What Ghostwriting Is

Happy Leap Day! If it's an extra day, why is it called "Friday" this year?

Like most people, I used to think ghostwriting was limited to anonymous authoring of someone else's book. Not true! Ghostwriting is a special condition of writing involving partial or no author credit for the writer. Any kind of writing. It can take place with the writer as an employee, under a work for hire agreement, as a freelance and with or without a contract.

More is at stake, however than just the credit of authorship. Other considerations, as attorney Ivan Hoffman points out, are rights retained and other payments like residuals (royalties in the case of a traditionally published sold book.) I disagree with Hoffman's assessment that negotiations and contracting may be limited to two or three parties (plus attorneys), because an agent may also fingerprint the procedures.

Just getting to the ghosting may involve many hurdles. A recent potential client insisted that I physically sign an extremely tight nondisclosure agreement simply to provide a free sample of my editing skills. You'll note that I am not identifying the client even by gender. That's how tight!

What else besides a book might be ghosted? Executive profiles, puff pieces placed in trade or association publications, web page content, blog posts, and serial formulaic fiction like mysteries, romances and westerns that come out under a publisher's pseudonym but written by many authors.

For years the acknowledged queen resource has been Eva Shaw's Ghostwriting: For Fun & Profit (Writeriffic Writer's), originally published in 1991 as Ghostwriting: How to get into the Business. Either title can help you deal with a ghostwriter or become one.

Defeat Content Thieves

Sigh! I'd hoped the "plagiarism"/copy stealing might be over for a while, but when I happened into the Technorati listings for this blog, I found my post on searching yourself partially scraped (probably from the RSS feed) and posted at an ambiguous site aptly named "spiderspro.com". A spider is an automated computer program that crawls around web pages, seeking whom it can devour.

This blog-style website is new and maybe thrown together by an amateur. Its illogical blogroll leads to an endless train of identical blogs that lead to the same. Maybe the whole thing is automated. Anyhoo, it reminded me of this super article sent in from the folks at Virtual Hosting: Take it Back! 100 Tips to Defeat Content Thieves. Especially important is the section on what to do once you've found the jerks stealing your stuff "Going in for the kill".

I'll also be perusing the white paper for leads on preventing Google and Yahoo's image searchers from accessing the graphics on my website. I'm tired of seeing all the top hits being people looking to swipe others' art. I'd rather know what writing topics people are searching for when they come to A Writer's Edge. That way, I can better serve readers' needs.

Search Yourself and Career

You probably already know that it's a good idea to Google yourself (in the privacy of your own home, of course). Also Google your blog or website's name and URL, and any other word or phrase with which you might be identified on the Internet. Don't limit this activity to just the most popular search engine. Sometimes surprises pop up on Yahoo! or Ask.com and even MSN's Live Search. For example, last night I was checking some links on my info page, and discovered a new reference to an organization I'd forgotten I was once part of. The name under which most of my print credits appear shows up on the new page at least twice.

Why do I care? It's not that I'm so narcissistic that I drool over seeing my name (current or former) in print on the web or anywhere. I overcame that character flaw a long time ago, when attention shifted to seeing my name on checks. The point of regularly searching the web for information about yourself and your work is three-fold:

• to ensure that the data are accurate
• to see how much someone else can find out about you
• the references found also might come in handy some day when you're selling yourself or your services. I use such a list as a means to verify my identity as well as some of my career credits.

Some of the newer automated searchers can display garbled and misleading snippets retrieved from limited sources. I found one of those last night, too. I was thankful the website provides a method to register and correct mistakes in what is displayed. And another showed an inactive email address. I had to jump through a few hoops to get that changed, and I'm grateful for the difficulty that prevents someone else from changing the data about me.

Master English Words - VOA

When I was growing up in southwestern Ohio, way out in the country near a tiny town called Mason, a field of very tall radio towers reached toward the clouds. From far enough away, on a clear day, a viewer could see the towers were topped by large antennas. A little sign, I think, indicated they were broadcasting Voice of America programs. We were going to talk the mean Russians into submission. (It was the Cold War era.)


Eventually I learned what the Voice of America did and then thought little about the activity until I discovered the digital version, VOA News.com. Better yet, the service provides a Wordmaster section subtitled "A Weekly Analysis of American English". It features grammar, idioms, slang, regional English, topical issues and an archive of articles/programs. What a wonderful resource for American writers, as well as its intended audience overseas. And it is a virtual wellspring of more resources. Peruse the list of programs, and you'll see what I mean.

Help Your Writer's Block Yourself

Many people feel stymied when they try to write and no one cares about their efforts or productions. The flow slows and eventually stops at the beginning of a Writer's Block. Beginning writers are especially prone to this, partly because they lack experience and partly because they haven't developed a tough skin for protection. Writers farther along in their careers recognize these feelings as part of the writing life. Missing enthusiasm from others can feel like rejection. Personal rejection.

If you're feeling so alone and unappreciated in your endeavors, stop and think about the ways in which you ARE receiving help in your whole life. Having even some of your physical and psychological needs met (emotional and mental) holds you up to be able to write. Perhaps you have spiritual ties that comfort and aid your living. That's another form of help. Participating in a writing group, even if no one is particularly wild about your writing, is still a source of assistance.

But wait! There's more: how about relying less on others? If you take an inventory of resources to help your writing life and find something lacking, step up and reach out for what you need. It is up to you to get your needs met in this life. I always think of baby birds that do nothing but poop up the nest and open their mouths to have food stuffed down their gullets. Then suddenly they are kicked out and must fly! Don't be a baby bird and expect Life to provide everything. Help yourself.

eBook Reader Review

Much of the buzz about reading books revolves these days around "readers", the electronic devices that can store books available in an electronic format. Readers, of course, want to know about them (and argue). Writers want to know if: they should be considering releasing their books in an electronic format, what about the rights, how must should one cost? And publishers want to know if people will buy these products (reading devices and ebooks). Visionaries are all over the spectrum as to whether or not ebooks and readers will replace tree books. Some of us see a place for both in the future. The trick is to make both forms economically attractive. I've asked Sam Warren, owner of San Diego WriteWay to comment on his experiences with a reader:

I love my eBook Reader

This editor recently bought an eBookwise Reader on the Internet for $120 and fell in love with it. Previously, I was too busy to read for recreation. Now I read at the bus stop, coffeehouses, doctor's offices, etc. There are better ones such as a Palm Pilot PDF, Amazon Kindle, Sony & Borders, iPod, and various cell phones. But they cost a lot more, and I am perfectly happy with my simple eBookwise Reader. In addition to all the best sellers, there are the thousand of free out of copyright ebooks, ebooks of the classics.

Self-publishing guru Dan Poynter told me that he reads ebooks on his PDF while flying from one speaking engagement to another. Many Luddites knock them, saying that they prefer the feel of a real book; but then, they haven't tried the convenience of having multiple books and a dictionary at their finger tips, plus the easy-to-read backlight and the adjustable font size.

— Sam Warren

Read more on Sam's page about ebooks.

Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure for Writers

Back to cats 'n' writers for this Silly Saturday post. Direct from the Prank Place, I bring you the latest Weird Action Figure: Crazy Cat Lady! She'll fit so well with our Jane Austen action figure, up there on the bookshelf. Just think, even if you can't afford to feed seven pussies like this cat lady counts among her chums, you can play like you do. I'm especially drawn by the fact that she's holding a Siamese, my breed of choice and the fact that she's also a member of the pajamas media.

Book Publishing Business

Anyone who hopes to have a book published, and everyone who considers self-publishing, will benefit by reading Rachael Donadio's essay on the NY Times website, Why Does It Still Take So Long to Publish a Book? Although she writes extensively about pre-pub marketing strategies, another take-away point is this:

As soon as a literary agent has sold a publisher a book, and even before it’s edited, copy-edited, proofread and indexed, the publicity wheels start turning.

Notice all the editorial steps that take time to accomplish. One would hope that the book had already been edited before it was submitted to an agent, and sometimes agents suggest rewrites (requiring another edit).

All this gate-keeping scrutiny of traditional publishing, that self-published books seldom receive, contributes to the negative impression about and discrimination against reviewing self-publishers.

Now go back and study the marketing description Donadio provides. Could you possibly do all that as an individual? Did you know of these strategies necessary for a published book to become even a mild success? Those who think that self-publishing is a fine alternative because it is faster and cheaper are short-changing themselves and their customers. And I haven't mentioned product quality, fodder for another post.

Get Editing Help

If you have skipped through the main pages of this website, you may have noticed that they are all now in an expanded format that matches the blog page's layout. In the process, I rewrote the copy for Editing Services and, to a lesser degree, Writing Services. Some may complain that the description of editing help offered is more vague than before, and that the prices have disappeared. That's because each client has individual needs, and a category of help does not fit all cases. For example, editing actually varies on a continuum from tinkering with a few words here and there through rewriting wide swaths or all of a work to full- on researching and writing the whole shebang for someone else to claim as their own (ghostwriting).

Individuals have differing ideas of what "editing" should cover. That's why I no longer offer fixed prices or a set service, but list examples. Some people want more and some want less. I'm currently working with a new author, readying a nonfiction book manuscript to send to the publisher. What I'm doing is more than proofreading, but less than what the client considers editing. An editor at the publisher will handle copy editing anyway.

The best way to get an estimate of the cost for editorial help of any kind is to provide an editor with a portion of your copy or manuscript and an idea of the work you want done. Sometimes the editor spots difficulties with the writing that the writer missed. A good editor will suggest how she can improve the work on the basis of a sample submitted. She won't "steal" your idea or your words (a common worry for beginners). Some jobs are more reasonably paid by the word, and some by the hour. It all depends on the type and amount of work performed.

RTIR: Radio-TV Inteview Report

If you're looking for a guest or a guest spot in the media, first look at RTIR: Radio-TV Interview Report. It's a magazine, newsletter, website and blog, altogether a potent PR pack with lists of guests available by state and subject, and an archive of its magazine.

Say you have a book, a project, a reform movement, or (dare I say it?) a political candidate to support. Announce interview availability in RTIR which "4,000 producers read to find interesting guests." Writers are always asking, "How can I get on Oprah?" Here's one easy answer. Sign up for free information about the service.

Book Editor Departs

Last night at the local guild meeting, the book editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Arthur Salm, announced he is becoming a reporter for the paper's Metro section. He didn't know what will happen to the books "pages", recently reduced from a pull-out section to two pages inside Arts and Entertainment.

Salm discussed what book reviews are and aren't, gave an overview of his incredibly tedious and boring-sounding job, predicted that Internet news content providers will start charging and bookstores will use POD. He seemed intent on impressing us with the abrupt rise to his current editorial position based on his apparently innate writing skills. He stressed:

• his B.A. in an unrelated field
• lack of any writing courses
• background as a bus driver
  
• experience as an unpaid movie critic on radio

His single editing credential consisted of proofreading copyright lines on reprints for a local academic press. Otherwise, he shuffled papers for that publisher, then skated into the job at the paper.

I don't know what to make of this, except to admit that I never took any journalism classes, either, although I had every creative writing class Northwestern offered. Otherwise, I have a prediction: the books editor position at the paper may not be filled, in keeping with the declining size and quality of the medium. I suspect that's been the plan for a long time.

Goodbye, Arthur. We wish you well.

Correct Pronouns Make Wise Writing

Walking home from school, children pass within ten feet of my open windows. How many times do I hear "Charlie and me got extra homework," or "Her and I hit the food court"? The problem is that American children are obviously not being taught when to use which form of pronouns. Even the adults admit to confusion about "who" and "whom", some advocating that we just do away with the objective version (whom). Here's a little list to clarify what I'm talking about: SUBJECTIVE PRONOUNS are I, he, she, they and who; OBJECTIVE PRONOUNS are me, him, her, them, and whom.

If you know how to diagram a sentence (or is that a lost art?), you can determine if the word form required is subjective or objective. A quick way to tell is to put the word in question after a preposition such as "to", "from", "by" or "with". Turn the sentence around, e.g., "The teacher burdened Charlie and me with extra homework!" or "The food court was invaded by her and me." Passive sentence, not so good, but I think you see what I mean. The prepositions call for an object (me, her, him, them, whom). The first versions needed subjective pronouns.

The dreaded "who" and "whom" follow the same rules. But this is where people develop a problem that Jack Lynch of Rutgers University calls "hypercorrection" and wind up sounding pretentious:

Hypercorrection is not simply being fussy or a nitpicker or a pedant. The 'hyper' part, from Greek, means 'too much.' It means working so hard to avoid one potential problem that you end up falling into another one.

The cure he suggests is to substitute one of the other pronouns and find which form sounds right. Imagine Jeeves announcing a visitor, whom he first asks, "Whom shall I say is calling?" If Jeeves had tried out "her is calling", he'd immediately know (if he memorized the chart) that the right way is to inquire, "Who shall I say is calling?" "Who" is the subject of the sentence.

Undermine a Writer's Block

All the many factors that individually or in any combination unite to cause a temporary disruption in your creativity (Writer's Block) rest on the same substrata: living beings are attracted by pleasure and avoid pain. Blocks protect you from possibly hurting yourself. One small success (finishing an article or The Book, submitting a manuscript, querying an agent) might lead to subsequent agony (failure, rejection, more hard work).

Eureka!

Now here's something you can grapple with, rather than founder on the hidden shoals of protective devices of your own making. Even better, you don't need to go into psychoanalysis to discover exactly what kind of annoyance or suffering you're avoiding. Acknowledging and addressing this sub-basement of anti-creative monsters will be effective against any and all of them. It's not the old "Name it and Claim it!" You don't have to identify whether you really fear success, rejection (who doesn't?), coming up dry, or public speaking.

Realize that what's happening, in reality, is a basic, nonverbal human reaction to potential danger--fight or flight. You are fighting your urges to write and running from the pitfalls such activity. You are actually loving yourself as a living being. That's nice. It's good. If you are risking large failure left and right, we'd worry about you! What to do to undermine Writer's Blocks:

• recognize your humanity
• permit the self-care
• be grateful for it
• accept that some pain is inevitable
• know it won't come all at once
• realize you can cope

Writers' Punctuation Marks

Your life is fast paced and varied. You are realistic, down to earth, and very honest. You're often busy doing something interesting, and what you do changes quickly.

You have many facets to your personality, and you connect them together well. You have a ton of interests. While some of them are a bit offbeat, they all tie together well.

You friends rely on you to bring novelty and excitement to their lives. (And while you're the most interesting person they know, they can't help feeling like they don't know you well.)

You excel in: Anything to do with money

You get along best with: the Exclamation Point

You Are a Dash

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Book Store Turns Classroom

Apparently in an attempt to attract readers and potential customers, the Borders big box chain of book stores is experimenting by offering free classes, The Sacramento Bee announced. The Borders Live Classes pilot program includes a variety of topics. Here's hoping it's a success, and that they include more classes in tune with books, writing and writers, all over the country.

Owed to Readers

$100,000 for Poetry

The New York Times announced this morning that Brooklyn poet Tom Sleigh won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his seventh poetry collection Space Walk, published last year by Houghton Mifflin. Sleigh is a creative writing teacher at Hunter College. The award is administered by Claremont Graduate University in California. It was established in 1992 in honor of the poet Kingsley Tufts.

Web 2.0 Unravels for Writers

Somewhat amusing to me was the Business Week article Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up because the local chapter of American Pen Women just asked me to talk with them about using such social nets, as well as websites, to promote members' work.

The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months ... MySpace, the largest social network, has slipped from a peak of 72 million users in October to 68.9 million in December.... The total number of people on such sites is still increasing at an 11.5% rate, but that's down sharply from past growth rates. "What you have with social networks is the most overhyped scenario in online advertising," says Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, which places ads for customers on a variety of Web sites.

I had always had the impression that the Web 2.0 is a phenomenon for people in their teens to about 35. While many of my clients fit into that demographic, an equal number are seniors, too. The youth factor is what I found participating in Google's version of social networking, Orkut. I think I'll explain to the ladies of the pen that unless they write for the YA (Young Adult) category, they may be wasting their time and efforts with social networks. Better to focus on a website and real networking.

Writing Illustrated, No Borders

Time to give it up again for comic relief. I'm referring, of course, to graphic novels, which are featured in a second part in this month's Words Without Borders, which says:

This month we spotlight graphic novelists of five continents. From childhoods spent in sundrenched Gabon and bombed-out Beirut, to road trips launched with levity and driven by despair, these international artist-writers lay out character and plot with all sorts of lines. Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian, fresh from their Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, join Cho Pyŏng Kwŏn, Magdy El Shafee, Alberto Fuguet & Gonzalo Martinez, Mazen Kerbaj, Liniers, and Pahé in matching word and image to dazzling narrative effect. Meanwhile, artist and writer Carmen Boullosa frames the Taller de la Gráfica Popular, siblings of the Mexican Muralists, in the context of the current generation; and interviewer Nicole Rudick draws out the real life in Gipi’s art. We hope you’ll enjoy these international scenes.

Squeeze Copyright to Stifle Creativity

The Harry Potter brouhaha playing out in British courts threatens the "fair use" provision of copyright law, or so says New York Times business columnist, Joe Nocera, in A Tight Grip Can Choke Creativity. In a tight nutshell, the case involves a website publisher who announced he was about to present a companion book (long a standard practice in the fiction world) for profit. The problem? The product for sale was to be a portion of the Harry Potter Lexicon, also very much for the profit of the publisher. Nocera claims the "fair use" portion of copyright law, "allows anyone to create something new based on someone else’s art."

Perhaps J. K. Rowling and the handlers of her empire don't think an encyclopedia of Harry Potter terminology is something new. After all, it was Rowling who created the Harry Potter world and everything therein. Nocera implies Rowling is suing because no one asked her permission (read: paid for a license or franchise) to produce this new book.


Really, how creative is it to list words and their uses in someone else's novel? Sounds more like a specialized form of editing to me, like indexing or preparing a glossary for a manuscript. Not exactly original work. Certainly nothing new. The information in the website itself comes from established sources.

I realize I'm arguing against my own forté, nonfiction. But I'm thinking like a fiction writer of a successful enterprise, wanting to keep creative control, as they say in the movie biz.

Is Sans Serif Easier to Read?

I've had to tinker with the template for this blog to get it to display correctly in Internet Explorer (thanks to Barbara Bingham!). While I was changing the code, I thought I'd try out using the Verdana font. This one is sans serif (without the little curly cues you see on Times New Roman. See? What do you think? Easier? Uglier?

This is written in Verdana, a sans serif font

This is written in Times New Roman, font

Who Ordered a Word Conspiracy?

Ah, the British do love their language. So much so that WordCount.org measures the 86,000 English words most often used. As if that's not enough, then they keep track of the rankings of words asked about. For example, I queried the status of "silly". It just seemed so appropriate. At that moment, "silly" ranked 452, right before "today", "aardvark" and "religion". Other people have noticed interesting word sequences in the QueryCount. So many, that in the interest of conspiracy theorists everywhere, see WordCount Conspiracy. How about this one:

1443-1445 conservative reduce vote

SFWC Keynotes Open to Public

The public can hear talks by Clive Cussler, the 'Grandmaster of Adventure'; Tess Gerritsen, best-selling author of The Bone Garden; Daisy Maryles, Executive Editor, Publishers Weekly; Kevin Smokler, Bookmark Now! Writing in Unreaderly Times; and April Sinclair, Coffee Will Make You Black ? -- without registering for The 2008 San Francisco Writers Conference, February 15-17. Each keynote session is $10.

More Widgets for Writers

About a month has passed since Liz Cohen wrote to tell me about the Answers.com Widget Gallery. Although I almost immediately adopted the Word of the Day widget for this remodeled site, time to blog about the new gizzies escaped me. I love that they are customizable for a wide variety of platforms. That saves tinkering time and is mandatory for people who don't know how to modify HTML or XML code. The widgets available include two feeds from WikiAnswersTM, Answer Boxes and Tips, and four "of the day" services: word, birthdays, quote and history. Beaucoup info is available describing and illustrating each device and its installation.


As long as we're on widgets today--Amazon Widgets now have more features such as the option to shuffle products each time they're displayed, forcing a default term in the Search widget, and the ability to designate custom identification numbers for each widget. Amazon has also made it easier to get rid of unused widgets on your My Widgets page. You can learn more about them at Amazon. I'd love to be able to use these inside posts. Maybe I'll widgetize my Wishlist.

Kick Off Writer's Block

Do you hear voices? Or do you think someone from the past may be sabotaging your work? Many people stumble onto such a situation when they are in counseling for other psychological issues. Critical voices from our childhood echo down the years to hold us back. I'm thankful that we can combat this experience.

Here's a helpful method that I learned long ago from the women's empowerment movement: we all have "boards of directors" in our heads. They tell us what we "should" do, what's right and wrong (you may think of this as a conscience but it is even more powerful than that). If you think back to your childhood and remember the people who influenced you the most, you'll usually find those people on your board of directors. Now, think about who is holding you back. Who gives you those negative messages that keep you down, make you feel "less than"?

Once you've figured out who are your anchors kick those people off your board, and (here's the key to improvement) add some positive role models, people who support you. These substitutes don't have to be from the past, either. When I was in my 30s I met a wonderful writer who became my standard for all behavior. Whenever I was in doubt, I'd ask myself, "What would Anne do?"

Anyway, the idea is to evict the board members with the negatively critical voices. You may have to do this exercise repeatedly over a period of time to get them all out and make sure they don't come creeping back. Don't feel bad about doing it--the real people will never know!

Celebrate Granta Magazine of New Writing

Another innocuous-appearing brown mailer lay in my back yard. "What book have I agreed to review now?" I wondered. Out slid what looks like a trade paperback and a thick one at that. But wait, Granta is a magazine, bearing an ISSN, interesting advertising and all. But wait again! There's that new book fragrance ... what kind of ink do they use in the UK? Sniff, sniff ... mmm ...

The book, er, magazine is a special 100th anniversary issue. Special it is, from the David Hockney front cover to all 152 pages crammed with new pieces by the likes of:

Julian Barnes
Salman Rushdie
Isabel Allende
Martin Amis
Ian McEwan
Harold Pinter
Zadie Smith

I'm going to be dipping into this box of literary chocolates for a long time. Granta subscriptions are available through Amazon.