Words on Wednesday

As soon as I promise to write something every Wednesday, I stop writing every Wednesday.

Henna has been nice. Editing has been okay. Perhaps tomorrow I will post my editing blurb that I put together finally.

I've also been writing fanfic and getting good feedback. If I ever thought I could craft an original plot or characters, I might consider writing my own stuff, but I seem to suck at plot.

Mother's Day was nice. Choir performance was the same day and we did quite well, to wrap up my first season with them. Having no rehearsal tonight is going to feel weird.

And that's pretty much it. Mostly I feel like I don't have anything to say that would be worth anyone's time to listen to. I've gotten very quiet lately as a result.

I hope all is well with you and yours.

Words on Wednesday

Hello all,

I've been trying to get into a habit of posting more consistently here at Little Fiddly Bits, whether I'm posting as an editor or just in general. In my head I've been calling it "Words on Wednesday", which is admittedly a little cheesy, but then I try to convince myself to clean the house with "Mundane Monday", so, there ya go.

Not much on the editing front today, except that the world seems out to get me with the constant misuse of the words "rein" and "reign". The second one means rule of a kingdom. Think "regnum" which is Latin for kingdom. The first one is what you use to steer a horse. You do not give someone "free reign". You do not "reign someone in" when they get too crazy. You do, however, "reign supreme." Can we all please just embrace this and stop putting all over everything I read? I'd be really grateful.

I have two henna gigs this weekend, which is unprecedented given that it's only he beginning of March. Henna doesn't usually start up for me until May at the earliest. So. Yay! Now I just need to mix up a fresh batch of paste, rather than using last year's. There is generally nothing wrong with using last year's henna, but this time around my final batch didn't turn out right and didn't do much for clients anywhere other than their hands. Which was disappointing, given that I'd mixed it up for a cancer patient to do on her scalp, and we ended up with hardly any color. So I'm going to give that stuff away for free to people who are curious about trying henna, warn them that it's not very dark, and let them have fun.

I freaked my daughter out yesterday, accidentally. She'd been cheerfully humming "The Hall of the Mountain King" while she puttered, just quietly going "bum-bum-bum-bum Bum bum Bum, Bum bum Bum, Bum bum Bum" and I recognized it and brought it up on Youtube for her to listen to... yeah. She didn't know that it turned into the orchestral equivalent of a heavy-metal mosh pit halfway in, and she gets emotionally affected by music the same way I do, so it was like forcing her to watch a horror movie. I felt terrible.

Then I told her the story of a friend of mine who, back in high school, was in the marching band , at a football game, and his team wasn't doing well, and he was bored, so he fired up the tuba and just quietly started going "bum-bum-bum-bum Bum bum Bum" etc... See, "Hall of the Mountain King" sounds amazing on tuba. And the rest of the marching band was also bored. And they got into it. And they got louder. And their football team heard them and also got into it, and started hitting harder. And the game kinda turned around from that point. Once my daughter was laughing, we turned the music back on again and she listened to it a second time and decided that it was pretty awesome, as long as she could pretend to be a dwarf with a hammer and chisel and go pound things. Which, let's face it, is pretty much what that piece of music is for.

That's pretty much it for my words on Wednesday. Got a deadline to meet for someone presenting a PhD thesis, first time working on one of those. Novel length, only nonfiction and with bigger words. And I'm writing fanfic again, I've got a chapter I need to clean up and post. If you're curious, I'll only tell you that I like Loki far too much to be healthy.

Have a great week!

My biggest editing peeve: me

So, I'm a freelance editor. Yay! People send me their novels and ask me to clean them up and get them ready to publish. Yay!

Their manuscripts aren't actually ready for that stage of the editing process. Boo. 

Okay, before we go any further, this is not going to be me yelling at the authors. Relax. I almost made it a "dear authors, please don't do this" post, but then as I was writing I realized that it's a matter of adjusting my own approach. So, really, relax.

See, it turns out that there are several different levels of editing that a manuscript needs - genuinely needs, I'm not just fishing for money here - and if you don't manage them more-or-less sequentially, you end up asking your editor to do a whole heck of a lot of extra work that you probably aren't paying them to do.

Marcy Kennedy has a terrific post that neatly explains the different stages of editing out there. When my prospective clients and I are first getting to know one another, I send them to that page just to make sure we're all using the same vocabulary to describe the same types of work.

For a perfect example, here's a snippet from that post:

Developmental Edit

You might have also heard this called a comprehensive critique, a substantive edit, or a macro edit. (No wonder everyone is confused, right?)

This doesn’t involve correcting your punctuation and grammar or smoothing out awkward sentences. It’s about big picture issues—for example, characterization, setting, plot, too much/not enough backstory, showing vs. telling, dialogue, POV problems, and making sure each scene has a clear goal and enough tension.

Do you see that part about POV errors? Do you? DO YOU? Good, because the title of this post is "My biggest editing peeve", and here it is.

Line Edit

A line edit will cover things like word choice, paragraph flow, smoothing out awkward or wordy sentences, eliminating repetition, catching clichés, and other style issues. During a line edit, your editor will also point out areas where you need to clarify what you’ve written and suggest spots where your transitions are weak.

Many editors will flag POV errors or small scale showing vs. telling during a line edit, but they will not do it to the degree that a developmental edit does

In other words, line editing isn't the same as developmental editing. Correcting the errors in a scene's point of view isn't supposed to be part of line editing.

I'm lucky. I generally am able to offer my authors "The Full Monty" and charge accordingly. I go through, usually at least twice, and look at every single thing I can find in the manuscript. I end up doing developmental stuff if it's there, and line edits, and then I finish up with a copy edit/proofread.

But I've been approaching it like a line edit. I've been thinking of it as a line edit, and then getting all cranky and bent out of shape when I find POV errors that mean everything I've just gone through with a fine-toothed comb is going to need to be rewritten anyway, and all the time I put in on the punctuation or whatever has been wasted.

It's a peeve. Strangely, though, it's not actually a problem. No, really. It's not a problem that authors are asking me to do a line edit when they need developmental one first. See, the real problem is that I keep trying to perform a line edit rather than taking a moment to go, "You know what, screw the grammar for now, let's just look at characterization and POV first."

Writers learn as they go. The more you read, the more you write, the more you begin to understand about the craft of writing.

Editors? Well, this editor anyway, is also learning as she goes. I refine my approach a little bit with every manuscript, and I get rid of the habits I have that make me enjoy the work less, while trying new ideas that make me enjoy the work more.

Figuring this thing out, about how I've been approaching the manuscripts, has been wonderful. I am so much less frustrated now! And it should have been obvious that I was taking the wrong approach, but since I'm being paid for an "everything" edit, I was trying to do everything at once and couldn't figure out why I was getting more and more unhappy with the work.

So. Send me a sample! I'll look it over, tell you what I think it needs, and we'll go from there.

Editing news

Huh. Well. I'm not saying I'm psychic, but the coincidences lately have been kinda fun. You know how sometimes you're thinking about a song you haven't heard in a while, and then right as you're thinking about it, it comes on the radio? Yeah. Fun coincidences like that.

TH most recent one: I was thinking about the little publisher out in Arizona that sometimes refers authors to me when their manuscripts aren't quite ready for publication. I was just pondering how they haven't sent me any work in a while, and I got a phone call from my contact out there. It seems he's left that publisher and is starting up his own company, and specifically wanted me to come along and be an editor for him. He says the work will be slow for a bit, but that's fine, it fits in with my freelance schedule.

So. There we are. Keep an eye open for Penmore Press, website coming soon. (As of this posting the page is still blank, but give them time, they haven't even officially opened their doors yet.

A bit about the editing

Hello all,

I just had it pointed out to me, by a friend, in a friendly way, that announcing I'm a freelance editor and then saying nothing about my process or rates was a bit of a tease. Sorry about that; we have established that I suck at marketing, and I didn't want to write what amounted to a commercial, so, yeah.

There are several different types of edit that a manuscript might need, but due to my temperament I have a tendency to end up doing all of them at once on a manuscript. There are also a lot of different names for he different types of edit, so for definitions of terms, I generally send people to Marcy Kennedy's excellent blog post on the subject.

Now, to rates. Editors can charge by the hour or by the word (saying it's by the page is the same thing), and since I work from home and have a kid, it's impossible for me to figure out an hourly rate for anything. Most of my editing ends up falling under the definition of "line edit", which in freelance world generally ranges anywhere from two to six cents per word, based on what little research I've been able to do. That fee depends on how much work the manuscript needs, and the work, as I said above, generally includes copy edit and proofreading stuff as well as a little bit of developmental editing (working out point-of-view usually falls under a developmental edit, but I can't ignore POV errors. I Just Can't).

If you're interested in seeing if you and I are a good fit together, you can always email me a sample of your work. Ten pages, double spaced, 12pt Times New Roman. I will look that over for no charge and give you my impressions, corrections, and commentary, and you can compare my editing style to any other editors you might also be considering. The address is heather dot bungardjanney at gmail dot com. In my response I will also include a quote of what I think I would prefer to charge, with the understanding that haggling is a time-honored art form and you may want to make a counteroffer.

One caveat, which may make us incompatible on this project (although I'd hope you would consider me for other projects in future): Please don't ask me about deadlines. They are my nemesis and I'm still, after two years as an editor, still figuring out the pacing of my work so that I can come up with realistic estimates of how long a manuscript will take to complete. If you're setting your novel in ancient Rome and I'm having to look up historical details and correct all your Latin, the book will take longer. It just will. If my kid is home sick from school, the book will take longer. There are ways you can I can work together to speed the process along, in which case the deadline may end up being dependent on you and not me. If I have three clients all asking for my attention simultaneously, the book will take longer. You get the idea. So yeah... please don't ask me about deadlines.

Tech stuff: I don't own a Mac, so your document needs to be in Microsoft Word format. If we end up working together, I'll ask you to install and use Dropbox (it's free, relax) so that we can share and make changes to the same manuscript. I'll also ask if you're interested in using Google Hangouts for the occasional live chat so that we can each ask the other questions for clarification. Finally, I accept payment via PayPal.

Hmm, and here I've been avoiding putting together a blog post about these details. Thanks to those of you who asked me the question, I've finally gotten off my butt and answered it!

Question for my loyal readers

...all nine of you.

If you were an author and you were checking out an editor to see if you wanted to hire them, what kind of information would you want to see on their website/blog?

I mean, rates, for sure. I figured that much out, but what other information would draw you in? Snippets of other clients' work, like a before-and-after thing? Grouchy rants -- I mean, sharp-witted humor -- about common errors and how not to make them? Links to other editors' pages?

See, the thing is, marketing is a pain in the ass. I'd rather be editing. Someday when I'm able to pay all my bills with editing, I'll hire a marketing person. Or, you know, get hired by a publisher so I have a steady stream of manuscripts. But in the meantime, I need to be all... perky and witty and of course you want to hire me, I'm awesome.

So, let me know, dear readers: what would you want to see from a prospective editor's blog? What would put you off?

Oh, and for the record, I charge by the word, but I'll go into more detail about that in another post.

Gracious, Has It Been That Long?

Hello all,

So it's been over a year since my last post. As a marketing tool, I'm pretty sure that means I fail at blogging. But I'd like to get into the habit of posting here a bit more regularly, and see if it's at all possible to build up a following again, because well-maintained blogs are, in fact, decent marketing tools. They just have to be, y'know, maintained.

My last post - over a year ago, I know, I know - talked about how it would be cool if I could maybe become an editor somewhere. That has happened. I'm still a little bemused and full of wonder over that fact, even a year later, largely because of how it happened.

It's a funny story, really - and also I absolutely can't give anyone any advice for how to break into editing, because, God's honest truth, I became an editor because Neil Gaiman retweeted something from me and the next thing I knew, I had clients.

No, I'm not kidding. This actually happened.

I wanted to be an editor, and had no official, on-the-resume experience in editing, so I didn't know where or how I could possibly get hired. So I sent a tweet to Neil Gaiman, asking him if he knew of anybody who might take an editor with no experience. He has a habit of responding to people, so I figured he might - or an assistant might, heck I dunno - somebody might respond with an idea of where to start looking. Instead, he retweeted my request. Did I mention Neil Gaiman has over a million followers? Yeah. He does.

I got a bunch of responses almost immediately, and to be fair, none of them actually panned out. To be fair again, mainly that was because people were asking questions I wasn't prepared to answer at the time, like, when could I fit them in and what were my rates. BUT, one of those million followers saw the message, and she knew someone who ran a publishing company, and put us in touch with each other, and the next thing I knew I was editing. For almost no money, because it's a small publisher and they can't afford much. But there are different levels of editing, and if manuscripts need a lot of work, they won't take them; instead, they'll recommend editors to their clients to look into on their own dime. So, thanks to them, I've gotten freelance clients, and now I'm editing.

I'm editing on a laptop I was able to purchase with my editing money. One of my clients says that she names her laptops and that I should name mine, and I strongly considered naming it "Neil Gaiman".

Turns out that I don't actually get into naming laptops, so it's just "the laptop". But it's mine and I love it and I only own it because of my editing money, so that's perfectly fine with me.

However! I am not yet self-sufficient with editing. I make grocery money, definitely, and can splurge on things like this laptop every once in awhile, but I don't make enough to pay all my bills, and I'd like to get to that point. So, here I am. Blogging.

Know anybody who wants to publish their story? Have them talk to me. I charge by the word, and what I charge depends on what type of editing they need and how badly the manuscript needs it. And I'd like to get more clients, so, yeah. Pretty much everyone I've had so far has been pleased with my work, except for the guy who was sent to me by the publisher and who disagreed with the notion that his piece needed any editing at all. (IT DID.)

I'm a pretty good editor, I think. But I'm pretty sure I still fail at "marketing blogs".