Your Best Edit is Your Manual Edit: Do It Feeling Virtuous

                     Your Best Manual Edit: Feel Virtuous. Save a Tree!

Cover Photography by Anne Howell

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

 

This article is excerpted from the winningest book in my HowToDoItFrugally Series of Books for Writers, #TheFrugalEditor, now in its third edition.  It’s from one of my daring departures, a little one-page essay on editing or…mmm…maybe a diatribe on one of my pet projects as it relates to editing—in this case the environment.. My publisher and I came up with the rather sedate title of “The Frugal Editor’s Extra" for all twenty of them numbered sequentially. (This one is number two.) They get placed sporadically at the end of selected chapters. Come have some editing fun with me. 

 

The Frugal Editor’s Extra #2:
Your Best Manual Edit. Feel Virtuous. Save a Tree!

 

I know some of us cheat on our manual edits by using a computer or we didn’t realize how superior a manual edit is to one done on  a screens. But really, a manual edit  can’t be fudged. You may resort to the keyboard because you are working at saving the planet. So feel virtuous. And thrifty. So, do it by printing your manuscript on your own recycled paper and feel just as righteous—and almost as thrifty.

We’re not talking about the reams you buy labeled with the recycled logo, though I’m glad you do. We’re talking paper printed on only one side that comes across your desk or out of your computer’s printer. I finally trained my husband to save his once-used paper for me to recycle, too. Our paper gets one more (great!) life before it becomes fodder for our city’s recycle bin.

To do this, salvage paper as it’s produced in your office and rescue the good stuff from your junk mail. Arrange the new ream of leftovers you are accumulating so the printed sides are all facing the same way and tamp them a bit so the edges line up to prevent your printer from rejecting them. When in manual editing mode, carefully put these salvaged reams into your printer tray with the clean sides facing up or down, depending on your printer’s preferences.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers and also coauthored a book honoring the Earth by reaching across hemispheres to work with Aussie Magdalena Ball. It is Sublime Planet, featured in the Earth Day Issue of The Pasadena Weekly and recipient of Dr. Bob Rich’s Life Award (Literature for the Environment). “Endangered Species,” a poem in it, was the recipient of  the Franklin Christoph prize and the book was honored by USA Book News. All proceeds go the World Wildlife Fund. It is part of Carolyn’s and Magdalena’s  Celebration Series, each a gift of poetry suitable for different holidays.

“Every day is #Earth Day.”  

“…no dictator can monopolize the sun. No autocrat can control the wind.”

~ Greenpeace

[and neither should they be used to threaten the planet with annihilation!” 

~ Carolyn 🌞]

 

“…beautifully written and poignantly sad, as the reader considers 
harsh climate issues happening now.”
~ Carolyn Wilhelm for Midwest Book Review

Now"s the Time to Get Started on Your Christmas Book for 2023

 

On Christmas Songs, Books, and Marketing

Riddle: So Why Is Taylor Swift a Terrific Marketer? 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

By Carolyn  Howard-Johnson

 

It’s holiday time. Even if we don’t think much about Taylor Swift the rest of the year, between now and January 1^st you’re likely to hear her singing “Last year I gave you my heart,” in my opinion one of the most unlikely Christmas songs of all time. It’s a good lesson in love, but also a reminder of the example she has set for creative types since she started flaunting her knack for marketing.

 

QUESTION: So what makes Taylor Swift a terrific marketer?

ANSWER: Because she knows that this one song reaches across generations as well as the months and years to include all she does, including “showing” us the the real meaning of the word “assertive.”

 

I fear the word “assertive” has gotten a bad rap in the last couple decades.

People often associate it with being brash or downright overbearing, but it’s a skill we all need in business (in our case the world of publishing) when we must negotiate a contact or make ourselves heard in the din of a hundreds of thousands of books being published each year. 

 

But Taylor got that right, too. She thinks creative people should get paid for their work. She stood up for that idea. She wasn’t afraid to use her financial clout to do it. And—here’s the biggie. She doesn’t hesitate to use her skill against the big guys.

 

A few years ago, Taylor pitted her case against Apple—financially the world’s most influential company—who planned to launch a free promotion for their new music streaming business, Apple Music. She did it with an open letter on her blog (ahh, the power of the written word and the power of blogging!) and a tweet or two. And she did it without mussing her hair or raising her voice or resorting to a lewd gesture. She assured Apple that she loved them, threw in a few more compliments like “I say this with love, reverence, and admiration for everything else Apple does.” It was polite, but she still socked it to them. In something like sixteen hours they were smart enough to buckle. Swift and all the other musicians feature on Apple's rollout got paid.

 

And now we can all add the word “assertive” to the lexicon of skills we need to survive, to influence. She used a gentle voice that convinced others that her protest was not about making more money for herself but a matter of principle and passion. Now the rest of us can be assertive and know that can mean engaging and focused as well as strident.

 

And while we’re at it, let’s think about what we creatives can learn from that Christmas song. We creatives have a little time to think about the holidays both creatively and in ways that help whoever out there likes what we do. For writers, I’m thinking “last minute” gifts by touting e-book gifts that are inexpensive and arrive very nearly instantly. For readers I’m thinking books that are classics from books of poetry to Dickens.

 

I’m thinking donations to your local library and a special thank you to whoever tosses the daily news onto your front porch. The list can get really long.

 

But mostly I want to remind you to start thinking about a writing a book with a Christmas theme—maybe an anthology. Think of this as a writers’ prompt to try a genre you never tried before. But mostly think about it as a career builder. Don’t wait until it is too late once again. Now is the time to do your NaNo thing in January. But give it a Christmas theme then make it your Christmas classic. It will be the thing that makes your audience think about your other books when ’23, ’24, and 3035 roll around. The basics will just wait patiently for you to practice your marketing skills starting every year sometime around Thanksgiving forever after.

 

Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. All her books for writers are multi award winners including the first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter published in 2003. Her The Frugal Editor, soon to be released in its 3^rdedition, won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award. And, yes. How about a last-minute book of Christmas poetry from Carolyn and Magdalena Ball’s holiday entry in their Celebration Series of chapbooks, paper or e-book. Find it at bit.ly/BloomingRed.

Writing -- The Daily Dozen

As promised, these final six tips complete the  Daily Dozen exercises for healthy writing.
The first six tips appeared on Writers on the Move last month.

Participles-- the -ing words

This month's warm-up starts yet again with verbs and the dreaded dangling modifiers. And I'm pretty sure every writer, no matter how experienced, has at least one somewhere in a closet or in a closeted manuscript.

Running along the road , the hotel was easy to spot.

Yes, the problem here is easy to spot as well--as easy as a hotel running down the road. The -ing word, now an adjectival form of the verb, attaches itself to the nearest subject in the sentence and hey presto! Fun all round.


But when you're in throes of involvement with your lead character working through his problems, it can be more difficult to isolate.


He thought through his options one by one. Mulling them over, the book seemed to provide the safest answer.


Still a dangling modifier--the book is not mulling over his options, but it's easy to miss this one as the subject of the previous sentence is the man doing the mulling.

Practice writing a few deliberately and you'll soon pick them out in your self-editing.


Dialogue

 Getting Into Your Character's Skins is an excellent article by Shirley Corder. Make sure each character has his or her own vocabulary and speech mannerisms. They should not all use "spiffing fun" as a favorite exclamation unless you show one character being so affected by another that he adopts the words.


This seems obvious but to make characters distinct, they should each have their own favorite, well-differentiated phrases.

Identify these from the start in your character planning.

The Missing Tip

This space is left quite deliberately. I would love you to post your vital daily writing tip in the comments box below and the best one, or ones, will be inserted here next week. 

The Warm Down--vital exercises.

Poetry--one a day

Write it but most of all read it. The compression needed to encapsulate sense and emotion is a wonderful lesson to learn and keep in mind when writing longer pieces.

Be it ten, or a hundred and ten thousand words, each one must be a necessary part of the whole. 

For short poems of the day, visit Magdalena Ball on her Poetry Mondays.

Read

All writers read, but take a chance to read out of your comfort zone to cross-fertilize ideas. Avoid the genre you write in yourself.

Try new avenues to explore new ideas. Go for the books you always told yourself you hated. If they're well written, they may well surprise you by stimulating your imagination in new ways.

 Relax 

A cop out? Not at all. Only with rest and relaxation can your mind work at optimum level. Set aside one day, or a half day if you really feel you can't afford the time, to pamper your writer's soul.

It's not a new idea. I loved it when I found it in The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. As the computer nerds say--garbage in, garbage out.

Take time to do what you love. Walk in the wild woods, visit art galleries and museums, socialize. And your writing will benefit accordingly.

 Anne Duguid is a senior content editor with MuseItUp Publishing and   her New Year's Resolution is to blog with helpful writing,editing and publishing tips at Slow and Steady Writers far more regularly than she managed in 2011.