Tag Archives: writing

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.

Word 2004 Does Not Like Mac OS X 10.5.8

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It may be time to update Office.

I just started work on a new book revision. The project requires me to take relatively lengthy, style-laden Word documents, turn on the Track Changes feature, and edit like crazy. It wasn’t long before I was pulling my hair out.

You see, the other day, I updated my iMac from 10.5.7 to 10.5.8. I suspect that something in that update just didn’t sit well with Word 2004, which I was still running on that computer. After all, the iMac has an Intel dual core processor. Office 2004 was written for the old PowerPC processor that came in older Macs. Whether the problem was Mac OS X’s inability to run the old PowerPC application or Word’s inability to run on the 10.5.8 update is a mystery to me. All I know is what I experienced: text editing so slow that I could type faster than Word could display the characters.

Revisions, RevisionsAt first I thought it might be the document itself. It’s 40 pages of text that utilizes about 20 styles and fields for automatically numbering figures and illustrations. The document was originally created about 10 years ago and has been revised and saved periodically for every edition of this book. It pops from my Mac to an editor’s PC and back at least five times during each revision process. I thought it might have some internal problems. So I used the Save As command to create a new version of the document. The new file was about 5% smaller in size, but had the same symptoms as the original.

Next I sent it over my network to my new 13-inch MacBook Pro. That computer’s processor isn’t as quick as my iMac’s and it has the same amount of RAM. The software on that computer was different, though. I had a developer preview version of Snow Leopard installed and, in preparation for a Microsoft Office 2008 project I’ll be starting in the fall, I’d installed Office 2008 with both major updates. I opened the file on that machine and it worked just fine. Great editing and scrolling speed. Exactly what I needed.

So I bit the bullet and installed Office 2008 on my iMac. And the two major updates. And two smaller updates that became available on August 5. It took hours — the updates totaled over 400 MB of downloads and I’m connected to the internet on a horrible 600-800 Kbps connection that likes to drop. (I’m living in a motel right now, traveling for my helicopter business.)

The result: All the performance issues are gone. Word is snappy yet again on my iMac.

You might ask why a person who writes about Microsoft Office applications had not yet upgraded to Office 2008. This all goes back to last year’s revision on this project. I actually did upgrade but then I downgraded. It was mostly because I needed the macro feature of Word, which wasn’t available on Word 2008. I’d upgraded my iMac last year, but when I decided to reformat my hard disk to ward off computer issues I was having (which were apparently caused by a bad logic board), I reinstalled Office 2004 instead of 2008. You see, I liked the old version better.

But it’s obvious to me now that I need to keep moving forward with the rest of my technology if I want it to perform as designed. Everything must be in sync. If I want to keep using Word 2004, I should use it on a computer that has the system software available during Word 2004’s lifespan. My old 12-inch PowerBook would be a good example. It has a G4 processor and runs Tiger. That’s as advanced as it will ever get. Office 2004 is a perfect match for it.

If there’s a moral to be taken away from this story, it’s simply that if you want your hardware and system software to be new or up-to-date, there will come a time when you’ll have to update the applications that run on it. Bite the bullet and do what you have to. It’ll be worth it.

Diving Back In

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I get to work on my second book revision of the summer.

One of the drawbacks of being a freelancer is that you spend part of your time lining up work but have very little control over when that work needs to get done. As a result, your life can be a mixture of large blocks of time off with large blocks of time working your butt off.

This summer is a perfect storm of work. Not only did I manage to get nine weeks of contracted cherry drying work in Central Washington State, but three of my books came up for revision at almost the same time.

Fortunately, cherry drying is mostly a waiting game. Although I’d like to see more rain (and, hence, more work) in the area, the waiting time can be easily turned into working time for my book projects. Once I get motivated, that is.

I spent much of July working on the biggest of those three projects and got it off my plate right after starting my last contract of the season. When it was over, I was burned out. I couldn’t start the next project until I had beta software to write about anyway, so I took five days off.

Then the software came and I took another five days off.

I am a procrastination expert. I can find anything to do other than work when there’s work to do. Yesterday, I even paid my bills — that’s something I usually put off doing. You know you’re grasping when you start using the things you don’t want to do as procrastination tools.

But today, I get back to work.

Writer's Keyboard One of the tools of my trade.

While I’m not at liberty to discuss the software I’m writing about, I can say that the software revisions should make the project a bit more difficult than a straightforward revision. I’m expecting about a 25% change in the content of my book. I’m not doing layout, which is a good thing. But I do have to come up with plenty of fresh examples and hope I can get all features working properly in my limited setup here at the motel.

So I’m diving back in today and will keep myself productive by turning off Twitter and my e-mail client and my Web browser. I’ll set achievable goals for each day’s work and knock off chapters, one after the other. The book has 23 chapters. I’m here for the next 10 days. Two or three chapters a day and I’ll have the book done before I leave.

I probably won’t be blogging much while I’m on this crazed schedule. I’ve found that if I blog in the morning, it sucks away some of my best working time. (I’m a morning person.) And by afternoon, I’m too burned out from the day’s work to write any more. But we’ll see. This revision might just go better than I expect.

On Censoring Dictionaries

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Why?

This morning, one of my Twitter friends @mjvalente linked to an article on John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog, “Ninjawords: iPhone Dictionary, Censored by Apple.”

As a writer, I’m bothered by most forms of censorship, so I read what Gruber had to say. He described Ninjawords, an iPhone dictionary application, and had all kinds of glowing praise for it, followed by the meat of the problem:

It’s a terrific app — pretty much exactly what I’ve always wanted in an iPhone dictionary, and, yes, with both a better user experience and better dictionary content than the other low-cost dictionaries in the App Store.

But Ninjawords for iPhone suffers one humiliating flaw: it omits all the words deemed “objectionable” by Apple’s App Store reviewers, despite the fact that Ninjawords carries a 17+ rating.

Apple censored an English dictionary.

Gruber goes on to point out just how idiotic this is and, frankly, I can’t disagree with anything he has to say. Dictionaries should include all words in common usage; the words that were removed — words like shit and fuck — can be heard daily on cable television and in schoolyards.

My question is this: By removing them, are they trying to pretend that these words don’t exist?

Whatever.

This morning, I used the Dictionary widget, that’s part of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on my Mac. I use this tool often throughout my work day to make sure the words I’m using in my work are the right words or to look up words I’ve heard but am unclear on meaning. With Gruber’s post fresh in my mind, I decided to see what would happen if I looked up shit.

Shit in the Dictionary WidgetGuess what? As you can see in this screen shot, it was there.

So was fuck.

So Apple makes a dictionary with “objectionable content” available as part of its operating system, which can be used by anyone — including school children! — but will not allow an iPhone (and iPod Touch?) app with the same content?

You might argue that the Dictionary widget and application in Mac OS X are protected by Parental Controls. But how many kids who are unfamiliar with these words are likely to be buying dictionary apps? And with these words in common usage throughout the U.S., how many kids do you think have never heard them? And isn’t there some educational value to understanding the true meaning of a word and its usage? I don’t know about you, but I find the Dictionary Widget information shown here quite illuminating. I especially enjoy the “unobjectionable” explanations of the phrases.

This all goes back to George Carlin’s routine “The Seven Words.” The whole routine — not just the words. (If you follow that link and watch the clip on YouTube, watch the whole thing, including his reasoning. George Carlin was a genius.) They’re just words, people. They’re not going to bite you or make you immoral or cause you to want to kill someone. They’re individual words — not even used in sentences to communicate a message. Just plain words.

Sorry, but it just doesn’t make sense to cut them out of the dictionary.

And removing other words with perfectly acceptable meanings — words that even appear in the Bible! — just because they also have “objectionable” meanings only makes matters worse. A cock is a bird. An ass is a donkey. (Gruber’s post lists more of them.) Should kids be kept in the dark about these meanings, too?

Apple, you know I love you — I’ve been using Macs and writing about them since 1989 — but you’re being silly. Cut it out. You’re embarrassing us.