Tag Archives: editor

An Editor Tries to Text

“Send me a text.”

Those words send a shudder through my body. Not because I think texting creates two-dimensional human beings (though I am concerned about the next generation’s ability to connect face to face) and not because the posture assumed by a texter is harrowing for the neck (again, I worry about the cervical vertebrae of today’s young people), but because I’m an editor.

I know some people find texting to be a convenient and, as needed, surreptitious shortcut to communication. But when I text—and I try to make it a very rare event, indeed—there is nothing convenient, surreptitious, nor shortcut-ish about it.  I’m simply incapable of the very conventions that make texting speedy. I cannot, for the life of me, forgo capital letters at the beginnings of sentences and proper nouns. Nor am I able to leave out a called-for comma. And periods? Forget it. I will not write a sentence that has no period at the end. How will anyone ever know I’ve ended my thought?

To make matters worse, I don’t have a smart phone. Yes, you read that sentence correctly, and it did have a period at the end. It’s true; I do not have a smart phone. I have a dumb phone. And I like my dumb phone (which used to be considered very smart, running on satellite towers and all). Thus I do not have a smart keyboard on my phone. I have a dumb keyboard (which used to be considered quite clever, one key pad being able to handle both numbers and letters; brilliant!). But texting on this dumb key pad . . . Not fun. Some of you may not even remember how that’s done, all you smart phone owners. You press the 4 three times to get an “I,” the 7 four times to get an “s,” the 3 two times to get an “e” . . . You get the picture. An editor standing head lowered (neck bent in an achingly awkward position) for a full fifteen minutes right in the middle of a busy supermarket, inserting all the periods from “special mode,” to let my friend know I’m running late.

A phone call would have been faster. (I don’t mind dropping capital letters when I speak.)

[See my follow-up post, “An Editor Gets a Smart Phone“]

Do You Have to Write a Book Proposal?

 

Many new writers are daunted by the prospect of writing a book proposal. And not without reason. A good proposal requires a substantial amount of work. But if you do it right, you’ve also done some of the hard work of writing the book itself. You’ll end up with a solid, detailed outline, a polished chapter or two, and a clear sense of what your book will look and feel like, as well as who your audience is. You’ll even have an idea of what you need to do to sell your book.

Sell your book? Won’t the publisher do that? Yes and no. Even if you do get a publisher, rather than publishing your book on your own, you will need to do a lot of the promotion. And much of that promotion will begin long before your book is published. In fact, the promotion should begin even before you approach an agent; this early “promotion” is called building a platform.

Are there ways around writing a book proposal? Well, first of all, book proposals are primarily for nonfiction (though many agents are now requesting query letters, which are a sort of mini-proposal, for fiction as well). The only way around writing a proposal for a nonfiction book is to independently publish, which is now a viable and respectable alternative (but is itself a lot of work, since you’ll be the sole promoter).

To find out more about writing a proposal, including what kinds of information you need to include, check out this article by my colleague Christina Blackett Schlank.

Confessions of a Perfectionist

 

“Wipe that grin off your face,” I said.  “I’m not working today.  I can talk however I want.”

I was responding to a friend who loved to catch me mid-sentence as I committed grammar faux-pas.  This time I had said who instead of whom . . . or maybe it was there’s when it should have been there are.  In any case, it was my day off and I wasn’t in the mood to have my grammar policed.

The problem with being an editor is that one loses the right to make mistakes.  People expect me to be perfect in my grammar, spelling, and punctuation . . . even when I’m not editing a book.

I can’t really take advantage of the relaxed cyber-atmosphere of all-lowercased letters and punctuation-free run-ons. Of course, I’ve been grammar-aware for so long, I don’t think I could let it all hang out if I tried. (You should see me trying to text . . . It takes me 15 minutes to send one message because I’m making sure all the periods and commas are in place.)

So . . . in light of this profession-appropriate perfectionism, you can imagine my dismay when I noticed yesterday that my second post, made on August 22, had an error not only in the first sentence . . . but in the first word! My perfectionism was slipping and I was only two posts into this new blogging enterprise. Grateful that my blushing couldn’t be seen across the cyber-waves, I quickly corrected the typo and hit “update.”

I suppose I had better get used to having “my slip show” if I’m going to play in this public sandbox. (Mixed metaphor, I know, but I’m practicing letting my hair down.)

Check back at a later date when I write more about perfectionism and the role it plays in Writer’s Block.

Nomi’s Blog

 

Nomi Isak (aka Nomi Kleinmuntz) is an award-winning book editor and writing coach. She has been the editor on more than 35 published books, and her clients include the J. Paul Getty Museum, Time-Warner AudioBooks, University of California Press, and numerous individual authors. She was the developmental editor on Illuminating the Renaissance (J. Paul Getty), which won the international Eric Mitchell Prize in 2004. She is also a writer herself and has been published in regional magazines. Currently she is at work on a novel.