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About Deadlines
It’s late Sunday night and my plan to write a week’s worth of posts has been foiled by the usual assortment of weekend activities plus the addition of a time-suck we in the freelance editing world call “gettin’ paid.” For a freelancer, deadlines are no respecter of nights and weekends. I might be able to steal another day or three if I really thought it necessary, but depending on how tightly the book is scheduled through the rest of the publishing process, doing so could put the release date in jeopardy. (Okay, that’s a worst-case scenario, but keep in mind that the author may have already pushed for an additional…
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Help Keep Stephen Off Prozac Writing Contest Extravaganza
UPDATE: A big ‘thank you’ to all who have already entered the contest. Each one of you is brilliant and beautiful (and/or handsome) and deserves to win for your writing skill, apparent compassion and Santa-Yoda covetousness. Now, tell all your friends, okay? (Don’t worry, they’re not quite as talented as you are. No way they can win that Santa-Yoda. But by asking, you’ll make them feel special. And that’s a good thing.) I tend to get a little bit depressed sitting alone in my tiny garden-level apartment writing these blog posts, wondering if anyone out there in the Interworld cares about the blood, sweat and tears that I pretend to…
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Confidence (and Lack)
I‘m just going to come right out and say it: sometimes I feel completely incapable as an editor. When these times come, I stare at the author’s words and they swirl together like some cheap TV special effect to spell out “You are a fraud!” I worry every time the phone rings that one of my publisher friends will be on the other end of the line. “Hey, Stephen?” “Yes…?” “We’ve been looking at the book you just edited. You know the one we’re talking about?” Gulp. “Yes?” “…and we were wondering…did you send us the wrong file?” This experience is sort of like a waking version of that dream…
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7 Fiber-Rich Ideas for Solving Writer’s Block
Close your laptop. Wait…not yet, read this first. After you close your laptop, pick up a pen and a little notebook – the tiny kind you always got in your Christmas stocking because they were four for a dollar and came in different colors and your mom thought they were “so cute.” (You should be able to find one in that box under your bed where you threw all the gifts from your Christmas stocking that weren’t edible.) Head out to a place you’ve never been – a new coffee shop, a park bench, a bus station – anywhere you might find at least one other person. Now, make up…
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The Mysterious Importance of Mystery
Not so many years ago, my younger son became a fascinated by videogames. Like his older brother before him, this fascination grew into a full-blown addiction for a time. But unlike his brother – who suffered through the challenges of finishing a level using the age-old technique known as “if at first you don’t succeed, stomp your feet, pout, growl, try out a new word to see if your parents notice, then try again” – my younger son was known to ask, “is there a cheat code for this?” Younger son has always been rather pragmatic; he likes order and when he comes across an obstacle, he prefers a simple,…
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A Book, Some Editorial Advice and a Picture of a Kitty & a Puppy
It’s Friday, which means absolutely nothing to a freelancer since all days end up looking the same. But for the sake of the rest of the working world, I’m going to play along. Hooray for the weekend! (For the record, I almost never use exclamation marks. This is not because F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote of them, “An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes,” but because I rarely feel all that exclamatory. So, if you see one on this blog, it’s either a sign of the apocalypse or a snide comment on the sentence that precedes it. Listen for the sound of hoofbeats. If you hear them…