Category Archives: Publishing

Fact or Fantasy

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I recorded my latest song (listen below!) last week, while recovering from Covid. Please enjoy the nasal, throaty, almost feverish quality of the vocals. A few days into being sick, as I lay in bed with one of the most impressive headaches I’ve ever had (and I’ve had quite a few), I thought, “Is this the day I die?” Clearly, it wasn’t.

“The Day We Never Met” is unusual, I think, in that it doesn’t have a chorus, and the title appears only in the very last line. For the recording, I utilized my latest (and greatest) stringed acquisition, a parlor-size acoustic/electric guitar from Zager. A gorgeous instrument of solid African mahogany, it’s designed to be easy to play; I haven’t noticed this feature yet, but I’ve heard practicing can be very good for that.

My mother is my most devoted fan, along with her cat, Asher. (You might argue that Asher has no choice but to listen, especially since his favorite spot is on my mother’s legs, but he could hide in the closet if he wanted to.) Mom likes to know what my songs are about, even if I don’t always know myself, so I will try to provide a little background here.

If you’re a longtime lurker of this page, and even managed to keep up during the two-and-a-half-year hiatus (kudos!), you will likely have noticed that I once trafficked in the published word, as a writer, editor, and proofreader. Yet even I am amazed at the sheer volume of words being produced today for public consumption. People look at their screens for hours on end, and they need something to read—in the form of e-books, news stories, magazine articles, social media posts, blogs, advertisements, and the like.

“The Day We Never Met” is about considering the source of what you read—and being a considered, and considerate, source yourself. More specifically, the song’s theme is to be careful when you talk about someone you don’t know. But a theme doesn’t make a song—or, for that matter, a poem or a play or an essay about the queen. So, I crafted a story around my chosen theme, set it to music, and ta-da!

The Day We Never Met

Profile

Title:
“The Day We Never Met”

Number:
11

Length:
2:37

Vibe/inspiration:
Patsy Cline

Key:
C major

What I imagine people might say:

  • “I wish I never met this song. Come on, it was too easy.”
  • “If this song had a chorus, my disappointment would only have been compounded.”
  • “Have I stumbled into the rhyming Olympics?”
  • “I’d worry this song might glamorize smoking, but you’d have to have an audience for that to be a problem.”

Lyrics:

Well, you’ve been writing about me
About the man you claim to be
Filling pages
For the ages
Is it fact or fantasy?

What makes you think you know so much?
You’ve never even been in touch
’Stead of knocking
You kept walking
Now you’re saying such and such

[Instrumental verse]

You flew in on a private jet
You lit another cigarette
I was waiting
’Ticipating
On the day we never—

You were late ’n’
Hesitating
On the day we never—

You’re narrating
Punctuating
The story of the day—

I was waking
Mind was aching
On the day we never—

You were making
Plans forsaken
On the day we never—

Now you’re taking
Bows for breaking
The story of the day—

Monday night ’n’
Not a sighting
On the day we never—

Tuesday quiet ’n’
Nail-biting
On the day we never—

Wednesday light ’n’
You’re a-writing
The story of the day—

A day I can’t forget
I haven’t seen you yet
We won’t sing a duet

About the story of the day—
The day we never met

Feeling the Love

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I self-published Determined to Be Visible—containing thirty-six of my blog posts tenuously held together by new material—as an exercise. In fact, I continue to see it more as a project than a publication, typically referring to it as “the blog book” rather than by its title. When my creative coach, Ziva, gave me the assignment, she warned me that once the paperback was available, she would ask me to promote it to my acquaintances—which I also saw as an exercise. I never expected anyone to buy it.

My mother purchased six copies, to give to residents at her retirement community. (Imagine the kvelling involved in that scene.) My sister ordered three; I envision her juggling them, because I don’t know what else she would do with so many. My aunt and uncle bought one, the same number I did. Which leaves exactly thirty copies (to date) acquired by people who do not share DNA with me. Who are these individuals? Friends! Wonderful friends!

The most meaningful aspect of this whole endeavor has been the support of family and friends. It feels incredible! On top of knowing that Determined to Be Visible has been actively printed on demand by Amazon, I have enjoyed receiving texts and being tagged in social media posts containing images showing “the blog book” in homes, offices, and hands—even on faces! I invite you to peruse this selection.

 

And I welcome additional photos for my collection!

Judging a Book by Its Interior

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It would be grossly premature to add “book designer” to my LinkedIn profile, but I appear to have successfully defined the styles for all the elements in my upcoming collection of blog posts. My husband, a graphic designer who is “acutely aware of typography in use across all media” (his words), suggested two typefaces for me to use—one text and one display—and gave me a crash course in InDesign in an airport lounge. I took it from there!

I was not completely unfamiliar with the components of book design—margins, font sizes, line spacing, indents, page numbers, chapter openers. In my role as an in-house editor for a publishing company almost half a lifetime ago, one of my tasks was to create “design memos” identifying and describing the items in a manuscript that needed to be prettified (by a hired professional) for publication. I don’t mean to brag, but one designer said my design memo was the best she had ever received.

Still, during the process of laying out Determined to Be Visible, I experienced both pros and cons, presented below (with the cons listed first, since I’m a bad-news-first kind of person):

Con: I didn’t really know what I was doing.
Pro: I had the power to make all the mistakes I wanted.

Con: I lacked a working knowledge of InDesign.
Pro: I had the satisfaction of struggling clumsily and then figuring it out.

Con: I wasn’t aware of best practices in book design.
Pro: I had the freedom to try things that didn’t work.

Con: I couldn’t draw on prior experience.
Pro: My next design will be much better.

Con: I had to study already published books to see what looked good.
Pro: This is a totally legit thing to do.

The biggest pro about book designing? It isn’t writing!

Yes, Coach!

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Seven months ago, I started a writing project: a collection of short stories. I surprised myself by completing synopses for 10 short stories in 12 weeks; the synopses average a little over 1,500 words. Following such a promising kickoff, my plan was to spend a month writing each of the 10 stories. But I got stuck on the first one (“Story 1”), a redo of a piece I had submitted for an online course a few years ago. I logged approximately 4,500 words of a projected 6,000+.

I knew I needed to see my creative coach, Ziva.

We met two days ago in her white Dodge camper van, parked with the windows down in the scenic lot of the local natural history museum. (Ziva was hosting houseguests, so we couldn’t conduct our session at her condo.) I thought she would tell me how to get “unstuck” so I could finish Story 1 and move on to the other nine. But turning to face me in the cab of the vehicle, she blew my mind with a quick-and-dirty way to produce my entire first book (“Book 1”): a curated compilation of my blog posts.

I loved her idea for speedily transforming content (that already exists!) into a publication. I will pull my 77 blog posts off the Web, put them in Word, organize them into sections, cut the ones that don’t fit (or that suck), write an introduction and maybe section intros, do some editing, format the manuscript, and distribute the document through CreateSpace (Amazon’s self-publishing tool). I assume this activity is meant to be psychologically liberating and affirming, and to provide a sense of accomplishment.

Before my 90 minutes with Ziva were over, I had enthusiastically accepted three additional assignments, none of which was to complete my partially written story:

  1. Hone one of my synopses for the Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition. (That’s two “Shorts”s; entries must be 1,500 words or less.) The deadline is two weeks away.
  2. Write synopses for 4 additional short stories for “Book 2,” my short story collection (with a new target of 12 to 14 tales total).
  3. Set up an underutilized room downstairs as a writing den for myself. I am tempted to enlist a professional organizer to tame the space—or “kill the monster,” as Ziva puts it.

I’ll get back to Story 1 eventually, possibly in the spring. I kind of miss it already.

All Q, No A

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I have spent a full month writing (but not finishing) the first short story of a planned collection of ten. (Eight, actually—I expect to ditch the weakest two. They don’t know it yet.) At this point, I can safely say I have more questions than answers. The opposite would probably be worse, though; having more answers than questions might feel like a multiple-choice test, and tests are stressful.

In the last four weeks, the following mysteries, among others, have presented themselves to me:

  1. QsHow much craft should go into a first draft? I’m a poet and I didn’t know it.
  2. Do they call it a draft because it has holes? Come on, I’m serious.
  3. Which is more important: sticking to the schedule, or taking the time to get it right? Within reason, as defined by a perfectionist.
  4. How much is too much backstory? Do you need a narrative providing the history of this question?
  5. Is it normal to crave frozen yogurt? Chocolate-vanilla swirl with rainbow sprinkles.
  6. Is it okay to write to entertain, rather than to be literary? My dream is to have a story published in a middle-school anthology.
  7. Literary magazines have length limits, so am I shooting myself in the foot (or accomplishing some other gory metaphor) by writing 5,000- to 6,000-word stories? Sounds like a job for an editor!
  8. How fully realized should the main character of a short story be? Same question for secondary characters. Screw the tertiary characters.
  9. How much time should I allow for research? Isn’t it easier to make facts up?
  10. How important is it to follow rules about writing? I’m not much of a lawbreaker.

I welcome answers to any of the above, and the sooner the better!

The Accidental Profession

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olivetti

The “vintage” Olivetti I learned to type on (not the actual machine but the same model, available on eBay)

copyediting

Copyedited manuscript page

About a week ago, I read the description of an online workshop being offered by Writer’s Digest University, called “Introduction to Copyediting.” The first thing I noticed about the course outline was its random capitalization, which either ironically undermined the validity of the curriculum or was a sly statement on the importance of copyediting. The topics covered seemed to capture what a copyeditor does. For example:

  • “How to properly use Quotations”
  • “Proper use of Commas, Colons, and Semicolons”
  • “Avoiding Redundant Words”
  • “Keep an eye out for consistency”
  • “How to prevent a writer from making all sorts of embarrassing mistakes”

I wondered, “How did I manage to collect these skills?” Based on my experience, here are the steps to becoming a copyeditor:

  1. Be exposed to the word editor at an early age. My first-grade teacher asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I said “writer.” The girl next to me said “editor.” I wasn’t quite sure what an editor did, but I felt it had something to do with books.
  2. Learn how to type. When I was about 12, I taught myself from a manual, on a manual.
  3. Have Mr. Thorn for English. Almost everything I know about grammar I learned in junior high.
  4. Edit your college roommate’s paper. When I was a freshman, my roommate asked me to look over an essay she was about to turn in. It was my first editing job. She got a B and was very happy.
  5. Apply for a job as a secretary. A week or two after graduating with a BA in English Literature, I answered a newspaper ad for a secretary at a publishing company. I aced the typing test. (See item 2.)
  6. Get promoted. Over the course of eight years, I worked my way up to the position of senior editor. One of my tasks was to manage the work of copyeditors; I observed what they did and became overly familiar with The Chicago Manual of Style.
  7. Go freelance. Eleven years ago, I began offering my services as a copyeditor.
  8. Learn something new every day. Each manuscript presents its own challenges, providing a constant education.

My first supervisor called publishing the “accidental profession.” While becoming a copyeditor may have been a bit random, certain things in my life pointed toward a career in publishing. As a child, I made tiny books to sell; I vaguely recall unloading one for a dollar. I remember being inspired by an arts-and-crafts toy from the drug store, the final product of which was a bound book about a grasshopper. In junior high, I produced an anonymous newspaper, calling myself the “Phantom Editor.”

I’m sure there are doctors, lawyers, firefighters, astronauts, professional athletes, rock stars, actors, architects, teachers, artists, and writers who always knew what they “wanted to be.” And perhaps people who pursue advanced degrees or seek vocational training have a pretty good idea. But I imagine that the majority of professions are accidental. For example, the other day, I found myself musing, “Who sets out to work at a property management company?” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I wonder if my precocious six-year-old classmate ever became an editor. Or a property manager.