Category Archives: editing and editors

A Writer’s Life

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Wow work at home! A writer’s life, an editor’s life, oh hey. Sit around at home, take your good time, concentrate in silence, work! Oh  joy.

Take a work break skiing in the yard

xcskitracksinyard smllfile blusunnytrees a 10-minute drive to a mountain lake

yesweb72greenlakemntnkick back . . .

Problem is . .  .

  • construction noise next door
  • phone solicitors
  • running out of office supplies
  • billing clients
  • looking for clients
  • too many clients at once
  • taxes
  • getting everything done
  • feral dogs

But there are joys, especially when you finish, as I did yesterday, a final edit of another book!

timeandotherdetails

Deering the Unknown, Blogging the Books

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After reading at the warm and wondrous Wy’East Book Shoppe in Welches (Oregon) on Mount Hood last weekend, I started driving home in the dusk and hit a deer. I am fine, the car will be fine, and the deer–? Dunno; it’s mountain lion territory there. Meanwhile, today the elegant Indies Unlimited brought out its sneak peek of The Rescuer’s Path, my recent novel that recounts both the 1971 love affair between a Holocaust survivor’s daughter and a fugitive Arab-American antiwar activist suspected of the bombing of an army truck, and the 2001 search of their birth daughter for the truth of her origins–  http://wp.me/p1WnN1-4Yc

Occupy 10 Things at Once, or Work and More Work

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I used to think you had to be a working mother to go nuts from doing too much at once. This is, of course, false. Be a writer, editor, and politically conscious human being in the days of Occupy and political change!

At least, things better change. Don’t know about you, but I, like most authors, don’t make enough from my books to eat, pay housing costs, pay insurance costs, etc. And like most authors, even those of us who have publishers (after years of skimping and trying), I have to do most of the books’ p.r.

Okay, so where in this do we find time to edit or whateverthehellelse we do for a living?

Well, and now it’s time to Occupy. Hey, I am with you, guys! Folks, I’m out there on the line and in the great political arena with you, every night.

Except, it’s by “liking” you on Fb. It’s by naming a few of you here: Occupy Oakland, Occupy Mosier, Occupy Writers, occupy . . .

We need to Occupy. We need to make a society where resources and wealth, power and decisions, are more shared. We as writers need to end the control of communications by big corporations. We as people need to end domination of the many by a few.

Of course. And “But the laundry! But the dishes!” “First , I have to pay the bills” and all of that just keeps a vicious cycle going. We need for own sakes basically to make a better world. Then there are 9 other things, right this minute, to do.

What are your most urgent tasks to do? Is creating change among them? And when do you write?

What sort of editor?

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You probably already know what sorts of work editors do. Here are some definitions, if not.
* A copy editor deals with issues of grammar, spelling, styling (for instance, does the use of capitalization, of quote marks vs. italics, of hyphenation, etc. follow the styles of the U. of Chicago Manual of Style and of the publishing house’s own style guide?), and–too often—of pre-preparing copy for the typographers.
* A line editor deals with larger issues of sentence construction, avoiding repetition, etc.
* A content editor, or substantive editor, deals with larger issues
of organization, both within and among the book’s chapters.
* A developmental editor deals with even larger issues of the book’s organization, and may suggest adding characters, possible changes in structure or point of view (and even in plot elements), etc.

These functions tend to overlap; for instance, most publishers will combine developmental, content, and some line editing into one job description, termed that of “the editor” or, perhaps, “the substantive editor”; nearly all publishers combine line editing and copy editing into one position, term it “copy editor,” and
pay at the lowest scale they can get away with, whereas some publishers, otoh, combine copy editing with some proofreading and typographic copy preparation and pay at the very lowest scale that they can barely get away with.

With individual clients, editors often combine most of the “higher level” editing functions into one, termed “editing”; a general critique of a manuscript, with few or no edits/comments noted on specific lines or paragraphs, and with a several-page letter developing major points about changes preferable for the manuscript, is called a manuscript critique.

Rates range from $20/hour for basic copyediting from low-paying presses to $90/hour for a manuscript critique with some example edits by a known writer or highly regarded editing professional.
Is this set of defiinitions of use to you? Please do let me know. Remember, this is a new blog, and your input can definitely affect these discussions.