Beyond the Elements of Style

Say Good-Bye. Or Is That … Goodbye?

Even Newsweek found it worthy this past week of notice: the new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has removed hyphens from 16,000 words. Not eactly Newsweek’s usual cup of tea; but there it is. Hyphens – or, perhaps, the lack thereof – make headlines.

The dictionary committed what Brian Brailer in the article termed “punctuational genocide,” in some cases closing up the word by removing the hyphen, in other instances replacing the hyphen with a space.

This sort of thing usually gets me livid; I’m conservative in only one area of my life, and that’s language. Change is bad! I screech with each linguistic step forward. If it was good enough for my grandmother …

But the Newsweek columnist is right in this instance: there’s no need for me to get my knickers in a twist, as the English would say. Because that’s what this change is about: the English – as differentiated from American – style of writing. And as an American, I’m not particularly perturbed at changes to expressions I never used.

And it does open up a larger question: how language, despite my discomfort with change, is about keeping up with life. Language communicates, describes, enables connections; and that can only happen if it is alive, a living tool.

In fact, I myself embraced some changes before they could discomfit me: in a recent style guide I wrote, I went ahead and closed up email, emessaging, and emarketing. I can read the moving finger, the writing on the wall, and I may as well get used to it now.

Change is good. It’s my new mantra … and it’s taking me way beyond the elements of style!

Thoughts on First Drafts

One of the individuals who works at a Customline Wordware client company is doing an undergraduate degree right now, and this past week he interviewed me for one of his classes.

Here’s what he wrote: “I have a writing assignment for my Advanced Composition class where I need to ask several people about their approach to writing a first draft, then summarize my findings.”

While I think that summarizing such findings may be more of a challenge than amassing the interviews — for if anyone is idiosyncratic, it’s writers — it’s still interesting to see the focus on first drafts. So, for what it’s worth, I’ll share my answers to his questions here:

Approaches to writing a first draft

1. Do you do a great deal of planning before you begin a draft?
I do a great deal of *thinking*, which isn’t necessarily the same as planning. I find that I work best when I’m actually engaged with the material I’m writing, and that it’s then that I assess whether or not I need additional information, research, etc. The best writing advice I ever received was, “Keep your butt in the chair. Just write!” It serves me well.

2. Do you prefer to draft in one sitting or several sessions?
First draft is one sitting. Always: I just want to get the material *down,* see what it is that I have to work with, then go away from it and think about it and come back to it. But a first draft is always all at once (which explains why I’m often awake and working *far* past my bedtime!).

3. What do you do when you get stuck?
Pace. I’m an expert pacer. That’s when I need to follow the “keep your butt in the chair” advice, because it’s a good time to just walk away … and that *never* works.

But what really works best is trying to take a fresh look at the material. And what works best for *me* is imagining explaining it — and my dilemma — to another person. Usually I’m halfway through when I come unstuck — the solution to the problem that got me stuck in the first place is there when I take a step back and think about how I’d present it to someone else.

4. How do you feel when you are drafting?
It depends a lot on what it is I’m writing. If it’s something that’s been stewing in my head for a while, I feel exhilirated when I finally have the opportunity to get it down. If it’s an assignment (from a client, for example) I often feel anxious at first — Will I do it “right”? — though that usually goes away as I write; the act of writing is very empowering, very confidence-building.

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What about you? How do you approach a first draft? With trepidation? With confidence? Either approach (and everything between them) is perfectly acceptable; it’s knowing your own style that will put you … beyond the elements of style!

They Might Be Giants

(10 points for anyone old enough – or eccentric enough! – to still be listening to the musical duo of the same name!)

But this blog is about words, not music, and here’s the word on the latest and greatest in world publishers (with thanks to Lori Cates Hand, who shared them via her excellent blog, Publishing Careers): the Frankfort Book Fair, arguably the largest and most important book festival, has sent out the winners:

• Reed Elsevier (Reed Elsevier–UK/NL): 7.6 billion
• Pearson (Pearson plc–UK): 7.3 billion
• Thomson (Thomson Corp.–Canada) : 6.6 billion
• Bertelsmann (Bertelsmann AG–Germany) : 5.9 billion
• Wolters Kluwer (Wolters Kluwer–NL): 4.8 billion
• Hachette Livre (Lagardère–France) : 2.56 billion
• McGraw-Hill Education (The McGraw-Hill Cos.–US) : 2.52 billion
• Reader’s Digest (Reader’s Digest–US): 2.3 billion
• Scholastic Corp. (Scholastic–US): 2.2 billion
• De Agostini Editore (Gruppo De Agostini–Italy): unavailable

This list, as several knowledgeable people on one of my Internet discussion lists have pointed out, is already obsolete thanks to a few corporate mergers/purchases; but we can still draw a conclusion or two from it.

First, while those of us who live in the U.S. might sometimes feel that the center of the publishing world is New York City, it’s a good reminder that there’s a lot of world out there that doesn’t have much to do with the Avenue of the Americas.

That’s not to say that we should neglect our own publishers or our own book expos, and attending BEA (Book Expo America, which next year will be held in San Diego, California) is an experience that every writer should have at least once in his or her career.

But … it’s also time to remind ourselves that we do live in a global village, and to be more creative in our endeavors to have our voices heard. I visited the Robert Frost farm museum in Derry, New Hampshire, yesterday, and was interested to learn that the poet left his beloved New Hampshire and took his family to live in England for some time because he was unable to be published in the U.S. and found more receptive ears (and, presumably, pocketbooks) in Britain. Even then there was a recognition that one is not simply writing in a small parochial context.

The Internet is the first step toward seeing publishing in more global terms. And maybe, next year, traveling to Frankfort isn’t a bad idea, either.

Who knows? If the publishing world can come together in peace, can governments be far behind? That would surely be beyond the elements of style!

Deadlines and Other Strange Creatures

Well, we’ll make it short and to the point his week, as I am wrestling with every writer’s best friend and deadliest enemy –– deadline time. I’m co-authoring a chapter in the upcoming second edition of Wiley Publishing’s Official Guide to Second Life, and this is Crunch Week. So I’m feeling neither erudite nor clever… just a little over-caffeinated!

But it’s a good subject for writers of all sorts to think about, as deadlines are as inevitable as the proverbial death and taxes. Amd when we sign the contract or make the agreement, the deadline is so blessedly out of sight in the future that it seems like a Small Thing.

Believe me, it very quickly morphs into a Very Big Thing indeed!

How do you deal with deadlines? While I could go off into the predictable every-writer-is-different spiel, there are some concrete bits of advice that will apply to all. To wit:

1. Write something on that first day when you’ve signed or sent off the contract. Even if you don’t eventually use what you write, write something having to do with the project anyway. That keeps you grounded in it, makes it real.

2. Plan the project. This is the next day, after you’ve had the champagne and the excitement has fizzled a little along with it. Use project management software if it’s complex, plain pen and paper if it isn’t. In one column, note the parts that you can do off the top of your head, no problem. In another column, note long-term pieces (if you need to get permissions, for example, or quotes: the sooner you’re on to that sort of thing, the better off you are). A third column will have to do with items, actions, etc. that have to be done in order for the first column to be completed (looking up references, speaking with someone, etc.).

3. Now take the information from #2 and look at your deadline date. It’s calendar time: look at how long you have to complete the project, and plug dates into the pieces of the project you;ve separated out in #2.

4. Start the long-term part right away. Seriously: right away. Don’t wait for the Muse: she’s notorious for disappearing once you’re on deadline.

If you plan everything out well in advance and follow that plan, you have a much better chance of not losing sleep — or sanity! –the last week or two of your project.

Speaking of which, I’d better get back to mine! Need to stay beyond the elements of style ….

Back to publishing …

Okay, you’ve all been kind as I’ve wandered off a bt in the past few weeks, so I thought I’d offer something useful this week by way of expiation. So I thought I’d give you a quick cheat-sheet on what editors are looking for these days in manuscripts. This information is distilled from talking with a number of agents and acquisitions editors over the past year, so hopefully it’s both relevant and recent.

So what do they want?

First off is, alas, nothing to do with the work itself; it’s audience demand. Is there an audience demand for this book? If not, it’s over before it’s even begun.

Second is still not about the book itself, it’s author platform and marketing. Will you be able — and willing — to promote this book? How? Do you have a specific plan? What is it?

Third is — finally — about the book itself. How does it differ from other, possibly similar, works? Can it stand apart … and stand alone?

Fourth is cost. Publishers are far more willing to take a risk on a book that costs less to produce. What this generally translates into is word count: long books had better be extraordinary and a sure thing.

Fifth: timing. This can move up to number one if the issue the book deals with is in the news and likely to stay there for the time it will take to bring the book to market.

Sixth and final is whether or not the manuscript will fit this particular publisher’s list. “Sorry, it doesn’t meet our current needs” can, unfortunately, mean just that.

So there you go. Bear these points in mind as you prepare your next book proposal and you’ll be beyond the elements of style!