Writer, Editor, Helper

Does Your Novel Need a Copyeditor before Submission?

In the writers’ groups where I hang out online, these queries are evergreen:

• How do I know if I need a copyeditor before I submit my work to an agent or editor?
• How do I find a good copyeditor?
• How much does copyediting cost?

The replies and comments are typically so head-spinning in their range and variety that no one could blame writers for being confused. And who can blame a writer for resisting an expense they aren’t convinced is necessary?

When Friends Find Grammar “Errors” in Your Novel

Creative writers sometimes mangle grammar on purpose or get creative with punctuation. At the drafting stage, we keep a dictionary and style manual at hand. When slips are unintended, we count on our copyeditors to catch them.

But at some point, most of us get advice on punctuation or grammar from a friend, relative, or strangers on social media. Sometimes friends or beta readers read our draft and point out what they believe to be errors.

The problem is, they’re often wrong.

Counting Pages or Words in a Manuscript Submission

Long before a book is printed, while the text is still in manuscript form, editors at publishing houses speak in terms of word count, not page count. An appropriate word count for a project depends on the kind of book. A picture book editor might think in terms of 0–750 words. An editor acquiring young-adult fantasy novels will consider anything from about 80,000 words and up. Thrillers, graphic novels, romances—their editors all have target ranges for the length of book readers expect. There are always exceptions, of course.

Page counts, on the other hand, are for printed books. Designers and production editors use a manuscript’s word count to estimate how many pages the published book will be, taking into account how they want it to look: how large the pages will be, how much white space is wanted, whether illustrations will add to the page count, etc.

Why then, at the querying stage, are writers almost always asked to submit a set number of pages instead of a set number of words?

When Page Numbers Don’t Help

 

Editors are never happy. First they throw a fit if you send in a manuscript without page numbers, but once you send them a paginated work, they complain when you try to discuss a sentence on page 67. What’s the deal?

Creative writers will benefit from understanding what editors and copyeditors face when it’s time to discuss changes to your manuscript.

Do You Overstep When Editing Fiction? Three Easy Cures

The other day, I ran across this line in a recent novel by a best-selling American writer (key words are disguised):

His disposition warmed faster than did the gradually dawning day.

I couldn’t help wondering: Did the writer write it that way? And the copyeditor thought it was fine? Or did the editor bully the writer into “correcting” the sentence by adding “did”?

Why would an editor insist on such awkwardness? No doubt from a doubly wrongheaded conviction that fiction isn’t exempt from formal English and that certain familiar wordings are somehow incorrect. But there’s nothing ungrammatical about “His disposition warmed faster than the gradually dawning day.”

I can think of three obvious ways overeager copyeditors get writers into trouble. Let’s take a look.

Sure, You Got A’s in English—But Do You Know Where Commas Go?

A few months ago in a conference session, a group of novelists digressed into good-natured complaints about being copyedited. One writer drew a lot of laughs saying, “I mean, I got A’s in English! I know where the freaking commas go!”* Others nodded in recognition and comradery.

I bit my tongue. I really wanted to say—as gently as possible—I’m sorry dear, but you freaking don’t.

Fiction+ for Creative Writers and Their Editors

Although I officially retired from my work at the Chicago Manual in December, I couldn’t say no to an opportunity to continue hanging around the CMOS Online Shop Talk blog when Russell Harper—the new editor—invited me to share a new corner of the blog with him called Fiction+. There we’ll focus on how to cope when Chicago style rules don’t quite seem to fit the creative context of a novel, story, poem, or play.

Russell kicked things off last week with a post on comma splices; today I interview Janet Burroway, author of the classic textbook Writing Fiction, a staple in creative writing classes that has just been issued in a new 10th edition.

If you’re interested in creative writing or editing, be sure to check out Fiction+. You can sign up for alerts if you want to be sure to catch new posts, and I’ll continue to give you a heads-up here.

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Photo: Woman Writing, by August Macke (1887–1914), courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 

Life as a Copyeditor

Do you ever find at the end of workday that even though you know darned well you weren’t slacking for even ten minutes, somehow you didn’t make any progress in editing your manuscript?

Or do you ever try to explain to someone why even though you put in forty or fifty hours a week, your editing time is way, way less?

So You Wrote a Children’s Book—What’s Next?

 

[Updated 5.30.2023]

Because I’m often asked for advice on how to submit a children’s book to a publisher or agent, I’ve accumulated a set of suggestions for writers who have a manuscript and aren’t sure how to proceed. Before you send off your work to a publisher, perhaps something in the advice below will help you take it up a notch or two in quality.

—Join SCBWI (Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators). It’s made up of writers at all stages of accomplishment, and its website has tons of resources, including lists of book critiquers whom you can pay to evaluate or edit your book. If there is an SCBWI group in your town, you can meet with other writers who may give you the benefit of their experience. Check the national organization’s site to find your state and regional organizations and local cell.

—Read all the books you can that are similar to what you want to write, especially the more recent award-winning ones. Children’s books have changed in amazing ways since we were kids, to include diverse characters, sophisticated humor, and edgy situations. In young-adult books almost no topic is off the table. And almost every genre is now a candidate for back-of-the-book discussion questions, resources for related reading, and sometimes even notes and bibliographies. There are also books on writing craft, such as Cheryl B. Klein’s The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults, and books on marketing your work, like Jane Friedman’s The Business of Being a Writer. Your librarian can help you find the books you need.

—Avoid these common pitfalls:

• Writing from an adult point of view; using adult main characters, humor, or agendas that won’t click with kids
• Instructing or moralizing instead of discovering from the child’s point of view
• Failing to write with the reader in mind (Will a child read the book? Will an adult read it to a child?)
• Illustrating your manuscript. For reasons of budget, aesthetics, and marketing, the publisher normally requires control over the number, genre, size, and, medium of illustrations. What’s more, book illustrating is a special area of expertise—artistic talent is only part of what it takes to illustrate a book professionally. An editor will put a lot of thought into pairing a book manuscript with the perfect illustrator. Unless you are a professional illustrator (and even then), resist sending illustrations with your manuscript.

Of course, all conventions may be ignored for reasons of genius! But beginners are usually better off observing the rules until they understand how to break them brilliantly.

—Look at the annually published Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market, which you can find in most libraries and bookstores. It will tell you everything you need to know about sending your work to publishers. It tells which publishers accept unsolicited manuscripts (as opposed to work sent via an agent), what kinds of books each publisher is interested in acquiring, and whether a publisher works with first-time authors.

—Find and read reviews of kids’ books. The best review journals include Horn Book, School Library Journal, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews. Subscriptions are expensive, so try the library. Professional reviews are also posted for many books at Goodreads and Amazon. Reviews will tell you what’s new and valued, and they can give you ideas for self-critiquing.

—Explore online. There are many closed Facebook groups such as KidLit411 and Sub It Club where children’s book writers share hopes and tips. Here are a few excellent blogs and websites. All of them lead to many other sites:

• Elizabeth Bird, A Fuse #8 Production: A School Library Journal Blog
• Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators
• Writing, Illustrating, and Publishing Children's Books: The Purple Crayon
• Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Writer Resources page

—Consider self-publishing. At user-friendly platforms like Draft2Digital and Amazon’s KDP you can publish print-on-demand or electronic books with little or no financial investment, depending on your technical skills. The days of taking out a second mortgage to fill your garage with copies that might never sell are (thankfully!) over.

Do you have experience in submitting your work to publishers that might benefit others? If so, please share in the comments below.

 

Photo: Lydia Liu, Children’s Books

 

 

But Is It Wrong?

I’m blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog:

One of the primal joys in life is to do good work. When the suit fits, the accounts balance, or the pie crust is flakey, someone takes pride in it.

In editing, it feels good to make corrections, tidy things up, and serve the reader. It feels good to put knowledge into practice. And—admit it—it feels good to spot an error! . . . Problems arise when

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Photo: Deliberate Mistake, courtesy of Neil Turner.

3 Rookie Goofs You Can Stop Making Right Now

I’m blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog!

Some lessons are harder to learn than others. Unfortunately for new copyeditors, sometimes the only way to recognize bad habits is to get slammed a few times by writers pushing back or by supervisors writing stet all over the copy.

So let me save you some grief and humiliation! Here are three bad habits I identified the hard way as a young editor . . .

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Photo: Ooops!, courtesy of Sten Dueland.

Why Can’t a Computer Index My Book?

I’m blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog!

Recently a reader wrote to us questioning some of the alphabetizing recommendations in The Chicago Manual of Style:

“In all computer-based systems that are in current use, the ASCII sort order is used. Any sort order that violates the ASCII order cannot be maintained except through repeated manual adjustments. Solutions such as sorting St. as if it were Saint violate this order and thus cannot be correctly manipulated in MS Word, for example. What is your thinking on this issue?” 

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 Photo: Selmer van Alten, Iceland phonebook is sorted on first names.

Are You a Grammar Troll?

I'm blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog!

For years, it seems, it’s been impossible to find a language-related post or article online without a stickler making trouble in the comments section. Even on political, social, and retail sites, outraged commenters love to point out a  a missplaced apostrophe as a way to challenge the . . .

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Photo: Esther Lee, Freemont Troll, Seattle

 

 

How Sticklers Give Copyediting a Bad Name

 

Public sticklers have annoyed me forever, and I’ve been meaning to write about that, but recently in a post titled “Editors, Would You Do Me This Tiny Favour?” Katy McDevitt at PublishEd Adelaide did a great job of it herself.

McDevitt gets to the meat of it in point 3: “It gives people the wrong idea about what editors do and what we think about”:

Let’s kick that greengrocer’s apostrophe myth to one side and focus on the huge, constructive contributions that editors make, whether that’s helping authors to achieve clear, polished English, restructuring awkward passages of text, or any of the dozens of other ways we fix, polish, hone, and otherwise make a book ready for its star turn.

Exactly. When copyeditors brag that they haven’t overlooked a typo since they were twelve, they reinforce the image of a superficial reader with her elementary-school list of rules chopping away at the weeds without noticing the forest or where the path is headed. They relegate our profession to the status of other stereotypes that ignore the challenging, creative, intellectual aspects of a job: the librarian who is there to shush, the accountant to count beans; the novelist to crank out what everyone would if they* only had the time.

We’ve all seen how a post that derides sticklers attracts a raft of commenters who insist that without attention to punctuation and grammar, communication and trust are compromised. I get it. We all get it. But can’t we take it for granted that scrupulous attention to grammar and punctuation is a part of copyediting, instead of elevating it to the definition of what we do?

Scolding about typos and pouncing on errant apostrophes are cheap grabs for low-hanging fruit. And much of it is misinformed and counterproductive. Public sticklers waste our time on outdated rules or rules that never existed in the first place. And they waste our time by drawing focus from the point of an article or post. How many times does a fussy commenter ignore the subject entirely in pointing out a typo? Other commenters then pile on to chastise or encourage, and all hope of intelligent conversation is lost. Is that the kind of reading you would want for your own book or article?

Finally, there’s a basic discourtesy in the “You missed a spot!” way of life. Confirmed sticklers could redeem themselves by pointing out typos kindly and discreetly. Even better, they could comment on the actual content and add their corrections as a postscript. Writers are trying to communicate something–and writers are not the best proofreaders and copyeditors of their own work. It would be helpful if all those cheerleaders for communication could focus a little more on the message and put the occasional grammar or punctuation gaffe into proportion.

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*Readers who wish to comment on this use of they are requested to support their comments with two current, authoritative sources.

 

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Are Copy Editors Bullies?

 

Photo: Prodigy69.co.u

Chase bank is bullying me.

The other day I received a threatening letter informing me that unless I notify them by December 15, they will begin mailing me “offers” for their products and services in nine (9!)  categories, including auto financing (I don’t have a car), education (done that), mortgage (I’m set), and a raft of others. From Googling the return envelope’s address, I’m convinced the letter is authentic.

The Freelancer’s Dilemma: When an Estimate Is Low

Have you ever been partway into a freelance editing job only to find that it’s going to take a lot longer than you (or the assigning editor) thought? Maybe the tables are full of math errors, or the writing requires a lot of time-consuming head scratching and minor rewriting.

If you exceed the estimated time, will the client think you’re exaggerating the problems to inflate the bill? Will they think you don’t know how to work efficiently? Which should you do: bill for the originally estimated time and take a loss, or bill for the extra time and risk alienating the client?

I’m guessing that freelancers more often cheat themselves than cheat their clients. But neither is a good solution. Instead, I recommend “working to rule.”

Experienced assigning editors know that there are two kinds of projects: (1) the kind that deserves just about exactly the estimated number of hours, and (2) the kind that takes however long it takes. The problem is, how do you know which kind you’re doing, and if it’s type 1, how do you “work to rule”?

Whether you’re working for a flat fee or by the hour, you can try to get a sense of a project’s importance by asking the assigning editor whether it’s okay if it takes longer than estimated. Pay close attention to her response. Not that she’ll come right out and give you permission to cut corners. Rather, she’ll let you know if the opposite is true: that it’s the kind of project that requires your best effort, regardless of cost. She’ll also know whether the schedule can be stretched.

If it turns out that you’re expected to match the estimate, that’s what you should do. Working to a specified number of hours takes experience. Learn to monitor your progress and make adjustments: Fact-check less (if it’s not what you were hired to do). Identify tasks that you can automate. Make a decision to live with idiosyncratic styles if they are logical and consistent.

I can hear you protesting, “No! We can’t lower our standards!” But let’s be reasonable. Some of our “standards” are just time-consuming habits that don’t really make a difference to the reader. Letting go of them gives us time for more important tasks—and if working for our employers means working to a schedule, working for the reader means using the time we have in the best ways possible. Besides, the manuscript doesn’t have to be perfect.

Shocked? Don’t be. The manuscript does not have to be perfect because perfect isn’t possible. As I say in The Subversive Copy Editor, there’s no Platonic ideal for that document, one “correct” way for it to turn out, one perfect version hidden in the block of marble that it’s your job to discover by endless chipping away. It simply has to be the best you can make it in the time you’re given, free of true errors, rendered consistent in every way that the reader needs in order to understand and appreciate, and as close to your chosen style as is practical.

You can fiddle with a text forever, but a client will only pay so much. Working to rule—with the reader in mind—is the best solution.

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Image of woman pouring coins from wallet by Marco Verch via Creative Commons 2.0. 

Getting Along with Colleagues Tip #2: Think Before You Send

Last week I handled something badly at work, and I’m still beating myself up about it. Since I don’t think that posting the details on the internet would help (see tip #142), I’ll just say that it amounted to embarrassing a colleague by copying others in on an e-mail that implied criticism.

Yes, I know I say in my book not to do this! Sometimes I don’t know what gets into me. But in penance, I’ll give you the benefit of my experience: I've learned, and continue to learn, that when you have a problem with a colleague, it’s best to address the issue directly with that person and only that person. Until you’ve tried that without results, don’t go elsewhere (especially not higher) with your complaint.

This isn’t merely kindness; it’s also a better way to resolve an issue. The private communication allows your colleague to focus on the problem rather than on saving face. It helps forestall that escalation of blaming we so often see in public figures who are publically accused of some misstep.

My own misstep ended well because of the grace and good nature of the person I embarrassed, so it’s time for me to let go of it. But I’ll keep it in mind; next time I might not be so lucky.

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Photo: Dejected White Figure Contemplating God Knows What, by Mike Steele, courtesy of Flickr

Random Advice for Copyeditor Newbies

If you’re new to copyediting, consider these snippets of advice. (Be sure to check with your supervisor if any of them contradict your usual instructions.)

• Don’t query a word or spelling or locution without looking it up. If a writer uses an unfamiliar word or spelling more than once, it’s very possibly intended. It’s easy to paste “eat one’s cake and have it, too” into a search engine and learn that the writer doesn’t have it backward.
• Don’t waste a writer’s time by continually asking for approval. (“Okay? If you don’t like this, I can put it back.”) Rather, indicate your flexibility in the cover letter. On the manuscript, use queries for giving or asking for information.
• Save grief later by e-mailing the author before you make editing decisions that are hard to undo. (“Re romantic/Romantic: do you have a system for capping? Should I meddle?”)
• Don’t track changes that will be invisible or confusing on a black-and-white printout, such as deletions of hyphens.* If the editing is difficult to read, the writer won’t easily see that the results read well.
• Be conservative in editing until you have more experience. You should be ready to explain every mark you put on the page.
• Remember the copyeditor’s creed: First, do no harm.

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*My workaround is to explain in the cover letter that I have edited common compounds silently in accordance with CMOS and Webster’s 11th Collegiate, and that otherwise I track the opening or closing of compounds respectively like this: right_wing or home-townhometown.

Photo by Jamey Boelhower from Pixabay

Meticulous, Compulsive . . . and Liberated?

Copyeditors have a reputation. We’re conscientious and task-oriented. We like our little routines. We like things tidy. That’s what’s good about us—it’s why we’re useful. We are valued for our tolerance for tedium and our willingness to plug away till the last crumb of typographical trash is off the floor and into the bin. It’s a cliché to say that we’re compulsive perfectionists; that we’re the quiet and unsung heroes of publishing.

Oh, come on.

Doesn’t it get up your nose even a little when a fellow copyeditor gets on a high horse about authorial ignorance? Or trumpets a typo in a published work with shock and indignation? Who’s she kidding? Let’s see everything she’s edited: I’ll bet you a million bucks you and I could find a few crumbs she missed.

Copyeditors have to rate among the most self-satisfied and superior folks I know, and it’s not hard to understand why. A body has to work up some kind of defense under the pressure of that reputation.

But let’s liberate ourselves from the stereotype. I’ll go first: I admit it. I mess up all the time. It’s how I know things.

Hey—that felt great.

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Image: Prettysleepy from Pixabay 

Dodging Editorial Bullets

Last evening I attended a lovely cello recital in a private home in my neighborhood. Sitting in the parlor listening to Brahms on a 1768 Benjamin Banks, many of us deep in reverie (or snoozing—hard to tell), I was startled to see a teacup roll off its saucer from the lap of my abstracted neighbor Peggy. I tensed for the crash, but the cup hit the plush Aubusson, somersaulted gently onto the wood floor, and miraculously righted itself without a sound. At a suitable moment, I retrieved it from under the settee and handed it back. Peggy inspected it for damage, caught her breath, and whispered “Spode!”

Walking home, I pulled out my cell phone, thinking how lucky Peggy had been not to break the china—and saw that my ringer was on. Full blast. This time the luck was mine, not to have jerked everyone awake with a tinny chorus of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

In copyediting, we forget, we overlook, we nod off. Often we catch our errors (or someone else does) before it’s too late, and no doubt we are happily unaware of many errors that make it into print. Copyediting and proofreading the sixteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, the team here caught typos and errors in every round, and every time, we felt the relief that comes with escaping shame and embarrassment, along with the naive hope that now it’s perfect.

But inevitably a few goofs are lurking in the pages. (And knowing our readers, we won’t remain unaware of them for long.)