Category Archives: Rants

Plagiarism Debacle

The solution:

1. We cut most of the offending material, as it’s non-essential.

2. We cite the other book the author published the information in, for the bits we keep.

3. The author never works with us again.

I’ve put too much work into it to cancel the book, so I’m fine with this. We have to recoup the time and money we’ve put in somehow, and publication’s the only way to do it. The manuscript is in galleys now, which is usually the point of no return; you can edit for punctuation or spelling errors, or remove something, but you can’t add anything. Galleys are also known as proofs, and they’re the final step before publication. They show you what the layout of the final book is going to be, and it’s the last chance you have to catch errors.

Thank the Goddess I caught this one before it was too late.

I have a feeling this author’s agent has received a nasty eye-opener concerning her client. I don’t know what the fallout will be, but we reap what we sow, so I’ll leave it up to them to work it out. Interestingly enough, the same agent represents the other author we’ve been working with on the second book, and that’s been sailing along so beautifully that the agent has a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the two situations. The only variable has been the author; the editing team is the same. The agent can draw her own conclusions.

An editor is supposed to be “a partner, not a critic” according to Richard Webster (author of How to Write for the New Age Market), but by this point I’m so unimpressed with the author that I don’t feel that this is a partnership at all; I feel like we’ve been doing most of the work. I know that there are authors out there who hand in substandard work and expect the editing team to polish it for them, and I find this attitude intolerable. I can’t know this author’s attitude throughout this process, but the lack of response to the first set of requests for rewrites, and this previously published material issue don’t do much for my confidence in him. A reader wants to trust the author. The editor helps that happen by making the material as accessible and as interesting as possible. Technically our goal is the same: to create a strong, positive product. So why do I feel so let down?

Everyone slips from time to time. This author claims that the material was a placeholder, that he meant to pull it out and rewrite it, and forgot, and he’s terribly embarrassed. Every single author I know is busy and overloaded with work of various sorts. There are authors out there who write books to pay the bills. This author had two projects that overlapped, and identical material ended up in both. I just happened to browse through the one that got published first. Whatever. His story might be true, it might not. It’s just further proof to me that he doesn’t really care about his readers. It also suggests that he doesn’t respect his subject, either, which as a reader upsets me.

I keep trying to like humanity, I really do. And then something like this happens, and I get all dejected and wonder if anyone’s honest at all.

It seems to be sunny today. I might wander downtown to clear my brain.

Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most

(t! would be proud of this post title. It’s the name of a song.)

I’ve been all over the place this week. From the heights of confidence to the depths of despair, from anxiety attacks to listless not-caring, I’ve seen it all. And it’s only Thursday morning.

While I made dinner and he washed the dishes, I asked HRH if he thought it was my body reacting to a reduction in the dosage of medication I’ve been on for a while and thus I was overreacting (let’s hear it for hormones!), or if things were understandably wonky in my life. He pointed out that while the medication adjustment probably wasn’t helping, not only was I writing a book to deadline for the first time ever, I was teaching, preparing for a concert in two weeks, dealing with the Zombie Manuscript from Hell (now with Shifty Author!), suffering from a lack of sunlight, and had struggled through three colds in succession. He’s also of the opinion that losing my computer has thrown me harder than I think it has. (This is probably true, although it’s oddly liberating at the same time. Of course, I’ve lost all record of log-in info for my website, but that can be remedied by contacting my host and telling them that I’m an idiot and forgot to write things down.)

You know what’s really gnawing at me about the Zombie Manuscript From Hell? The fact that I’d finally reached a point where I was confident about it. I was happy with it, proud to have my name on it as editor. I was confident that it was a solid, saleable product with excellent information delivered in a sophisticated and accessible fashion to the intermediate practitioner.

Of course the info is good. The author had already published it elsewhere.

Argh.

I have no idea where this leaves us. This was supposed to be the lead title to launch the series. Part of me wants to punish the incredible dishonesty of the author by canceling the book. We’ve put so much time, money, and work into it, though, that we can’t. Think of all the rewrites, repeated edits, more rewrites we’ve done. Another option is to do an emergency rewrite on the pages and pages of plagiarized information. I certainly wouldn’t trust the author to do it, so I would likely do it instead, which puts the screws on my own book written for my own deadline.

I shouldn’t worry about this until I’ve heard what the company’s legal recommendation is. I’m creating more stress, which I really don’t need.

My contracts, which were mailed out April 14 but still hadn’t arrived as of yesterday, apparently ended up Returned to Sender because of a mistype on the address label, so they’re being mailed back to me today (and yes, the address has been corrected). It’s frustrating, because half my fee is disbursed upon signing. That means when they get the signed contract back, it goes into the 4-6 week bureaucratic process before the cheque is issued and mailed to me. It’s now delayed by an extra three weeks, which means I’ll get it mid- to late June. Then the bank will hang onto it for a month, which means I’ll finally have that money mid- to late July. The second half of my fee is issued upon delivery of the manuscript, which is due July 1. When you do the math, that means I’ll be handing the dratted thing in before I see a penny. Mind you, it also means that I’ll have the second cheque finally landing in my account mid- to late August, which is nice to count on. And sometime between now and midsummer I’ll see my editor’s fee for the second book, and the first book (if it gets published).

On top of it all, I’m restless, but I don’t want to go out. Just call me an enigma.

Orchestral Confessions

It appears that I only hate Strauss when I can’t play it. Once I’m comfortable with a Strauss piece, and I can settle into the rhythm of it, it’s actually fun to play. The only problem with it now is holding the celli back – we keep wanting to spin the waltz faster to keep it moving!

I’m also guilty of being very pleased that the incredibly disturbing individual who sits behind me hasn’t been to rehearsal in two weeks. It upsets me that he affects my enjoyment of playing with the orchestra so much. He’s a bit hyper, and he can’t stop talking; he also plays too loud. Three rehearsals ago he drove me right to the edge, forcing me to grit my teeth through the first half. I couldn’t hear anything but his voice and his mishandling of the rhythm and dynamics. When Douglas called break, his cello was down and he was out like a shot for his cigarette. My old stand partner turned around and smiled at me, asked me how I was, and I did something I rarely do with acquaintances: I said, “If he doesn’t stop talking, I’m going to kill him. I’m going to turn around and plunge my bow right into his chest.”

“Qu’est-ce-qu’elle a dit?” our principal cellist asked. My stand partner relayed the information, laughing, and the principal turned around to look at me and say with all sincerity, “And I will sharpen your bow.”

It wasn’t nice, but it felt good to know that others were just as fed up as I was.

Now, I know that words have power. They hurt, or they heal. Sometimes, though, words have to come out so that they stop hurting you. And yes, he hasn’t been at rehearsal for the past two weeks now. No one has said anything, but I know that we’re all relieved. And the dynamics are better, both musically and otherwise.

To All Aspiring Authors:

When an editor asks you for a more sophisticated tone, simply using more ten- and fifteen-cents words instead of perfectly good five-cent words will not achieve this for you. “Utilise” instead of “use,” “perceive” instead of “see,” and “ponder” instead of “think about” merely clutters up the prose for the reader. Get to the point. A thesaurus is a useful tool for a writer at times, yes; however, your reader shouldn’t have to use one to get through your book. Sophistication arises from how you approach the subject, not the words you use to discuss it.

Thanks.

An Exercise in Frustration, Starring the Bank

As I’m a consultant for an American publisher, I naturally get paid in cheques drawn on an American bank. I must present these in person in order to deposit them. Today I went to my local branch to deposit the hefty cheque retaining my services as imprint specialist for one year.

I was told they had to hold the cheque for twenty-five business days.

That’s five weeks.

When I dared to ask why, and told them I’d had no problem depositing the last cheque from this particular company four months ago, I was informed that perhaps my branch would let the cheque through, since they knew me personally, but this branch could not help me.

So off to the West Island I travelled, and learned that the cheque has to be frozen for five weeks for three reasons:

(1) The bank currently has no employment record for me on file.
(2) It’s a US cheque.
(3) My current financial profile flags a transaction like this as dangerous.

Of course the bank has no employment record on file — I’ve been freelancing for the past two years. The teller was much more helpful than the last one; she helped me make an appointment for a financial review to upgrade my bank privileges, processed the cheque, froze the majority of it but left five hundred dollars clear so I’d at least have some money available, and explained that the successful deposit of the last US cheque was a fluke that should have flagged the system as well.

I’m a bit grumbly, as it’s taken six weeks for this cheque to get to me from the moment it was printed, and now it will take another five weeks before I can actually officially have the money. I understand that the bank has safety precautions, but still, it grates that I pay them for inconveniences like this. Sometimes I really think that keeping my money in an old sock where I can get my hands on it when I need it, and no one can charge me for the privilege of using my fortune for their own investment, is the solution.

Grr

Any time Philip Heselton’s Wiccan Roots wants to stop quoting and re-hashing Jack Bracelin’s 1960 bio of Gerald Gardner, it can go right ahead. I’d rather read something original than a secondary text. Heselton acknowledges in his foreword that Bracelin’s book is a key text and that he quotes frequently, but really, the first two chapters do nothing to advance the scholarship of the field. So far the analysis is weak and pointless, and it’s just a string of quotes from other books.

This book is supposed to be ground-breaking. I keep waiting for the ground-breaking part. I may only have finished two chapters, but readers are gained are lost through a first chapter alone.