Editor — Substantive and Copyediting: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy
I’m out of the office this week, due to a death in the family. I still have access, obviously, but my online time and creativity are limited.
I’ve got a healthy backlog of subjects to post about, but I’ve been meaning to invite questions, too. I’ve just been forgetting to mention it. This seems like a good time, though. If there’s anything you’d like me to address in a post, please submit it via the contact form.
Give me something to talk about on Thursday!
As language sites go, The Phrontistery is one of my long-time favorites. More a compendium than a thesaurus, it’s an excellent resource for expanding and brightening your vocabulary, or even for browsing for ideas.
While one of the main features of the site is the International House of Logorrhea, a free online dictionary of weird and unusual words, I’ve found the separate lists of uncommon words, grouped by subject, to be just as useful. The color terms, fabric terms, and unusual animals are particular favorites of mine. I’ve returned to them again and again over the last few years, when I’ve been stuck and any common word just wouldn’t do.
If you’re bored of three dollar S.A.T. words and you’re looking to expand your vocabulary and throw a little more color into your writing, you could do worse than to browse The Phrontistery’s hallowed pages.
Be warned, though, that like any items of luxury, these should be used sparingly. Add one here or there for a little garnish or extra spice, but overdo it and you’ll look like you’ve been playing dressup in your mom’s thesaurus.
Right now as I type this, I’m wearing black sweatpants and a faded X-Files t-shirt I’ve had since 1996. It’s a little cool here today, so in a while I might put on a pair of black and pink striped socks. I showered and washed my hair this morning, then ran a brush through it and let it air-dry into the random soft ringlets and waves it likes to make. And… makeup? What’s that?
Technological advances have made telecommuting possible. Working from home is a commuter’s dream. No queues, no crowds, no traffic, no weather. Many days, I’d be slipping up the stairs of the bus at 6 a.m. and squishing into my seat, staring out at the rain or slush and envying those friends who were snug and warm in their own home offices, with their own hot cocoa, sleeping in until 8:50 and padding across the hall in their bunny slippers at 9:00.
If you ask any random person what the biggest draw of working at home is, they’ll likely give you the same answer: Going to work in your pajamas. (Okay, some of them might say “underwear”. Personally, I live in a place where it’s not that warm, and I like to have a window open. Let’s not scare the neighbors: Pajamas, it is.)
One of those same advances that make telecommuting happen, though, also seems to threaten to undermine the very spirit of it.
I’m talking about videoconferencing.
Bunny slippers and messy hair may be the hallmarks of the telecommuter, the freelancer, the work-at-home professional. But don’t get me wrong, I clean up every bit as nicely as the next girl.
Freelancers are still professionals. There’s a time for wearing pajamas and shuffling across the hall to tackle edits, but there’s also a time for looking like the professional that I am.
With a little advance warning, I can do my hair and dig out some eyeliner. I can adjust my laptop’s built-in webcam and my room lighting, get frustrated and run back to the bathroom to put on foundation and do my makeup again. I can make sure that my big-name reference materials and my own clients’ books are featured front and center on the tidy shelves behind me.
I have colleagues in four countries, but I have yet to work with anyone in my own timezone. Phone and video chats are the closest things I have to meetings with my clients. I think there’s a definite benefit to being able to see the nuances of the people I’m conversing with. It adds a face, literally, to the transaction.
Videoconference may feel like the enemy. It may feel like a threat to the freelancer way of life.
It isn’t.
A videoconference is your chance to show your client that you are that professional they hired. It’s another tool in your professional arsenal, and if the opportunity comes up, don’t be afraid of it. Use it to your full advantage.
(And you can still wear your bunny slippers. I won’t tell!)
All writers have words or phrases that they overuse. “Just” is one of mine. I also have characters whisper and murmur too often.
Many writers have certain words which they always or frequently misspell. Some keystroke patterns just trip up certain fingers. (See? There’s a “just”!) I’m guilty of “wtih” for “with”. Additionally, I almost always overreach and have to correct “defauly” to “default”. (That’s right, I can’t type “default” by default.) I know that these words are problems for me, and I’m careful about catching them.
All of the writers I have ever worked with have weaknesses in these two areas. It’s not something to be ashamed of, it’s simply something to be aware of. I find it fascinating, on an academic level, because it’s something that seems to be universal and individual at the same time.
If you’re not sure which words you commonly overuse, ask your editor, or have a friend read over your manuscript. Sometimes they’re hard to spot for yourself, while others can see them for a mile away. It’s similar to the way we don’t notice ourselves adding “um” and “uh” into our speech.
Being aware of these things, catching them and replacing them will make your writing stronger. Catching the words you use too frequently and forcing yourself to think of alternatives, work around them, or leave them out entirely where they’re unnecessary, will sharpen your skills and get you thinking more deeply about your word choices. And that’s just a good thing all around!
Today’s post is about a book.
It’s not an editing reference, or a writing reference, or a how-to of any kind. It’s a children’s book, of sorts, which takes an interesting perspective on children and imagination.
In The Monster Engine, Dave DeVries has taken children’s drawings of monsters, creatures and things that go bump in the night and fleshed them out into vividly colored 3-D creations. He has then gone back and interviewed each child artist, asking them about their monster.
You might worry that perhaps the children might feel disempowered by this; their creation taken away from them, their own rudimentary skills dwarfed by the attention of a professional artist. Don’t. The children all seem to love seeing their visions transformed. In some cases (even though DeVries is quick to qualify that he’s no psychologist), it even seems to have helped them put their fears into perspective.
It’s a brilliant concept, very well executed. DeVries has gone on to gallery shows and school tours. He works with college students on mixed media and digital art technique, and with elementary school students with a stage show geared toward introducing children to art.
I’m not including any sample pictures here because I want you to go to the site and see them for yourself.
When I started working as a freelancer, my first few jobs were for a publisher. I had the security of knowing that everything I touched was guaranteed to make it into print — security I needed as I worked to build my resume — and I knew that I’d be earning the same fixed rate of pay that all that publisher’s other freelance editors got, which offered little room for negotiation. This was also good, since I didn’t know what editors charged, or what my skills were really worth.
Soon enough, though, I had some happy clients through the publisher. Through a friend of a friend of a client’s friend, I got my first query about an independent project. I took a deep breath and said, “Well, my rates depend on a number of factors,” and stalled; cornered, I had realized that I had absolutely no idea what to charge.
I’m fortunate to have self-employed friends and family, and they were able to give me good advice. The best and most important advice I received, was this: Charge what you want to be paid.
It’s profound, yet simple. Choose the hourly (or yearly) salary that you feel is reasonable, and back-engineer your rates so that they provide it.
Do so realistically, of course. As much as I want to make six figures a year, I don’t believe that I’m in a place yet where I can reasonably demand to do so. I aim for a salary slightly higher than the one I finished with at the large publishing house I worked for, and that puts my rates well within the industry standard.
That leads quite handily into the next question: What’s the industry standard?
To determine this, I started searching the web. (What did we ever do without the web?)
I found a couple of useful guides, such as this pdf article on writersmarket.com, written by Lynn Wasnak and based on an annual survey she compiles. (If you’re a freelancer, go to her site and add your data for her 2009 survey!)
They helped a little, but they didn’t help much — Copyediting is worth $1 to $6 per page? That’s quite a wide range! — but they at least gave me the ballpark. The rate I’d decided on was toward the lower end of the scale, as was appropriate for a beginner, but it was still within the scale and not off the bottom or the top.
The Editorial Freelancers Association has a guide to industry standard rates as well, broken down clearly into pace (pages per hour) and hourly rates. It’s easy enough to convert those numbers into a per page rate and see the relationship.
Some freelancers charge by the hour, but I’m more comfortable charging by the page. The hour is too subjective a measure for me. You don’t know that I’m timing only the minutes I spend on your project. I could tab away to check my email or respond to an IM and leave the clock running. You’re reliant on my reading speed, and I can’t itemize every minute of work in a way that proves I’m working honestly. Plus, on an easy project, if I’m efficient then I’m only cheating myself. If I’m not, I might be cheating you. I’d rather remove that ambiguity.
By charging per page, with a finite number of Microsoft Word document pages and the knowledge that without substantial cuts or additions, that page number isn’t going to change much, I feel that there’s a much clearer expectation on both sides as to what the final cost of the job will be.
My rates still depend on a number of factors. Namely, how long I reasonably expect to spend on each page. For a simple, clean manuscript that needs very little editing, my rates will be lower. For something that requires more work (whether recasting awkward sentences, making more spelling and grammar corrections, or doing more research or fact checking, or something involving significant rewrites), my rates will be higher. A short deadline will push my rates up, as well. I can usually determine within a few pages how difficult a project will be; often, the first page is illustrative enough.
How to translate that into money, though! For my own use, I worked out a simple spreadsheet that shows me rate per page, and how that translates out into hourly (and daily, weekly, monthly and yearly!) rate based on number of pages per hour. This is a very handy tool. Industry standard assumes a 250 word page, and the industry standard editing speed is between 5 and 10 pages per hour, depending on the complexity of the work. If you think about the difference between 5 and 10 pages per hour, at the same rate per page… $20/hour at 5 pages per hour = $4/page. $20/hour at 10 pages per hour = $2/page. (Assuming a 200-300 page manuscript, you can quickly see how giving your editor a clean manuscript is to your benefit!)
Now, before you think that I rush off to up my page count and make myself rich, slow down! This doesn’t mean that I pay less attention and zoom through my work. It means that I can use that scale to pick the page per hour speed that I think is realistic for the job, and I can choose my rate from there, targeting the right overall figure. I can charge twice as much for a harder, 5 page/hour job, as for an easier 10 page/hour job. I’m not charging an hourly rate, but I’m still getting a standard hourly rate, and it’s the rate I feel comfortable targeting. This way, I don’t aim too high, but I don’t sell my own skills short, either.
I’ve gone this long without a grammar/punctuation post, but I’ve decided that it’s time for one. Dialog interrupted by narration seems to be a very common punctuation sticking point. Since it’s something I often find myself correcting, I thought it would make a good introductory technical tip.
The rule for inserting narration into dialog is simple. Periods after the first fragment are followed by upper case letters. Commas after the first fragment are followed by lower case.
Determine where your narration interrupts the dialog. Is it mid-sentence or at a break between sentences?
If it’s a single sentence, interrupted mid-flow, it should be offset by commas and neither the narrative nor the continuation should be capitalized:
“I could do that,” she said, “or I could just kill you where you stand.”
If two sentences are separated by narrative, you have a choice as to where the period falls. Just be consistent. If there’s a period in either spot, you have ended the sentence of dialog. The next sentence of dialog must start with a capital.
“I could do that,” she said. “Or I could just kill you where you stand.”
or
“I could do that.” She said, “Or I could just kill you where you stand.”
or even
“I could do that.” She smiled. “Or I could just kill you where you stand.”
Editors aren’t schoolteachers. We’re not here to handhold, or praise, or encourage, or assign an opinion or a grade to the manuscripts we receive. We’re here to correct, to polish, and to be professional.
But, when someone’s life’s work is sent back to them covered in red ink, it can be more than a little disheartening to them. Intellectually, your writers know that you’re their partner in this. You’re on their side. Your job isn’t to tear down their work, but to make it the best that it can be, and any criticism or questions you return with, or corrections you suggest, are only offered in the interest of making their work stronger.
Intellectually, they know that. But find a non-patronizing way to remind them, anyway. Emotionally, when writers open a file to find their “baby” marked up with a sea of red ink, it can be hard to keep rationality and objectivity at the forefront.
That’s their problem, you might say. They need to learn to accept criticism and develop a tough skin if they want to make it in this industry.
Well, yes. Yes, they do. But at the same time, they’re not paying you to tear them down. They’re paying you to help them. It’s their responsibility to take corrections in the proper spirit, but it’s equally your responsibility to offer them in the proper spirit, with professionalism and sensitivity.
In my intro letter when i contact a new author, I usually take a moment to explain how I work and what my style is, and to mention the kinds of changes I’ll likely be suggesting so that they’ll know what to expect. Within the file, I make a point to keep a lighthearted tone in my comments if there are items that I question, or places where I feel the need to explain the rationale behind my suggestions. I’ll occasionally add humor to my comments if it’s appropriate, but I won’t tease or criticize. One of the authors I work with has been a close friend since college and I feel comfortable joking with him at other times, but when it comes to his manuscripts I’m very careful with the sarcasm. I want to develop a rapport. I don’t want to critique anything in a way that might feel like an attack.
Editors are often the first audience for a manuscript. We’re being entrusted with it, and our responsibility as substantive editors is not only to fix the little mechanical things that are obviously broken, but to be honest about what the manuscript needs.
If a sentence or a concept or an image really stands out to me as being exceptional, I’ll leave a comment in the margin to say so. If I’m really enjoying a project or if a cliffhanger gnaws at me so sharply that I find myself wanting to go back to work at 10pm just to see what happens next, I’ll say so. I’ll check in from time to time and offer a reader’s opinion on a plot twist or a joke, or an observation on what, at this point, I’ve been led to predict will happen with a certain character or plot thread. All of these sorts of observations are invaluable to the writer: they’re the first indication they’ll have, in some cases, as to whether they’re leading the reader down the intended train of thought: whether a plot twist is too obvious or a twisting trail of clues is too confusing. Whether that joke is actually funny.
Strike a balance. Don’t handhold or head-pat constantly. You’re not their schoolteacher or their cheerleader, and it will hurt your credibility with them if you come across as if you think you are. But remember that positive feedback is important feedback, too. It encourages good behavior, like parallel construction or vivid showing-not-telling imagery. A simple “this sentence is perfect”, or “I love this image” or “I laughed out loud right here” reassures the author that their words are coming across as intended. It reminds them that you really are reading instead of just slashing away with the red pen, and that you really are on their side.
