Tag Archives: books

NaNoWriMo ’09

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Is this the year for me?

As I finish up a crazed month and a half that included of two 6-day helicopter excursions and a week-long trip to Ventura, CA to record a new video training course for Lynda.com, I find myself with an almost empty schedule — right before the start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

The idea behind NaNoWriMo is to write a novel in a month. The quality or marketabilty of the novel doesn’t seem to matter. Apparently, it’s more important to get the words out, preferably to complete a story, than to write something that might one day be published.

Whatever.

I commented extensively on NaNoWriMo back in 2005. I didn’t have much to say about it that was nice. I expanded on my thoughts in a post a few days later. You might want to read those two posts before you continue. My opinions haven’t changed.

In fact, my opinions were confirmed just today. I happened to be in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Flagstaff, AZ. On a little table near the coffee shop area was an arrangement of books for and about NaNoWriMo. Despite the fact that November is still two weeks off, publishers and bookstores are cashing in on the needs of wannabe writers, offering them guidance for writing a novel in a month. I counted eight titles, from a small paperback to a shrinkwrapped “kit.”

I didn’t buy any of those books. I’ll never pay for anything branded as NaNoWriMo merchandise or in support of NaNoWriMo or even designed to help writers succeed in their NaNoWriMo efforts. I detest the very idea that organizations and individuals are trying to cash in on NaNoWriMo.

I’ve never participated in NaNoWriMo. My excuse is that I’ve just been too busy. When you spend all day writing about computers or something equally dull, you don’t want to spend your evenings writing.

I don’t have to prove I can write a book in a month — I’ve already done it. More than once. And my books have been published. And I’ve even made money on them.

But this year, I’m thinking I might use the ticking clock of NaNoWriMo to write the novel I started and lost. Maybe NaNoWriMo can motivate me to finish it.

So this week, I’ll pull out my notes and look them over. I’ll track down my outline and blow the digital dust off it. I’ll remember all the loose ends and how I planned to tie them up. And maybe — just maybe — I’ll be a NaNoWriMo author this year.

Anyone else out there thinking about giving it a try?

What Editors [Are Supposed to] Do

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And what they’re not supposed to do.

As I travel across northern Arizona by helicopter, escorting two paying passengers among Arizona’s natural and semi-natural wonders, I find myself working remotely on a book project I started before I left and will finish when I return. I promised to keep the ball moving while away and that means reviewing edits of chapters I’ve completed.

It does not mean getting angry about editors overstepping their bounds and making manuscript changes they have no business making.

In an effort to educate writers and editors about the various editing jobs out there, I decided to put together this list of editor job types and duties. I’m hoping that my project editor and the miscellaneous editors she’s managing will read this and learn.

Rather than discuss all kinds of editors, I’ll concentrate on just two: technical editor and copy editor. These are the ones I work with directly most often — and the ones that give me the most headaches.

Technical Editor

A technical editor’s job is to ensure that a book’s content is accurate and instructions are easy to follow. Technical editors are widely used in the computer books I write, although for many of my titles, I’m responsible for my own technical accuracy. When a technical editor is put on a job, his duties include the following:

  • Reading the entire manuscript.
  • Reviewing all statements of fact to ensure they’re correct.
  • Trying all instructions to make sure they work.
  • Reviewing all screenshots to ensure that they’re correct.
  • Asking the author for clarification on something that’s not clear.
  • Informing the author of inaccuracies in text or screenshots.
  • Suggesting additional information that the author may have missed that’s within the scope of the book and may be useful to readers.

A technical editor should not — I repeat, not — do the following:

  • Make changes to information or instructions. That’s the author’s job on reviewing the technical edits. An exception would be to fix an obvious typo.
  • Add information or instructions. That’s the author’s job on reviewing the technical edits.
  • Ask the author questions about how the program works. The technical editor should know how the program works. If the author got something wrong, it’s the technical editor’s job to tell him — not to ask him if it’s right or wrong.

Under no circumstances should the technical editor make changes to the manuscript to introduce information or instructions that he has not verified. The author should never be required to perform technical editing chores on text introduced by the technical editor. It must be assumed by the author that the technical editor’s comments and suggestions are accurate and correct. Otherwise, why have a technical editor?

Copy Editor

A copy editor’s job is to review the manuscript and make sure the text is grammatically correct and conforms to the style guidelines established for the publication. The copy editor’s job is to improve the book, not change it. Specifically, his responsibilities include:

  • Reading the entire manuscript, or, for a revision, the portions that have changed since the previously published edition.
  • Identifying and fixing typos and spelling errors. If there are a lot of these, the author is simply not doing his job.
  • Identifying and fixing grammatical errors. One could argue that if there are a lot of these, the author probably shouldn’t be writing. I’ll agree with that. But every author is prone to making a few grammatical errors and should probably be forgiven. The copy editor needs to fix it.
  • Identifying and fixing style errors. I’m talking about usage like e-mail vs. email, Web site vs. website, and press the OK button vs. click OK. Style should be established in advance and adhered to by the author, so there shouldn’t be many of these problems, either.
  • Point out sentence constructions that aren’t clear. If a rewrite is necessary to clarify, the author should be allowed to do it. If it’s an easy fix like adding punctuation or a few words, the editor should be able to do it.

The copy editor should not do the following:

  • Change the author’s voice. It is the author’s book, not the copy editor’s. The only exception should be in the event that the author’s voice is so far off established standards that it needs changing. That’s a problem that needs to be resolved by the editor in charge of the project, though.
  • Change the author’s common usage to something the copy editor prefers. If the author likes to use a phase such as “If desired, you can…,” the copy editor should not change the phrase to “If you want to, you can….”
  • Create awkward sentence reconstructions to remove prepositions from the end of a sentence. While old-time grammar rules say you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition, it’s commonly done in casual voice writing. An author should try to avoid this, but should not be required to make his sentences sound like those in a college text book to do so.

There are good copy editors, bad copy editors, and copy editors who should not be copy editors at all. I love having a good copy editor; I love feeling that a revised sentence remains in my own voice but is improved. I love to learn from that. A bad copy editor, on the other hand, won’t find the errors he’s supposed to find. It’s embarrassing when they’re found in the printed book. A copy editor who makes changes for the sake of changes — as if to justify his own importance to the project — should not be editing. He should be either writing his own books or doing something that has nothing to do with writing. These copy editors create bad feelings for experienced authors and make their work a real chore.

What Do You Think?

What are your thoughts on this? Are you a writer with some editor stories to share? Or an editor with some author stories to share? Please share your comments on this post. I’d like to get a discussion going about this. I think I’m on track with this assessment, but maybe you have other ideas?

In the meantime, I’ve got to make a phone call. One of my editors needs to be reminded of her responsibilities and their limitations.

When is an Ebook Not an Ebook?

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When it’s printed.

I just got back from a trip to the office “superstore,” Staples. I needed a printout of the next book I’m supposed to revise.

Huh?

When I write books that are printed — and most of them are books that are printed — I get a bunch of author copies. I keep at least one copy for my archives. Then, when it’s time to revise the book, I have a handy reference to the current edition, which I use as my starting point, keeping it at my side as I work, paging through it to see how or where I covered topics I’ve written about in the past.

But when I write books that are destined not to be printed — in other words, ebooks — I don’t get a copy of the book in print because it’s never printed. Instead, I get the same thing as everyone else: a PDF file containing the laid out pages in ebook format. As a result, the only current edition I have to refer to when working on the new edition is a PDF.

I can’t work with PDFs this way. I need to have a book, on paper, that I can leave open to a particular page and consult while I’m working. I can’t be switching back and forth from Microsoft Word (which I’ll use to revise the book) to Adobe Reader (which I’d use to see the book onscreen). That just doesn’t work for me.

So I had to get the book printed. All 605 pages of it.

I took the PDF to Staples on a CD that contained only the PDF. I told them to print it on 3-hole punch paper. I wanted them to print it double-sided, but since the book starts on an odd page — as all books do — I knew they’d screw it up and put the odd numbered pages on the right side when the book lay open. I couldn’t deal with that. So I had them print it single-sided.

It cost me $49.

The 3-inch binder I had to buy to fit it in cost another $15.

Oh, the Irony!

This is ironic on so many levels.

First is the cost: I spent $64 for a printed copy of my own book. A book that all users of the software it’s about get for free on the software disc. (At this point, I’m thinking I should be calling it a software manual, but my name is on the cover and there aren’t many software manuals you can say that about.) I’m willing to bet that I’m the only person idiotic enough to have printed the whole damn thing and stuck it in a binder.

Next is the fact that the book’s been out for a whole year and I never bothered to print it. Hell, I’ve got enough books on my shelf. Yet when it’s time to revise it — in other words, make it obsolete — that’s when I print it.

But the kicker is this: just the other day, I wrote a blog post rejoicing the fact that, for the first time, I’d finished a book without an exchange of any paper between me and my editors. No printouts, no inked markups, no printed galleys. Electronic all the way.

And now this.

This is so ironic that it could be given as an example of irony in a dictionary.

I Had to Do It

Now those of you who are ebook lovers and paper book haters — and you know who you are — might get the idea that I really didn’t have to print the book. I could have worked with the PDF. It would have saved so much paper. It would have been worth it.

I have three things to say to that:

  • I didn’t use any paper on my last book, so the paper monitors owe me some.
  • The book wasn’t printed for its readers. Think how much paper that saved.
  • It’s definitely worth it to me not to have to switch applications and lose my train of thought while working. The printout will enable me to work more efficiently and effectively. I’ll get the job done quicker. (And then I can turn off my computer and save some energy.)

But no, the irony is not lost on me. Guess I’ll get some more scratch pads made when the new book is done.

Writing in the 21st Century

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A look back at the evolution of writing for publication.

Yesterday, my 72nd printed book went to the printer. For the first time ever, not a single sheet of paper was printed, mailed, or marked up during the writing and editing process for one of my books.

I’ve been a freelance writer since 1990. Most of my work — all of my books and 95% of my articles — has been about using computers. Yet for the first few years I wrote books about using computers, the manuscript files I created weren’t even used for the production of the book.

In the “Old Days”…

Back in the old days, my manuscripts had to be submitted in standard manuscript format. That means I wrote them in Microsoft Works (in the beginning) or Word using a plain font like Courier with double-spacing. What came out of my [$2,000] laser printer printer was a document that looked as if it had been typed on a typewriter by a very careful typist. Hundreds of pages. I was required to submit two printed copies of the manuscript to my editor.

In those days, Staples sold “manuscript boxes.” These were cardboard boxes designed to hold stacks of paper that were 8-1/2 x 11 inches. I’d print two copies of the manuscript, stack them one atop the other in this manuscript box, and mail them to my editor.

One time, in order to make a deadline, I sent the manuscript copies to Manhattan with my next door neighbor, who worked there. She then called a courier company to deliver the manuscript to the publisher’s offices in the Columbus Circle area.

In all honesty, I can’t remember how edits were handled. I don’t even recall getting any marked up copies of that early work. I think I got the galleys, though. They were printed (of course) and I wasn’t allowed to make many changes to them.

The Rise of E-Mail

Around the time of my fourth book (third solo book) in 1992 or 1993, e-mail was starting to get big. I still recall my shock and surprise when I sent an e-mail message to someone and got a response within an hour. Whoa!

That’s the book I started sending manuscript chapters via e-mail to my editor. The idea was that she’d review the chapters as they came in. This really saved my ass when my hard disk crashed and I lost everything on it. I was able to recover all those files from my editor and keep working. But when it came time to final submission, it had to be printed and mailed in: 2 copies, double-spaced.

Database Publishing with FileMaker Pro on the Web

This is one of the few books I wrote and laid out using FrameMaker. Its cross-referencing tools couldn’t be beat back in 1998.

When I started writing Visual QuickStart Guides for Peachpit Press in 1995, I also began doing layout. In the beginning, I used QuarkXPress, but I soon switched to PageMaker and finally to InDesign. I did a number of other books for Peachpit and for AP Professional (Claris Press, FileMaker Press) using FrameMaker, which I still think was the best layout tool out there. (InDesign is getting closer; thank heaven it finally added cross-referencing tools in CS4.)

For the early books, I’d create the chapter files, print them out, and mail them to my editor. Marked up copies would be FedExed back. I’d make the changes in the files. When the project was done, I’d send them a Zip disk or, later, burn a CD on my [$700] CD burner with all the files. That disk would travel by mail or FedEx on top of a stack of printed pages. In the beginning, they wanted 2 copies, but later they began using their own copier to make the copies they needed.

Word Files from Templates

Quicken 99: The Official Guide

This was the first book I wrote that made extensive use of Word templates.

Time went on. For the books I didn’t lay out, Microsoft Word became the standard. At first, I submitted files with the usual double-spaced, plain vanilla formatting. But some of my publishers got fancy and started sending templates with styles and macros and buttons built in. Although these files were always created on a Windows PC, they worked fine on my Mac. They usually came with detailed instructions for use; by applying the styles and submitting the files, my formatting would ease the task of getting it typeset on their system. Some of my publishers had terribly antiquated systems that required a lot of effort on the part of the production staff.

The use of Microsoft Word meant that my manuscript could go through a series of editors — copy, technical, and proofreader — with all edits clearly identified using the revision feature. I’d get edits back, review them, and either accept or reject them. Then I’d send them on to the next editor. The process was long and tedious, with lots of editing and a manuscript file that looked like a colorful mess of type. Often one editor’s changes would be changed back by another editor. Whatever.

I was required to send printed manuscript pages for most of the 1990s, but the files were transferred by e-mail, with a backup copy of all files on CD sent along with the printouts. I also got all galleys printed. That was often a lot of paper — hundreds of pages. In the mid 2000s, I started bringing the one-sided pages to my local copy shop to have them cut and padded; I’d use the back side of each page as scratch paper.

The Rise of PDFs

In the mid 2000s, I started seeing galleys as PDFs. I’d review them onscreen — no easy task when you have a smallish monitor and can’t read an entire page at once — then print out the pages with problems, mark them up, and send them into my editor. One of the reasons I bought a 20″ monitor a while back was to be able to proofread page by page.

Around the same time, Peachpit wanted to send me markups of my laid out book pages as PDFs. I resisted for quite a while because reviewing edits and making changes to the laid out page files with just one monitor was such a pain in the ass. My office now has a pair of 24″ monitors connected to one computer so I can review corrections on one screen while making corrections to manuscript pages on the other.

The End of Paper

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My most recent book was written and edited without an exchange of paper.

The book I finished yesterday (Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide) was the first one that had absolutely no exchange of paper. I’d create book pages using InDesign and turn chapters into PDFs. I’d upload the PDFs and a zipped folder full of chapter files to Peachpit’s secure and private FTP server. The chapter files were my offsite backup — I did all of my work on this book from a camper or hotel and did not have a spare hard drive to back up to. My production and tech/copy editor would review the PDFs, mark them up with Acrobat — they use the full version, which I don’t have — and put them in a different folder on the FTP site. I’d download them, review them, and make manuscript page changes. Then I’d upload new PDFs to yet another folder and send fresh zipped files. My indexer got her own set of PDFs with accurate page numbers as we finalized pagination from one chapter to the next. When all editing was done, I updated the InDesign book file and its individual chapter files to finalize cross-references. (This is also the first Visual QuickStart Guide I’ve written that has cross-references to actual book pages rather than chapters.) I generated my table of contents and laid out the index when it arrived from my Indexer yesterday morning. Although I was still handling edits on Wednesday morning, by 10 AM yesterday (the next day), my editors at Peachpit had all the final files. By 5 PM the same day, the printer had those files.

I expect to see printed books within 3 weeks.

There are a lot of folks who see printed books as a terrible waste of paper. Although print publishing is definitely on the decline, there are many people — myself included — who prefer reference work in printed format. I don’t think print publishing will ever completely die.

I’m very pleased, however, that the production process didn’t add any more paper waste to landfills or recycling centers. I, for one, don’t need any more scratchpads.

Anyway, I thought some writers out there might be interested in the evolution of the writing/production process as seen by an “old timer” like me.

I’m just glad I never had to use a typewriter for my writing work. Using one in college was bad enough.