so just leaving vapor trails…. We talk endlessly about asserting our worth, realizing our skills are valuable, marketing to clients who value those skills, etc. That begs the question: What are you worth? Maybe a better question is this: How cheaply will you work? What conditions have to be present in order…

Discussion: Favorite Client Attributes

Posted on April 12, 2010 by lwidmer

Still on vaca and enjoying the company – We do a lot of lamenting about client issues, so I want to turn this on its ear a bit. Consider your perfect client – they’re out there – what would that client have that will keep you loyal? I’ll start. My favorite clients (I have the…

Things I Can’t Stand (Part One)

Posted on April 9, 2010 by lwidmer

I’m off today and all of next week, but I’ll leave you this week with something fun to ponder, discuss, or disagree with. I can’t stand: The use of “Google” or “texting” as verbs. People who use “Google” as a verb, as in “I Googled him” sound like they’re choking on walnuts, for one thing….

Thursday Musings and Madness

Posted on April 8, 2010 by lwidmer

I think I’ve accomplished more this week than any week in my career. I have tomorrow and all next week off, so I’ve had to herd the cats. So far, I’ve managed a pile of client captions, two interviews for an upcoming article, four more interviews for a newsletter, four more newsletter articles from those…

Disturbing Trend of the Day

Posted on April 7, 2010 by lwidmer

Normally when I get crap in my email I just delete it. However, this particular email disturbed me on a few levels. Let me explain: The offer:They want to sponsor my weblog. This weblog. They want me to earn money, money, money through their sponsorship. What’s in it for me:Money and higher traffic to this…

Convincing Them You Don’t Suck

Posted on April 6, 2010 by lwidmer

Ever have one of those clients who is with you all the way…until they show your editing or writing work to a friend, neighbor, pastor, or checkout clerk and suddenly you’re that fool they’re wasting money on? Having had my fair share of those in the past, I’ve amended my contracts to avoid it. If…

Lillie Ammann

April 6, 2010

Interesting situation, Lori.

I actually encourage my editing clients to get input from other people on their book manuscripts. I don't think one person has all the answers, and the books have been made much stronger as a result.

However, I recommend that the author selects readers with specific talents, then I send the advance reading copies asking for the readers' feedback. Of course, the author talks to them in advance, and they have agreed to serve as advance readers and are expecting to hear from me. People are usually eager to do this for a listing in the acknowledgements and an autographed copy of the book.

We tell them specifically what we want from each of them.

For example, in a recent book, we asked an expert in Judaism to review the ritual of the Passover dinner the characters attended. The author had left out a blessing, and I didn't know the ritual and didn't catch it. Another reader, who lives in the geographic area where the book was set, pointed out that the author had Indians living in teepees when they actually lived in caves. A third reader is very knowledgeable about the origins of words, and he found a couple of words that weren't used at the time of the book.

The author had spent years researching the history and still missed those things. Although I checked the dates on words I thought were too modern, I didn't even think to check the two the advance reader found; I thought they were words that had been around that long. And without doing extensive research, I wouldn't know the details of a ritual of a religion that I know little about or what kind of dwellings Indians lived in during a particular point in history in a specific geographic location.

Sometimes the advance readers do make suggestions about grammar, etc. that are wrong. But I just ignore them. All the input comes back to me, and I only change or discuss with the author those things that are legitimate.

Having the advance readers submit their suggestions to me rather than the author does two things: it keeps him from dealing with the ridiculous suggestions, and it encourages the advance readers to be honest in their feedback about the story without fear of hurting the author's feelings. The system has worked very well for my clients and me, and I always recommend authors get feedback from other people.

The differences, I think, between what I do and the situations you describe are 1) that I as the editor deal with the advance readers, and the author isn't inundated with wrong suggestions and 2) I as an editor don't know everything and can't possibly catch everything in a book length manuscript, especially on topics that I'm not expert in, whereas you are an expert in what you write.

Lillie Ammann
A Writer's Words, An Editor's Eye

Lori

April 6, 2010

Lillie, I love that approach. I'm surprised you haven't had a posse-type response, which makes me want to try it. I think it's very useful to cut out the author in this phase as it goes a very long way to removing doubts and souring the relationship.

I love it. I'm glad to know of another way!

Kimberly Ben

April 6, 2010

Lori, I must thank you til this very day for even bringing this topic up. You mentioned this as a problem a while back and I immediately added a version of that clause to my own agreement. I'd only experienced one bad episode with a client bringing a third party into the mix, but once was plenty!

Paula

April 6, 2010

This discussion reminds me of some of my college writing courses. The professor was really into the parts of speech and diagramming sentences — so much so that the board looked like it should be in an advanced algebra classroom. Me? I memorized the parts of speech for our tests, then promptly forgot half of them. I learn better by doing. If it sounded right, it usually was correct. Then I had to decide how to justify it to the professor, who didn't much care for the, "It sounds right" school of thought.

Luckily I don't usually have to deal with editing by committee. But a long time ago a local city magazine had a dictator-like editor who re-wrote every line in the magazine to be in her voice. She also stuck her "edited by" byline under the authors' names. Seriously. Apparently she had no clue how unprofessional that made her look, and that she was openly ridiculed by most if not all writers who ever contributed to that magazine.

I'd Google her name to see whatever happened to her, but like at least half of the parts of speech, I've blocked it from my memory.

Lori

April 6, 2010

Once is plenty, isn't it, Kim? Glad it worked to pre-empt this for you!

Paula, that's a narcissist right there. I'm sorry – I don't give one hoot most times if I get a byline or not, but I think it's the height of insensitivity, ego, and shameless self-promotion to tag your name at the end of magazine articles as the editor. Your name's on the masthead – be satisfied with the status that comes with that.

I wonder if she's had negative backlash from those who hated her editing style? Hmmm…

Clare Lynch

April 6, 2010

I recently did a job for a client that couldn't have gone any smoother. The work was ready to be published and then . . .

. . . a new arrival at the company was invited to give her thoughts. Keen to make her mark, I think, she sent round an email entitled "Further Amendmants" (sic) with a very heavily marked up version of my work. You can imagine what those amendmants comprised.

A call was arranged to discuss the amendmants and I have to say I defended my territory admirably, compromising for the sake of the relationship on those bits that she hadn't completely ruined.

I hate jargon, but I confess I wheeled out big words such as "tautology" and "hyperbole" to articulate why my original was better. At one point, the other person on the call, who I'd been dealing with up until her arrival, said: "I've no idea what hyperbole means, but I agree – Clare's version sounds better".

That's the great thing about being a writer – we know how to make a case!

Lori

April 6, 2010

Oh Claire, that's hysterical! What a way to impress them! (Side note – a relative's child often says to telemarketers "Dad can't come to the phone – he's stuck on his promontory.")

Wendy

April 6, 2010

Yes, it's quite annoying to hear "This is great! Thanks!" one day and told, a couple of days later, that their neighbor's, dog-grooming assistant found several things they felt were errors. You then have a battle on your hands convincing the client that you wrote certain phrases a certain way for a reason.

I, too, have read posts about you including this in your contract, so I have since done the same thing. I don't want to get caught with that headache again from a client who finds it necessary to get the opinion of someone like their hairdresser who's using their grade school grammar lessons to edit your work.

Lori

April 6, 2010

Neighbor's dog-grooming assistant? Hilarious!! Wendy, you crack me up. 🙂

I think Lillie's on to something, though. The idea of allowing limited editing to select readers is super. Not so much for articles where editors would have six fits and a cow if you ran it by someone else, but for books it sounds like a great idea.

I've had people run it past friends, employees, coworkers, acquaintances, and the oddest was a personality the client was trying to woo. It's why I'm adamant about this. I can't please the world AND the client, so how about I stick with those who are paying?

Paula

April 7, 2010

I just had a guy point out that one line needed to be "pushed down" so a section wouldn't be broken up on the next page. Fine, if you're talking to the graphic designer or the person in charge of a layout, but my job is content, not page layout.