Beyond the Elements of Style

Data in One Place Doesn’t Exist

This week’s guest blogger is Bill Blinn, who knows a thing or two about backing up data.

Any data that is in just one location doesn’t exist.

Why? The answer is that bad things can happen to good data. Have you ever used an existing document as the basis for a new document and then, without thinking, saved the new document using the old filename? I have. Goodbye old file, unless you have backup. I did.

Have you ever formatted one of two disk drives in a machine, thinking that you’re formatting the C drive and accidentally pointed the format gun at the head of the D drive, the one with all your data, time billing records, photos, and music? Yeah, I’ve done that, too, I’m embarrassed to admit. The only recovery is backup.

Ever have a machine just die? Been there. Done that. Recovered the data.

So far, I haven’t had a computer stolen. We did have a network-spreading virus/worm years ago when the “I Love You” messages circulated. That was May 4, 2000. We’ve become smarter since then and we’ve instituted more safeguards, but backup saved the day. A lot of people I know lost every jpg on their computer because that particular virus overwrote (among others) all jpg, jpeg, vbs, vbe, js, css, and doc files.

Files exist on fragile magnetic or optical media. The more copies you have, the less likely it is that you’ll lose something important.

Backup is an essential part of living in the computer age, yet no-one seems to take it seriously until it happens to them. I’m raising my hand here: I lost an entire novel which, though possibly not the Great American one, was nonetheless dear to me. It broke my heart. I started doing backups.

Just running whatever backup software you favor isn’t enough, either. What happens if your home or office is burned, flooded, or otherwise destroyed? Good-bye, data. Offsite backup is the only reliable solution.

It doesn’t have to be costly, either. You can keep thumb drives of important files at a friend’s house. You can exchange backup with a friend, too: store hers on your computer, she stores yours on hers. There are many creative ways to deal with the issue: the only incorrect way is to not do anything.

Back up all your files regularly, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

And a Final Word on Fonts …

(Okay, so it probably isn’t the last word in the Grand Scheme of Things, but it is for this week, anyway…)

Thanks to Geoff Hart, whom you have encountered in these virtual pages before, you can enjoy this –– er –– humorous take on the fonts debacle.

They’re way beyond the elements of style!

Times New Roman Isn’t, Either …

When it comes to matters of typography, I am clearly a babe in the woods and sit at the feet of people such as Dick Margulis, who had this to say about my weekend post on the evils of using the Courier font:

Times New Roman was a terrible, terrible choice for a default serif font in Word–and the fact that it is the Word default font is the reason so many people use it. It was designed to be used in a narrow newspaper column (the Times of London), and as such it is a semi-condensed face. That means that with normal (default) margins on US letter-size paper, there are too many characters on a line for comfortable, extended reading.

If you’re going to recommend TNR for mss., you need to recommend, as well, that margins be bumped up to 1.5 inches. That leaves a 5.5 inch type column, and 12 point TNR is satisfactory (if boring) on that measure, because it averages 65 characters per line–close to the limit for extended reading.

However, there are much better choices, even within the default font set that installs with Word, for reading comfort.

So there it is. Times New Roman isn’t your friend, any more than Courier is; so be aware of that, and that there may be issues with your favorite font, as well.

To clarify, I’m speaking here mostly of printed documents that will be sent out as queries and proposals, not as manuscripts to be read on-screen, where one can, of course, change the font so that one can read in whatever way makes one comfortable.

Dick does add:

Oh, and I completely agree with you about Courier. I see it recommended all the time in books about submitting to agents. I even see it listed as a requirement on agent sites. But there’s really no good reason for it that I can see.

Learning about fonts (as I clearly still am) is part of being … beyond the elements of style!

Courier is Not Your Friend

Okay, I’ve just received the third manuscript in a row formatted in Courier. What are people thinking?

I believe that one of the Writer’s Digest books is still advocating the use of Courier. I hope not, but it must be so, because here it is 2008 and I’m still getting manuscripts formatted in Courier. Fiction, all of them; don’t know if that’s contributing to the problem or not.

People, people, people! Repeat after me: No more Courier! Yes, it looks like a typewriter. Is this supposed to be a good thing? Why on earth would you want to have your manuscript look like it was typed? Do you take pride in still using telephones and cars that must be cranked to get started? Do you light your home with candelabras? Do you shovel coal from your basement into your furnace? Why on earth do you want to use arguably one of the better inventions of recent times –– the computer –– and make it look like you’re not?

Trust me on this one: no one wants to read an entire novel printed in Courier. More to the point, no one wants to read a query letter or a book proposal printed in Courier. It’s difficult to read. It shows that the author really doesn’t know his or her way around a word processing application. It’s old-fashioned (and not in a good way). Did I mention that it’s difficult to read?

So what font should you use? Most people these days recommend Times New Roman. It’s a serif font that is easy to read on paper (and most of you will be submitting on paper). It doesn’t work as well for web pages –– computer viewing is a different affair altogether, one we won’t go into right now –– but for standard writing purposes, Times New Roman is your friend.

Okay: lecture over. And just to show that even Times New Roman has its detractors, read this fun piece in The Big Jewel: Less Popular Fonts Lash Out at Times New Roman.

Welcome to the 21st century, where you’ll be … beyond the elements of stye!

Chapbooks, Anyone?

I was talking to a friend recently about a poet’s collection that I’d like to see put into a chapbook, when my friend said, “what’s that?” And while I’ve used the word here, there, and a little of everywhere, I had to admit that I … didn’t actually know.

So for those of you who, like me, tend to sometimes use words without knowing mch about their origins, here’s a little history lesson. Chapbooks originated in the Renaissance. Paper was fairly scarce, but a growing number of people in Europe were learning to read. Chapbooks were small printed books containing stories, poetry, songs, even sermons or essays, and were sold fairly cheaply. The men who bought them from the printers and then turned around and sold them on the street (the precursors, perhaps, of modern newsstands), were called chapmen … and the books, chapbooks.

These days, chapbooks are often used for poetry collections or essay collections, and are often given as well as being sold. They are also used by some publishers as a “teaser” of sorts for an author’s forthcoming book, a promotional/marketing tool to entice readers to purchase the book itself.

As Wikipedia would have it,

No exact definition can be applied. Chapbook can mean anything that would have formed part of the stock of chapmen, a variety of pedlar. The word chapman probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for barter, buy and sell. The term chapbook was formalised by bibliophiles of the nineteenth century, as a variety of ephemera (disposable printed material.) It includes many kinds of printed material, such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales, children’s literature and almanacs. Where there were illustrations, they would be popular prints.

Want to read more? Someone at MIT did some work on chapbooks that can be found here.

And this just in: According to reader and book producer extraordinaire Dick Margulis, “Aldus Manutius commissioned the first italic types specifically to cram more words onto the pages of chapbooks, for a competitive cost advantage.”

So next time you want to mention collecting a friend’s poems into a chapbook, you’ll know whereof you speak (as will I!). And then, like me, you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Selling to the New Age Market

Okay, I’m not really as lazy as the last couple of posts may make you think: but it seems that the past week for some reason has been filled with brilliant advice from colleagues that I just have to share. Here I’m quoting a post verbatim from one of my brothers in the National Writers Union (which, bizarrely enough, is also Local 49 of the UAW, but that’s a story for another time). Randy Peyser, who runs Author One Stop, has some advice for anyone out there who thinks she or he has the perfect manuscript on Wicca, astrology, the Tarot, or dowsing:

I run a national publishing consulting firm and shop manuscripts to all of the Mind/Body/Spirit publishers. Here’s what I can tell you about them:

While it is possible to shop directly to a publisher, you MUST have a very strong book proposal to accompany your manuscript — and, like anything, it helps if you have connections to people within that publishing house, especially to the acquisitions editors.

Here is more information you should know:

You must have a unique twist to your subject matter. No publisher is looking for material that has already been covered, and so much of the New Age thought/philosophy/techniques have been covered. That’s why Harper Collins, who used to be a major publisher of New Age books, rarely publishes them anymore. It wasn’t until The Secret that the MBS publishers started to really “rev” up again. Now there are a flood of Law of Attraction knock-offs on the market, but that phase will probably wear thin soon.

You had better have a very strong promotional plan and be out there promoting PRIOR to sending them your manuscript, because publishers are interested in authors who have eyeballs — in other words, those authors who are out in front of audiences where they are being seen continually. Likewise, the competition section of your proposal had better be strong, because otherwise publishers will know you didn’t do your homework.

I know the majority, if not all, of the Mind/Body/Spirit publishers. Never tell a publisher that you know you have a bestseller or that you know Oprah will want to interview you. They will see both of these statements as signs of an amateur.

While you don’t necessarily need an agent to approach many of the MBS publishers, you will want an agent or someone at the NWU to help you with your contract. I used an NWU contract advisor for my first book, which was published by a New Age publisher. That advisor was superb. She gave me eight hours of her time and went through every single detail, telling me what I should fight for and what rights I should not give away. That being said, if I had to do it over again, I would have hired a literary agent to negotiate the contract at an hourly rate, because I didn’t have the clout to get everything I wanted as a first-time author. If I’d had an agent working with me, I could have at least doubled my advance.

So, who are the few agents out there who accept New Age books? Anyone ever hear of Eckhert Tolle? I consistently shop manuscripts to Eckhert Tolle’s agent. So far, this agent has been willing to consider every client I’ve sent to him. My reputation is always on the line when I send something out, so a book has to be polished and a book proposal has to be exemplary before I will ever send it out to someone who can command the kind of advance that Tolle’s agent can command.

Then there’s Sylvia Brown’s agent, but she only takes manuscripts that she believes will get a high six or seven figure advance and you had better have the promotional plan in place to prove it.

There are a few other agents I work with who shop to MBS publishers and there are still other agents I hire to negotiate contracts when I’ve found a publisher for one of my clients. They will negotiate a contract for $50/hour and
have taken about five hours to do contracts for me in the past.

So, there you have it. I hope this letter does not come across as self-serving. It is truly my intention to provide information that helps those who publish in the Mind/Body/Spirit genre to have the success they desire.

Much of this is good advice that transcends genres. As you know, putting together the best possible book proposal and brilliant query letter, having a platform, and having a terrific manuscript are the keys to getting published anywhere, though perhaps particularly so in this niche area. Follow his advice and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Shipping the Work to India

A recent article in Business Week talks about more and more copyediting being outsourced from Europe and North America to India, because of the lower costs of having editing done there.

It’s not a new issue: faithful readers will remember that I addressed it once already in my post titled Happy Labor Day. But if Business Week has something to say about it, then it’s more of a major issue than it was when I addressed it in 2006.

My friend and colleague, Geoff Hart, has an interesting take on it that I think is absolutely right on:

We’ll never be able to compete with Indian editors on the basis of price, and competing based on quality is unlikely, at least in the long term. Let’s not forget that many Indians are every bit as skilled with English as we are, since it’s often their native language. And with roughly four times the population of North America (and probably a comparable ratio for Europe), there will potentially be four times as many good editors — and four times as many bad ones, of course.

We can offer only two things that Indian editors can’t reliably provide: skill in our local dialect of English, and proximity to our clients. The former is one of those things that translators like to debate, namely whether you can produce prose indistinguishable from that produced by a skilled local. The best translators believe you can, but in my experience (with French), they’re fooling themselves (i.e., judging others based on their own skills). Very few translators can hide their native tongue well enough to fool me. I’ve heard the same observation from several full-time translators whose opinions I respect.

Proximity is no longer such an issue, particularly for those of us who earn more than 90% of our income from clients on other continents whom we’ll never meet. But for some clients, it’s important: they like the ability to phone during regular working hours or request an office visit or otherwise know that we’re available on a moment’s notice. To retain such clients, we need to give top-notch customer service so they have no reason whatsoever to look elsewhere. That’s true of all clients, by the way: the easier we are to work with, the more human nature (i.e., laziness) makes it likely that clients won’t look elsewhere.

Unfortunately, many clients and potential clients see editing as a commodity, and commodities will always be purchased at the lowest price. In the context of this discussion, that means India. These clients aren’t worthy of our time — there are still clients who appreciate our value, and will pay for it. But let’s be realistic: basic copyediting skills, such as fixing subject-verb accords and typos, really are a commodity service. Any editor worthy of the name should be able to fix these problems.

The only thing that allows us to rise above our colleagues and command a premium price is the ability to provide specialized services, and that means we need to find a niche where our expertise is worth the extra money. For me, that’s science editing, and specifically the subset that relates to journal articles written by non-English scientists. I provide heavy substantive and developmental editing (based on 20+ years of working with journals and learning their criteria) along with polishing the language, and for people who need what I provide, a nonspecialist simply can’t compete.

So the question to ask yourself is the following: What do I offer beyond a commodity service? Market that value-add to your clients. It’s no guarantee that you’ll never lose a client to an Indian or other editor with equally specialized skills, but it does reduce the risk.

There’s far more editing work out there than any one group of editors can handle — the trick is to find it. At some point, the amount of editing work required domestically in India will become sufficiently large that Indian editors will begin satisfying the needs of their domestic market first. That should relieve some of the pressure on us Westerners.

Of course, getting from here to there will be difficult. One useful option is to begin capitalizing on another major outsourcing trend, which is seeing much technical writing being shipped to India, where much software and hardware development is going on. (Ditto for China.) All writers need an editor, and for Indian companies (or branches of Western companies) that will be selling their products around the world, localization (culturally sensitive translation) of their documentation will become important. That’s where editors can become extremely useful.

The mills may indeed be closing, but there’s always something you can do with an improved and focused skill-set. Bear that in mind — and visit Geoff online at www.geoff-hart.com. Then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Looking For A Few Good Writers

… or aspiring ones, anyway!

My local writing group recently lost a member, and we’d been wanting to expand anyway, so the need to incorporate new members has become quite pressing. And it’s brought up a lot of questions that are probably good to consider: who are we? What are the group’s goals? Who exactly is the person we want to have join us? Is there an ideal candidate? What can we offer that person? What do we need from him or her?

And can the group come to a consensus around any of these issues?

These are valid questions, I think, to ask of any writing group, local or virtual, large or small. We happen to be asking them because we want to have some new members join us; but you might want to consider asking them even if your group isn’t looking to expand. It’s easy to lose focus, to forget the original (or even evolving) mandate, to lose track of what you’re doing. Questions like these bring you back to the center.

One of my clients is a marketing firm that recently engaged me to write an operations manual for the company. An operations manual sets out everything about the company, from where the paper for the copier is located to the policy around sick days, from the specific steps entailed in everything the company does to how it hires new employees. It forces a company to review in minute detail every aspect of its business, much of which has never been articulated or was articulated so long ago that it’s been forgotten. In essence, the operations manual tells the company’s story.

Staying in touch with one’s story isn’t just important in the corporate world: it’s important for any group. The story allows for group members to bond, to recall common goals, to feel part of something larger than any individual member. Losing a sense of history means losing part of ourselves. And any group needs that backstory, the communal equivalent of “how I met your mother.”

Groups also need the ongoing part of the story: this is what we do, this is how we do it, this is why we do it. My writing group decided early on, for example, to break with the common genre-specific considerations: we are fiction writers and poets, and have discovered that having a good mind and a willingness to take risks compensates for not being as schooled in each others’ genres. It’s a decision that has worked for us, and certainly would not work for others. It’s part of our story, and it needs to be articulated.

Think of the groups to which you belong (and if you don’t belong to a writing group, seriously consider joining or starting one). What are their stories? Is your story still aligned with theirs? A periodic refresh of this process can be enormously helpful. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!