Around the Word

Today the BloGG brings you hints and inspiration from two novelists, and goes gallivanting through the colorful history of acronyms:

• Here's writerly wisdom for wordsmiths in all genres. Even if you haven't read Freedom, you've probably heard of its Pulitzer-winning, Oprah-sparring author Jonathan Franzen. Ragan's PR Junkie marvels at the Franzenfreude that has seized America, and looks at the Great American Novelist's bold tips for novelists who want to stand in his shoes—and for writers of any stripe who care for their craft.

1.  The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
2.  Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.
3.  Never use the word "then" as a ­conjunction—we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.
4.  Write in the third person unless a ­really distinctive first-person voice ­offers itself irresistibly.
5.  When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
6.  The most purely autobiographical ­fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more auto­biographical story than "The Meta­morphosis."
7.  You see more sitting still than chasing after.
8.  It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.
9.  Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
10.  You have to love before you can be relentless.

• Many writers—columnists, scholars, closeted storytellers—dream of writing That Book or Their Novel. Alas, for most of us, the pressures and desires of ordinary existence interfere with this ambition. In an interview with the L.A. Times, novelist-and-working-mother Mary Gordon preaches discipline and passion as the pillars on which her after-hours authorhood rests. Check out her tough-love tips to parents whose unfinished masterpiece is the ball that keeps getting dropped. Writers, what are your suggestions for juggling so many projects?

• OMG, IDK what any of these acronyms mean LOL. Acronyms swarm through our daily lives, often in such hordes that we cease to notice them. Where do they come from? Writing in More Intelligent Life, Economist correspondent Robert Lane Greene tracks the history of acronyms in technology, medicine, the military, the boardroom, government—down to our daily conversation. Acronyms can make powerful phrases banal or add a luster of legitimacy or sanitize medical diagnoses (often for the sake of marketing). At best, they fill a niche for which no synonym applies: a SNAFU (situation normal: all fucked up) is "a screw-up caused by some title-inflated CTO or SVP trying to impose TQM (total quality management)." Ultimately acronyms are tools, molded to the purposes and attitudes of their users. Where have you noticed acronyms cropping up recently? Do they delight or distress you?

Ghost Guide: How to Price Your Editing Services

We asked, you answered. Last week, one of our ghostwriters wanted to know:

"What is an average fee that one of your writers would request to edit a full (80,000-90,000) manuscript?"

We turned his question—how much to charge for a book-editing project—over to our writer listserv, and from their collective wisdom we've compiled

What We Think About When We Think About Editing Fees 

The Job

Everyone who weighed in agreed: you and your client have got to settle on a shared set of realistic expectations. Are you line/copy editing a manuscript that's in pretty good shape, or are you tackling organization, focus, tone, and fact checking? If it's the latter, says Sheila Buff, a best-selling health writer, "that's something else entirely"—and you should up your rate accordingly.

The Project

To assess what needs to be done, accomplished writer and former editor Allen Mikaelian advises fellow editors to follow his lead in conducting a preliminary check-up. "I always get at least a sample of the manuscript first. Some 90,000 word manuscripts are easy, some take forever." David Lauterborn, who edited big-name travel guides before assuming his current post at Weider History Group, seconds the point, noting "heavy scientific or financial content can double the required hours." After you've seen a representative chapter, you'll be able to estimate the number of hours you'll spend editing, and you can calculate your fee based on your hourly rate (hours of work x dollars per hour = fee).

The Fee

The short version: pay rates vary. A lot.

It's up to you whether to bill hourly or charge a flat fee for the project, but even if you go with a fixed rate, you'll still need a rough idea of how many hours you'll spend on the manuscript—if anything, it's even more essential when you're charging a fixed price. Business author and ghostwriting guru Brian Solon warns, "if you quote a flat fee which is too low, and the editing process inevitably ends up taking way longer than expected, your effective hourly rate will plunge." He also recommends taking the author's personality into account. With a difficult writer, he says, "you could spend an entire day getting them to approve a handful of pages."

Solon talks us through his thinking: If you think you can edit 10,000 words per week, and you're taking on an 80,000 word manuscript, then that's eight weeks of work. "How much is eight weeks of your time worth?" he asks. In his example, a week's work is worth $2,000 ("if you are brilliant and the best at what you do," he qualifies), so $2,000 x 8 = $16,000. And that's your price.

Buff's numbers are decidedly more modest. According to her, the industry base rate starts at about $35/hour, increasing from there depending on your experience and your publishing record. She advises you assume five to ten pages an hour for a solid line-edit. If the manuscript has 250 words per page, and 80,000 words total, then you're looking at 320 pages of editing—or, using Buff's rubric, between 32 and 64 hours of work. Charging hourly, that's between $1,120 and $2,240 dollars.

Lauterborn comes in somewhere between the two. The average Lonely Planet-type manuscript "ran some 40,000 words, with a 6-week allowance for the project," he says. For an 80,000 or 90,000 word piece, then, "a good editor should request a three-month window of time and request a minimum of $10,000 for services rendered, more if the client has a solid publishing track record."

The Conclusion

Even if our math is a tad rusty, our skills are sharp enough to confidently note that there's a huge difference between $1,120 and $16,000. The "industry standard" isn't so standard after all, it turns out—hardly surprising, considering the case-by-case nature of the business. What IS standard, though, is the roster of things to consider:

• What are the (shared) expectations between you and your client as to the scope and nature of your edits?
• What is the time frame? Is this a drop-everything-and-stop-eating editing bonanza or a more leisurely gig?
• How long will the project take you?
• How much is an hour of your editing expertise worth (in dollars)? Where are you in your career?

From there, you've got to bite the bullet and quote a rate, but you can quote it with the confidence that you're within the realm of the reasonable.

Around the Word

The BloGG is serving up some tasty hors d'oeuvres today.  Check out the tantalizing "genius" grant, sample our public libraries, see how English digests abbreviations—and play edible Scrabble!

• Here's a pick-me-up for freelance writers wrestling with awful day jobs.  Yesterday, novelist Yiyun Li—one of the New Yorker's "20 under 40," received a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation, which recognized artists and scholars in fields from music to astrophysics.  For Li, interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, the money simply means more time to write.  Her latest collection of short stories, "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl" was released on September 14.  Check out the title story here.

• Bookworms in America have burrowed into libraries since 1731, when we were still royal subjects.  At The Book Bench, Macy Halford looks at America's first subscription library, founded by Benjamin Franklin.  The history lesson was spurred by a recent New York Times story about public libraries that are privatizing to survive (and, perhaps, for less noble reasons as well).  Given the stiff fees I paid to access Berlin's Staatsbibliothek, I consider the U.S. library system a great boon—though admittedly I visit infrequently.  What purpose do you think public libraries serve these days?

• For word sleuths, tech innovation has opened a brave new world.  "Check out this app!" would have been gibberish to many of us last year.  Slang keeps pace with the technology that inspires it—while standardization lags behind.  The Columbia Journalism Review follows the vicissitudes of abbreviations such as "mic" or "mike" for "microphone" and "in sync(h)" for "in synchronism."  Apart from a few sticklers, most authorities accept both variants.  "Mic" and "synch" derive from the radio era, but now that most people consume information in print (online), we wonder if spelling will standardize itself more readily.  We're curious to hear your thoughts on this phenomenon.  Why abbreve? 

• And which of those abbreviations (above) will count in Scrabble?  You'd better check your dictionary, or we'll have you eating your words.  Literally.  Cheez-Its are now edible Scrabble tiles, each toothsome treat with a letter on it.  Wired offers clues on how to play the game, cheddar-style, since the crackers have no numbers and are not distributed according to official Scrabble rules.  A triple word score has never been so scrumptious!

Around the Word: The Age of Eloquence

Today we're hosting a field day for speechwriters, with words of wisdom from seasoned rhetoricians:

• Public speaking—the world's "oldest art"—is alive and well today.  David Murray, editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, discusses the current state of speechmaking, arguing that public speeches remain an elegant and compelling form of mass communication.  Speeches may inspire or educate, and, most crucially, are part of "living history."  Murray's goal of keeping Vital Speeches current has led to some eyebrow-raising inclusions, such as Tiger Woods's public apology.  How would you define a "vital" speech? Have you heard any orations recently that seized your interest?

• Speechwriting has deep roots.  Political speechwriter Dan Conley travels to ancient Greece to trace the philosophic foundations of speechmaking.  Both philosophy and speechwriting draw on the art of rhetoric and require the intellectual courage to synthesize information and draw persuasive conclusions.  Specialization has sundered the two disciplines, but Conley believes practitioners of both fields might learn something by taking a page from each other's books.

• Freelancers thrive on independence, but what about the sweetness of a fruitful creative collaboration?  While composing a talk on cooperation and diversity, speechwriter Cynthia Starks found that multiple cooks can spice up the broth.  She worked closely with the client to generate and refine content, fielding suggestions from different departments in the firm and seeking advice from fellow speechwriters.  The result was a stronger speech tailored to the client's purposes.  We ask our freelancing friends: have you collaborated on a project recently?  When do outside voices help, and when would you prefer to go it alone?

A Passion for Punctuation

Bloggers and columnists are sounding off punctuation woes today in honor of National Punctuation Day.  The holiday was created seven years ago by former journalist Jeff Rubin to honor the lowly comma.  These days, writers seem most piqued by overtaxed exclamation points!!! and the misplaced "apostrophe-S" (the it's/its confusion, or "Chicken's for Sale").  Teachers complain that the slapdash orthography of text messages and emails has bled into students' writing, leading to egregious semantic sins like "IDK" for "I don't know" and :) emoticons appearing in school essays.

Whence all the anxiety?  Concerned citizens are declaring that English is dead.  They may be onto something.  When classical music retreated to the academies and was shored up by curmudgeonly composers poring over rediscovered Bach manuscripts, its knell began to toll.  Rising unease over punctuation and grammar misuse, evidence of which can be found here, there, and everywhere, would seem to indicate that we are fighting a similar (losing) battle against technology-memes that threaten our cherished cultural institutions.

But wait!  How do you explain the 800,000 members of the Facebook group "'Let's eat Grandma!' or, 'Let's eat, Grandma!' Punctuation saves lives"?  That's a relatively small slice of the Facebook population, but it reveals that even punctuation can be lovable—if you show people why they should care.

Grumpy grammarians might do well to ease off the battering ram and ask themselves, "So what?"  Why should proper usage matter?  We know it does—the miracle of human communication hangs by a very tenuous thread, and the right words in the right order keep it from snapping.  A misplaced comma can wreck the bridge you're building, as the title of Lynne Truss's popular Eats, Shoots and Leaves demonstrates.

The bigger issue is that "proper" grammar isn't necessary—or even proper—in most of today's communication channels.  An apostrophe takes up valuable space in a text message, so using one makes a statement.  Teens are sensitive to implied social signals.  When they text or tweet, they instinctively recognize and adjust to the requirements of form and audience.  Before students learn what's "right," they have to figure out for themselves what works.  Once they've established their own mode of communicating, the endless litany of rules and exceptions don't seem worth absorbing.

These students have intuited an important lesson: usage is a social construct.  Grammar has been fluid for most of human history: no one chastises Shakespeare for misspelling his name (Shaksper), and the word "grammar" itself is a distortion of the word "glamour."  These days, however, grammar has developed unavoidable (and often unconscious) social implications.  When Punctuation Day's founder Jeff Rubin corrects mispunctuated signs in restaurants, he says he judges the management's investment in their food and customers based on the care they take over their grammar.  The chef isn't using semicolons in his soup.  Nevertheless, we all make assumptions about social status, class, "in-group" identity, and even emotional engagement, based on grammar and usage.

We can't live outside of language.  We can harness it better, though, by listening to both the explicit and implicit stories it tells.  The BloGG wants to hear your take—what is the purpose of punctuation to you?

And we hope you enjoy National Punctuation Day with some comma-shaped cookies, a red sharpie, or by simply paying a little more attention to those unsung heroes of usage!

Around the Word: Great Debates

Today, we're refereeing three debates for language-lovers:

• To eBook or not to eBook?  Words may look the same onscreen as on paper—but somehow they feel different.  The text's form—an eBook, a Word Doc, a notepad or thick novel—colors our approach to reading and writing.  In Wired, technology writer David Dobbs illuminates these internal shifts, examining the benefits and drawbacks of digital and paper-based media.  For instance, Dobbs sticks to the screen for fine-toothed line-edits, but for large-scale changes, he finds he is "more sensitive to proportion and rhythm and timbre" when marking up a printed page.  And, while praising the iPad's lightweight frame, he describes eBook reading as more "horizontal" and diffuse compared with the "vertical" intensity of a physical book.  Online, a reader is always conscious of potential links—you can toggle to a dictionary or Wikipedia to clarify a word or allusion, perhaps glance at your email on the way back.  This extra material tugs Dobbs away from the text, so that even serious reading feels "shallower."  We turn to you: have you experienced similar differences when you approach texts onscreen or on paper?  Which do you prefer?
  
  In the same vein, iPad-toting authors might enjoy Information Architects' latest app, "Writer."  "Writer" creates a writing and editing arena that clears out distractions and employs a typeface designed to promote slow, careful reading.  "Focus Mode" turns off auto-correct and spell-check prompts, and blurs out all text but the three lines you are working on.  It also features estimated reading-time for a block of text.  If you give this app a whirl, let us know how it works for you!

• Fans of contemporary fiction may have noticed the brouhaha brewing over the Man Booker Prize finalists.  The New York Observer has the scoop: three of the six finalists wrote their novels in the present tense, a tactic that piques two famous British authors.  Philip Pullman, author of the popular His Dark Materials series, and Philip Hensher, former Booker Prize judge, deride the use of present tense as a trendy technique that creates a superficial sense of "daring" and "unreliable" narrative.  Book critic Laura Miller, writing for Salon, defends the three Booker hopefuls for plying what she believes is a well-justified and powerful technique given the specific character of the novels (one, for instance, is narrated by a five-year-old child).  Have you read any novels in the present tense recently?  What were your impressions?

• Here's catnip for grammar sticklers who literally wince at the misuse of "literally."  The webcomic The Oatmeal warns you to choose your words carefully, because literally anything could happen.  And xkcd pokes nerdy fun at the literal/figurative mix-up.  So, what is the literal meaning of "literally"?  We dug up this Slate article by dictionary editor Jesse Sheidlower, who traces the irksome intensifier's transformation over centuries of use and abuse.

Orations, Etymologies and Unknown unknowns

Heads up, speechwriters!  Today we're sharing some words of wisdom on finding your own public speaking voice.

"It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know," said Thoreau.

"Exactly," replies The Eloquent Woman, "so forget Thoreau."  Sure, Churchill, Einstein and Buddha might make stellar dinner companions, but do you want to invite them all onstage with you when you give a speech?  Audiences ride roughshod over quotes they already know—if you want listeners to follow your tracks carefully, stick to your own voice and find ways to surprise them.  When selecting quotations, look to less-famous lights who will offer the audience fresh insight.  Or put a new edge on an old saw by researching what was said directly after or before a famous utterance.  We may love Mark Twain's fillip, "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.  I said I didn't know"—but the steamboat pilot to whom Twain was apprenticed was less amused.  Putting an old chestnut back in context enlivens your speech and gives your audience something new to think about.  Finally, The Eloquent Woman counsels, don't be shy about using your own voice.  After all, audience has come to hear you.

Speechwriter Cynthia Starks agrees, adding that presenting your real self is the best way to cure stage fright.  In her most recent blog post, Starks draws on wisdom from public speaking coach Saskia Shakin, who urges speakers to speak from the heart and tell stories that weave the facts into a larger, more meaningful pattern.  Stories give the audience something tangible to hang onto—and they help you remember why you're speaking in the first place.

In the land of grammar, a different sort of bedbug is biting The Word columnist Jan Freeman.  This epidemic isn't for entomologists but etymologists.  Spiking bedbug populations have given new life to the phrase, "Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite"—but where does the expression come from?  It's a popular story that "sleep tight" refers to sleeping arrangements from early colonial times, when children slept in rope beds anchored beneath their parents' bed.  Freeman begs to differ, and cites evidence from the OED and other semantic sleuths who argue that the phrase derives from a Victorian bedtime rhyme, "Sleep tight, wake bright."  Bedbugs started appearing in the ditty during the late 1800s—and, unfortunately, have stuck around since.

Another invasive species is blooming in the U.S.—the terminal "s."  Are we moving "towards" good English or "backwards" away from it?  Neither, as the Columbia Journalism Review kindly explains.  That pesky "s" is imported from Britain, where it's perfectly sound English.  And though the Grammar Guards of the New York Times and Chicago University don't approve, the "s" has more or less taken root in the States.  But take note!  This flexibility applies only to some directional words ("towards," "forwards"), while "beside" and "besides" remain two different words.  Confused yet?

Finally, our politically-minded friends can add Donald Rumsfeld's memoir to their 2011 summer reading list.  The former Secretary of Defense has just announced the title of his memoir, Known and Unknown, taken from his widely debated quote about links between Saddam's regime and WMDs.  We know one thing: we're eager for those anecdotes about Elvis Presley.  How about you—are you interested in Rumsfeld's reminisces?  And, in a ghostwriterly twist on the old fantasy dinner party game, whose political memoirs would you be most excited to read?