Today’s word count: 2,472
Total word count: 13,516
Evidently I had a lot to say about the topic of ethics. This was a terrific day, and I’m not even counting the bibliography listings I added (which would have bumped me over the 2.5K mark, but which would have been ethically questionable).
It’s hard to believe that I’m just over one-sixth done.
Well, that helps the mind-mess; turns out that there was a miscommunication within my writing group, and things have been set back to Thursday.
Until next week, that is, when Wednesday becomes our new meeting day. Sigh.
I’m all messed up week-wise. All morning I’ve been thinking it’s Wednesday, because I went into the bookstore yesterday instead of today on Tuesday, my usual day. However, the writing jam has been switched from Thursday to Tuesday (possibly temporarily due to yet more schedule changes), which is today – or so my calendar tells me. My brain is struggling to maintain the Wednesday-day-after-work truth simultaneously with the Thursday-writing-jam-day truth, along with the Tuesday-according-to-the-calendar truth. It’s very sad, but I think I’m getting a headache from trying to figure out what day it is.
The solution is probably to stop thinking altogether and go check on the laundry.
I really, really ought to remember to open the windows in here more often. I discovered a warm, fresh-smelling world when I went out to pick up laundry detergent at the corner. Now that they’re open, the place feels more awake and relaxed. And the entire caboodle of kittens are now squished into the open windows, pressing as close to the fascinating new smells of the Great Outdoors as they possibly can.
I’m not a big quiz person, but when I saw this on Sapph’s LJ I just had to find out.
No surprise to anyone who knows my writing or my reading tastes, I’m sure. It amused me.
Welcome to the grand unveiling of the official Owls’ Court banner!
Many thanks and effusive compliments go to my big brother and talented artist Talyesin, the professional who constructed this work of art for me and all the little owls. They are quite chuffed, and keep loading the page to see the images of themselves appear.
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.
