When is a blog not a blog?

When its owner goes weeks upon weeks without adding a post, and can’t seem to get around to turning it into the simple website he needs.

Seriously: all I need is some kind of “web presence” that’ll provide the info provided on the pages listed along the top nav bar. In lulls between editing projects I’ve begun fluffing up such a site using the iWeb application on my MacBook. I just need to finish it and then fire up my GoDaddy account to publish it.

The (happy) challenge has been that lulls between editing projects have been few and brief. (Have I mentioned lately how much I love my job? And how glad I am to have it?)

Physician, healing himself, maybe

A year and a half into my “serious” editing career (that is, since doing it for most, and, now, all of my living), I’m still sorting out how the work’s going to affect my own writing. It remains to be seen if I can get myself to generate enough first-draft material of my own while keeping up the editing pace I need to keep up to earn a decent living.

I’m pretty cheered by today’s work, though.

As the previous post explained, I’m rolling through the existing dozen or so chapters of my novel-in-progress, switching the story from first-person/past tense to third-person/present. As I go, I’m also trying to trim down the chapters at least closer to their length limits.

This is always tough for me: my first drafts consistently run double the length they ought to be. (And yes, they really should be at that shorter length; allowed their full bloat, my novel — a pretty simple story about eight scary months in the life of a 7th grader whose family’s gone off the rails — would weigh in at 700 pages.)

The chapter I was working on this morning was only 400 words too long (some are more than 2000 words overweight!). I’d already trimmed it at least twice in the days following the completion of the first draft, but when I went at it this morning after switching it over to the new POV/tense scheme, I was able to pretty quickly cut away those 400 words.

The ease of those cuts and my confidence in them are directly attributable, I think, to the chops I’ve refined through pushing myself to edit between two and four novels a month over the past eight months (that’s when I made the switch from part- to full-time editing; in the year before that, I edited probably one book a month).

If I come out of this better able to view my own stuff at a healthy distance and make the changes necessary to keep the pace where it should be, I’ll be thrilled. The signs are good…

Riding the stationary bike

That’s basically what I’m doing with my writing these days.

The novel I’ve been working on for the past year and a half (working title The Randolph Drill) has been moving along at a snail’s pace since December, when the latest book-after-book string of editing jobs started bearing down on me. As per always: very glad for the work, and the work itself has been a kick. Lucky me! But (ain’t there always one of those?) my own book’s progress has suffered.

I’m still finding enough time for the book to feel like it’s a living thing, even if, for the past week, it hasn’t been an ambulatory living thing.

This isn’t another post to whine about that, though. (I try to limit myself to one such whiny-post a month.) The fact is that I’m still finding enough time for the book to feel like it’s a living thing, even if, for the past week, it hasn’t been an ambulatory living thing. That is, it hasn’t been moving forward. (Hence the post-title’s stationary bike metaphor.)

Ten-and-a-half chapters (about 34,000 words) in, I’ve convinced myself that the original first-person, past-tense scheme just isn’t working. My protagonist is a 12-year-old kid while the story’s events unfold; I’d had him narrating his story looking back at it from 5 or 6 years downstream. There’s no particular reason that shouldn’t work, but I’ve just never been able to make the kid’s voice snap to life. I came to realize that I preferred the way the story moved when I was planning out a chapter, writing to myself about it in third person, present tense.

I changed over what I’d written so far in the current chapter-in-progress to that scheme, and sure enough, I much preferred it. Plus it seems possible that the shortened distance from my planning-voice to the written chapter might allow me write leaner first-draft chapters (and get to the end of them more quickly). As is, chapters have been lumbering to the finish line at about twice the length they need to be, and I’m not allowing myself to move on until I get them within a few hundred words of their target length. (And yes, I need to do this. I can’t bear to thrash my way to the end of another 600-page draft of a story that has no business stretching beyond 300 pages. At least on something of a novel’s length, I need to pay disciplined, incremental [chapter-by-chapter] attention to keeping the pace moving, or else I’ll end up with an elephantine tangle that’s just too daunting to revise. I must fix this about myself.)

I’m spending my limited writing time these days working my way through the draft from the start, flipping it over to the new POV/tense scheme. I can do this work in little bursts at any time of day that happens to free itself up, and that’s helping. (I know, I know: If I were a bigger writer-man, I’d be able to bully myself into opening the actual-first-draft-creation tap at any time of day and in any setting. Instead, I can only seem to do it these days in a coffee shop with earbuds pumping in ambient-ish music, or in a hotel room somewhere. Another reason I need writing-therapy.)

Remains to be seen

I’ve been freelance editing full-time since July — the longest I’ve gone without a corporate daddy (that is, a job + benefits) in, let me see, 25 years. Maybe longer. It’s been going really well, once I stopped freaking out. There’s been enough work from the start, but my deepest, tiniest, most fearful self (quivering little blemished fellow) took about four months of stomach and skin and blood pressure issues to accept that.

Since then, I’ve just been busy (and gaining back the weight I lost due to the anxiety-related stomach issues). A good thing, of course (the steady work, not the regained belly). I remind myself of my good fortune constantly, believe me. It’s taken me awhile to pay back the funds I had to borrow from the family coffers to cover the transition from regular biweekly paycheck to the loosey-goosier dollar-stream of the self-employed editor. And then there were the holidays, and some unexpected bills. But now, knock wood, all our accounts are squared and the future looks bright.

I suppose I’m still being steered by that tiny, shivering little guy who messed up my stomach for four months and put me on blood pressure meds.

Which means I have the leisure to worry about what’s less than ideal about this arrangement: I’m not getting much of any of my own writing done. The vision for this gig was to make a living out of 25-30 hours a week and mix my own writing (and regular workouts) into the remaining hours. That’s still theoretically possible — but the fact is I’m still unable to turn away work that’s offered to me. Too scared the offers will stop coming, though I’m pretty sure they will, at least for the foreseeable future. I suppose I’m still being steered by that tiny, shivering little guy who messed up my stomach for four months and put me on blood pressure meds. The result: I’m still starting a new book edit a week, still working too many evening and weekend hours, still unable to keep vacation time clear of work.

Maybe when I’ve managed to actually build up a $$ cushion I’ll find it in me to protect more time for the stuff that keeps me functionally, reasonably happily human — banging my head against my own fiction, spending uninterrupted time with family and friends, staring over my finally settled stomach at the occasional full-length sporting event. And, oh! Reading fiction for pleasure. I’ve been inching through David Mitchell’s fine The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet for probably three months now. Ridiculous.

Me me me…

I have now forced myself to add a page of testimonials to my editorial power and glory. I have accepted that this is a necessary part of hawking my wares. I am now a ware-hawker. So be it.

I would love to be able to do it in the conventional manner — with my clients being able to actually speak about their experiences with me and then sign their names to their testimonials — but that’s not possible just yet, as the publisher I do almost all of my work for prefers not to publicize the fact that they use contract editors. I can’t say I understand the reasoning behind that stance, but I love working for this publisher and have no doubt that they do, indeed, have a good reason for it.

So, until I can generate some praise-singing from authors unassociated with that publisher, the best I can do is offer up a medley of anonymous voices — and hope that prospective clients can convince themselves that I didn’t write them myself.

Best music of 2011

My friends are all posting lists of their favorite music of 2011, so I wanna play. Here’s my list:

1. Gillian Welch “The Harrow & The Harvest”

2. Radiohead “The King of Limbs”

3. Wilco “The Whole Love”

4. My Morning Jacket “Circuital”

5. The Decemberists “The King Is Dead”

6. Thievery Corporation “Culture of Fear”

7. Mogwai “Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will”

8. Fleet Foxes “Helplessness Blues”

9. Yuck “Yuck”

10. Bon Iver “Bon Iver”

Honorable Mention: 

Wagons “Rumble, Shake and Tumble”
Steve Earle “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”
Other Lives “Tamer Animals”
Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit “Here We Rest”

Rates rates rates

I hate money. (And, history tells me, it’s not so wild about me, either.)

Followed a recent online discussion string in which editing rates in general were discussed, and mine in particular were met with shock after a recent client was kind enough to recommend me. One popular site advertises an average rate of $0.009 per word, which does indeed look like a hell of a deal compared to my posted rate of $0.03 per word.

I’ll admit it: I really haven’t tested the pure freelance waters yet. All my editing has been done through one publisher, and they pay a flat per-book rate. So far, they’ve been very happy with my work (in fact, recently raised my fee at their initiative) and have been able to give me all the work I can handle.

Still, it just makes sense to diversify, or at the very least prepare to do so. When I threw this blog-masquerading-as-a-website together, I hurried into setting my rate without taking the time to research where rates typically fall…and now see that I was perhaps a little, um, hopeful to set my rate at 3 cents a word.

That said, though, there’s no way I can make a living as a contract worker if I try to match the less-than-a-penny word rate mentioned above. For the amount of work I typically put in on a manuscript, that would come out to just over $20 an hour. That just won’t cut it, and I don’t think it should have to.

The upshot: From this point forward, I’m changing my rate to $0.02 per word. I still don’t expect a stampede of authors, but maybe it’ll at least drop me into consideration. Should the one publishing house who’s been regularly engaging me on behalf of their authors stop doing so (God forbid), I’ll revisit the issue.

And I’ll always take books/authors on a case-by-case basis. I’m currently very happily working with my first freelance client, and we fashioned our own “phased” agreement and rate based upon the state of his manuscript and his experience as a fiction writer.

Oddball publication

Strange opportunity came my way a few weeks back when my beloved old employer (Denny Mountain Media) got in touch to see if I’d be interested in writing a very short piece on fatherhood for MSN.com’s “Lifestyle” page. I’m a father, I write–so I figured, what the hell?

They provided the topic: “The [#] Most Important Things Fathers Can Teach Their Kids.” I could replace the [#] with whatever number I liked. Interesting assignment (how would you have responded?). The “published” result surprised me: they broke my 1000-word piece up into a “slide show” and matched each of my 10 items with a photo of shiny happy web-people (see example).

In any event, the piece gave me a chance to tip my hat to my own dad on a couple of “slides,” so far that reason alone it would’ve been worth it. The fact that it also paid more than I’ve received for all but a couple of my (oh-so-much-longer) fiction pieces also  counts in its favor. Here’s the link.

The wave recedes…

Lordy. Regulating my workflow will likely always be a challenge…and I know, above all, I should be glad to have a workflow to regulate.

Still, I love it when the work backs off a little after a long siege. I worked every day of the long Thanksgiving weekend, including four or five hours on Thanksgiving Day. Not good.

As of yesterday, though, I completed the bulk of the work on three different projects. I’ve cleaned off my desk and paid some bills–and it looks like I have my projects for the next three months all lined up and spread out so I can do my work, AND reacquaint myself with my own writing, AND work out a few days a week, AND have some time to hang with my family.

This afternoon I’ll have a conference call with an acquisition editor and the author with whom I’ll be working on five books, one right after the other (hence the amazingly long-range work schedule already being set). The books look fun as hell. And then tomorrow morning I’ll drive up to Whidbey Island for a couple of nights with my writer pal at his vacation place. We’ve done this a couple of times before: writing in the morning, a midday walk along the beach, work (for me) in the afternoon, then dinner in Langley and back for some Scotch and music and general hanging out.

I’m a happy man!

Blogslacker

As soon as I get the time, I’m going to convert this to an actual little website, rather than a (far-too-often-dormant) blog posing as one. The new site might have a blog component, but it’ll have to called “Very Occasional Notes” or something. I just can’t shove aside my own writing and my editing work (which continues to go wonderfully well!) often enough to justify calling this a blog!