January 9, 2014
Insurance for freelance editors: WorkSafeBC
December 29, 2013
The Elements of Expression: Putting Thoughts into Words by Arthur Plotnik
There’s an expression in Dutch: Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg. It translates approximately as, “Why don’t you just act normal? That’s already strange enough.” And how right the Dutch are: rhetorical flourishes, weak jokes, arty effects, obscure language, and the breezy style that Strunk and White warned against are all reasons to toss a book over your shoulder. But, taken too much to heart, won’t this keep-it-normal philosophy result in Soviet-cell-block-grey writing? The literary equivalent of overcooked cabbage and brown rice without salt may not get thrown across the room, but it will end up gathering dust under the bed.
Somewhere between these two extremes is writing that catches attention without bolting on superfluous ornaments. The Elements of Expression tells you how to use concrete images and unfamiliar combinations of words to produce writing that is fresh and expressive and brings delight to the reader. Arthur Plotnik provides techniques for injecting force and power into your writing, and suggests a variety of places, from rap music to Shakespeare, to find new language. Most importantly, he tells you how to make this new language your own.
Don’t waste time finding your single real voice. We rarely find our real voice . . . Our voice can be a new voice—or several—that we make real, a voice in harmony with our roots but capable of expressing the full flower of the evolving self. Like everything that breaks from the ordinary, the new voice entails risks, apprehensions, missteps. These are reasonable costs of liberation.
I expected this to be a book about writing, so the chapter on oral presentation was a delightful added bonus. We’ve all been tortured by the People Who Should Be Banned from Presenting (the flaunters of their unpreparedness: “Prepare? Do gods prepare?”). In keeping with the theme of adding expressiveness, Plotnik pleads for effective voice modulation. In the past, the baby-talk sound of the kindergarten teacher who traversed an entire octave in one word and the android-like delivery of newscasters made me think that the best modulation is the one that nobody notices (“just act normal . . .”), but when you’re a small figure on a distant stage, the audience needs more animation than you would use when speaking face to face. Plotnik tells you how to use volume, tempo, and phrasing to make your presentation sing. He finishes with his own checklist of methods for reducing the terror of public speaking (bring a marked text and an extra copy).
As always, Plotnik is a joy to read. He shares his secrets generously, and he empathizes with the yearning for effective expression that all writers, however casual, feel.
Other books by Arthur Plotnik
Better than Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives (review)Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style (review)
Elements of Editing: A Modern Guide for Editors & Journalists
The Elements of Authorship (review)
Reviewed from my own copy of the book.
November 26, 2013
The Elements of Authorship by Arthur Plotnik
Arthur Plotnik is always fun to read. In this combination of manual and memoir, he presents the ins and outs of the world of writing—and he’s done it all: studying at the Iowa writers’ workshop, journalism, commercial writing, editing a magazine, you name it. If you’re committed to being a writer, this is your guide to the landscape of the trade.
The contents
- Studying to write—the highlights of the writers workshops
- Lessons to be learned from journalism
- Writing full-time
- Writing at home
- Working as a commercial writer
- How to please editors
- The personal lives of writers
- Getting published (“The Pit and the Pinnacle”)
- Style and how to write well
- Finances of writing and contracts
- Being a poet
- Technical considerations
- Becoming obsolete
Every so often a newspaper reports on the “fecal dust” that blows through certain cities from the open latrines of shanty-towns. The imagery sticks in one’s mind, with that piercing word fecal and the unsettling notion of airborne waste. We thank heaven we don’t breathe it, yet day and night we are assailed by toxic drivel from office, media, and motor-mouthed acquaintances. Choked on this fecal verbiage, people turn to the literary word for refreshment.
For writers, the listener’s time is always suspended until the words can gather force. One attraction of writing is this magical opportunity to rummage for the bon mot or perfect squelch or ultimate love call while the world stands frozen. And so the writer struggles with words, chooses them with care, arranges them to refresh the listener’s mind and ear, then heaves them out and shops for better words and rearranges them for hours, days, months, until nothing can be added, excluded, or shifted to make them more refreshing, more stimulating. But when the words are uncorked in print, the effect is instantaneous: “By God, that’s what I would have said if I’d had a year to think about it!”
—“What Readers Want”
Reviewed from a library copy of the book.
October 2, 2013
When to capitalize “the”
I find capitalization one of the trickier areas of copy editing. As you try to be consistent, it’s easy to slide down a slippery slope of increasing capitalization until your document looks like the product of a Victorian letter writer.
The Taming of the Shrew
“The Lottery”
the Supreme Court
the Panama Canal
the Constitution
the Beatles
the University of British Columbia
One question that causes a lot of problems is the question of capitalizing the definite article with proper nouns. Should you write “he went to The University of British Columbia” or “to the University of British Columbia”? Is the article part of their name?
Luckily the style guides have some helpful advice. The Canadian Press Stylebook, 16th ed., has a useful entry on page 287, and The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed., also deals with this topic.
Titles of works starting with “the”
In general, include the article and capitalize it:The Taming of the Shrew
“The Lottery”
For periodicals, Chicago suggests lowercasing the article and not italicizing it, even if it is part of the official title: the New Yorker.
Canadian Press style capitalizes “the” when it is part of the name: The New Yorker (no italics because this is a newspaper style), but it uses a lowercase article for names of almanacs, the Bible, dictionaries, directories, handbooks, and so on.
Sometimes you can drop a leading “a” “an” or ”the” in a book title if it doesn’t fit the syntax of the sentence (CMOS 8.169):
Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew
“The” before a proper noun
The article is almost always lowercased:the Supreme Court
the Panama Canal
the Constitution
the Beatles
the University of British Columbia
Some specific types of proper nouns
Places
Lowercase the article except in a city name that contains “the” (CMOS 8.45):
the Netherlands
The Hague-
Institutions and companies
Chicago says that a “the” preceding the name, even if it’s part of the official name, is lowercased in running text (CMOS 8.68).
the University of Chicago -
Associations and unions
Same again: lowercase “the” even if it’s part of the official name (CMOS 8.70).
the League of Women Voters
Changes in capitalization styles
These are recommendations from two specific style guides. Organizations have their own house styles for capitalization that may deviate from the guidelines I’ve quoted here, so check your house style.
September 28, 2013
Robert Mackwood at Word Vancouver: A literary agent’s take on publishing today
Today I was at a Word Vancouver talk by Robert Mackwood: A Literary Agent’s Take on Publishing Today, presented by the Canadian Authors Association. Robert Mackwood is the director and principal agent at Seventh Avenue Literary Agency. He works with non-fiction books.
If you self-publish, you have to be the publisher. Don’t rush, and make sure you get a good editor, designer, and printer. Robert estimated that you’ll have to spend at least a couple of thousand dollars to make a book that you’ll be proud of.
Literary agents in Canada
There are only about twenty agents in Canada: five in Vancouver, one in Halifax, and the rest in Toronto. New York City probably has about 150.Dealing with a literary agent
Robert gets about thirty to forty queries per week (about the same as ten years ago). He can see quite quickly whether he thinks the project is something he can sell. He charges 15%, and of course, only gets paid when he makes a deal. Most agents don’t have a lot of clients. He tries to keep his client list to under forty.Write, don’t call.
What about the proposal? He didn’t get into too much detail about the format and nuts and bolts of the proposal. Just put together a short description of your project and yourself. Describe what you’ve done so far to promote your writing, and include the trail of yeses: writing contests, magazine articles, previous publications, and any other time someone said yes to your writing. What he doesn’t really like to hear: “I can finish the manuscript in three weeks.” “We’re going to make so much money on this!” “Oprah’s going to love this!” and, worst of all, “I’ve decided I’d like to be a writer!”
Should you self-publish?
Deciding on the best publishing route is too big a topic to go into here, but here are a few points:| Advantages to self-publishing | Advantages of conventional publishing |
| You keep all the profits | No up-front expenditures |
| You have total control | The publisher does the marketing |
| It’s fast | You get the credibility of the publisher’s brand |
| You benefit from the publisher’s professional expertise |
An important point is that a self-published book that gets decent sales and some good reviews may be picked up and re-published by a conventional publisher.
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