anEditorsBlog

An interesting article appeared just this morning in The Economic Times—interesting and particularly appropriate for the primary election season that is evolving here in the States, as well as for writers. In the article, “Google, Wikipedia are white bread for young minds,” the author raises attention to a trend that is also increasingly appearing in the business of editing: “Google offers easy answers to difficult questions. But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious, refereed work or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and fleeting commitments.”

The quote comes from Tara Brabazon, a professor of eighteen years at the University of Brighton. While not slamming Google or Wikipedia, she does draw attention to a trend of individuals taking everything they read at face value, without questioning or performing additional research to justify accuracy or authenticity. She also addresses the additional concern that easy access to information has dulled our senses of curiosity; but that’s another story for another day.

So, how does this trend relate to the primary season? Well, just in the past few days, I’ve received forwarded e-mails and spam that are total fabrications and intentional lies that question the background and integrity of specific candidates—and the messages are perfect examples of the problems with poor research. Their content is created and circulated to mislead readers and fuel the rumor mills that surround candidates. One of the e-mails went so far as to cite Snopes.com (an urban legends and rumor mill investigation Web site) in support of its claim; however, if a reader had taken the time to check even that one reference, he or she would have discovered that Snopes says the exact opposite. Further investigation would have revealed the true facts at other Web sites. But, why bother to do that extra work? The information is on the Internet, so it must be true, right? In that case, let’s forward it to another round of readers!

Moving on, then, how does the trend relate to the business of editing? Well, because authors are growing increasingly lethargic in checking their facts, as evidenced above. Granted, it is the job of an editor to fact-check and verify information; but if a story line is rooted in bad research, I can’t do much to help. It’s back to the drawing board for you.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a staunch supporter of Wikipedia. And, I probably use DogPile and the Internet to research more than the average person. But, over the years, I’ve grown accustomed to questioning practically any source of information. Even in the print world, an author has the right to insert his or her own interpretation of the facts, and any process allows the possibility of a mistake being introduced—so any information has the potential to be “tainted” or wrong and should be verified in additional sources. (Yes, even Britannica online or the Oxford resources!)

Which brings us back to Professor Brabazon’s suggestion that no source or resource should be taken at face value. The lesson is to reference Wikipedia and google (or Dogpile) Web sites to your heart’s content; but, verify the facts and make sure you’ve done your homework before you cite anything as gospel truth.

Thank you; the soapbox is closed for the day!

I’ve missed you! The months of May, June, July, and now almost half of August have slipped by without any new posts. I would apologize, but the business world is full of apologies and you just don’t need to hear another one! The truth is that I’ve been busy with several big projects that have not allowed me to take time for this blog.

First of all, the design and SEO company that I hired shortly after New Years Day finished with the third-generation of my primary Web site, www.the-freelance-editor.com. They are still working on the revised search engine optimization part of the site, but I took several days in May and June to replace the older headers and tags that the designers removed. The old ones had been doing a pretty good job, anyway, and they matched the existing text (the revisions will likely require some rewriting of text on the site—a project I don’t have time for in the foreseeable future). Please take a few minutes to visit and let me know how you like the new look.

While working on that site in May and June, I was offered a banner advertisement on the American Association of Museums (AAM) Web site. The offer was too good to refuse, so I worked for another several days rebuilding the old museum division site so the ad would have something attractive to link to. If you want to view the ad, visit the AAM site and click on “Museum Marketplace” then do a search (the bargain rate was for the third tier down), say for “editorial services,” and then refresh the site until my ad comes up. When you click on the ad, you should link to www.anEditorForMuseums.com. I’m rather fond of the result—both the ad and the Web site!

Also in June, I began serving as group leader for the local Orlando Area Writers Group of the Florida Writers Association. That transition involved setting up a new e-mailing system with a WordPress blog and FeedBlitz, as well as the need for me to meet local writers and prospects for speakers. You may not think that sounds like too much work, but most of my clients and contacts are scattered elsewhere in the United States and around the globe! I haven’t ever concentrated on soliciting local jobs.

In early July, I was notified that the pictorial history of Orlando (for which I signed on as ghostwriter but ended up as author and local project manager) had finally been published. Orlando Then and Now was released by Thunder Bay Books at the end of July, resulting in a few book signing sessions and several e-mails from current and former residents—pretty good publicity. (Though I don’t get any royalties, so don’t rush out to buy it!)

Finally, for much of July and August, I’ve been working on opening a new division of the-freelance-editor as well as an entirely new company—which I’m not at liberty to announce yet.

So, you see, I haven’t just disappeared, even if this blog site did a convincing job of relaying that message. All I can say is that I’ll try to do better . . . at least by September.

The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) recently announced the short lists of contenders for both its prestigious literary awards: the Carnegie Medal and the Kate Greenaway Medal. The final selections will be announced in a ceremony at the British Library in London on June 21, 2007.

The Carnegie Medal, which is celebrating its seventieth anniversary this year, is awarded to recognize the UK’s best writing for children and young adult readers. While the award provides no cash prize, the Carnegie Award is the most sought-after honor for authors published in the UK. Titles are nominated at large by professional librarians throughout the UK; the finalist is then determined by a panel of librarians from both public and school libraries. This year’s short list consists of six titles:

• The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks
• A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd
• The Road of Bones by Anne Fine
• Beast by Ally Kennen
• Just In Case by Meg Rosoff
• My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick

The Kate Greenaway Medal is also celebrating a milestone this year: its fiftieth anniversary. The Kate Greenaway Medal is awarded for “outstanding illustration in a children’s book.” Winners also receive a cash prize presented as the Colin Mears Award. This year’s short list also contains six titles:

• The Elephantom by Ross Collins
• Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett
• The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon by Mini Grey
• Scoop! An Exclusive by Monty Molenski by John Kelly and Cathy Tincknell
• Augustus and His Smile by Catherine Rayner
• The Emperor of Absurdia by Chris Riddell

In honor of the two anniversaries this year, two special contests are being held: one to choose the “Carnegie of Carnegies” and another to select the “Greenaway of Greenaways.” In each case, ten titles have been chosen from among all previous winners—the so-called best UK books of modern times! The public is encouraged to reread their favorites and vote from those lists by noon on June 14. Results will be announced the next week at the main ceremonies.

I have never watched the new series Are you smarter than a 5th grader? but I understand it’s turned out to be quite a popular hit. For fun, the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, CA (east of San Francisco and Berkeley), recently asked two fifth-grade teachers to come up with a quiz for its readers. Their fifteen questions are not difficult, but—well, that was a few years ago! See for yourself, and take the quiz (don’t look at the answers accidentally—they are at the bottom of the page). The questions came from the regular curriculum, and the teachers revealed that a score of ten would earn a gold star. I’ll confess to earning only nine!

I’ve always liked silver better, anyway . . .

Granta magazine has just published its second Best of Young American Novelists list. The first list in 1996 helped launch the careers of Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections), Chris Offutt (The Good Brother and a variety of Kentucky-oriented memoirs), Stewart O’Nan (Snow Angels and A World Away), David Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars and East of the Mountains), Mona Simpson (Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, and A Regular Guy), Melanie Rae Thon (Meteors in August, Sweet Hearts, and Iona Moon), Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Reservation Blues, Indian Killer, and a forthcoming young adult novel—The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian), Allen Kurzweil (A Case of Curiosities, A Grand Complication, and the “Leon” series of children’s books), Edwidge Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory and The Farming of Bones), and Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides). The new list contains the names of another crop of rising authors (under the age of 35), who were culled from nearly two hundred original submissions.

An interesting description of the judging process is available as part of the introduction to the list (at the above link), but an interview on NPR with Granta editor Ian Jack and Paul Yamazaki of City Lights Books in San Francisco also shares some information about how the twenty-one authors were chosen. Judging criteria included the basic evaluations of story and language but also some author talents: the ability to persuade readers that the novel’s world is “believable,” the ability to interpret existing information in a new way or to teach new ideas, and the ability to enable readers to experience pleasure as they read.

Begun in 1889 as the as the student literary and political journal at Cambridge University, Granta magazine was reborn in 1979. The London-based magazine is currently published four times each year to showcase, according to the corporate Web site, “new writing—fiction, personal history, reportage and inquiring journalism—[as well as occasional] documentary photograph[s].” Excerpts of each author’s works make up the Spring 2007 issue (No. 97), which is available for single purchase.

One of my newer tutoring pupils asked during his first session, “What is writing? Isn’t it just, well—writing? Isn’t it simply putting words on paper?”

Well . . . no, I answered, stalling to collect some thoughts. What about words that are published online, I asked, words that are posted on the Internet, which we see on a monitor?

I had stalled as long as I could, and he didn’t see that point, anyway. So I started from a different angle. I pointed out that the original “photocopiers” were highly skilled calligraphers who, basically, put words on paper. They would have been writers, according to the youngster’s definition. But, I continued, many of them could not read what they were writing—they were artists, trained to copy what they saw. Should we really call them writers?

His puzzled look encouraged me to continue. Writing is learned; it is not a skill we are born with, I said. We struggle to learn . . . to form letters . . . to combine those letters into words . . . to make those words into sentences—sentences that convey a message. I wrote these words on the board: writing learned not skill born with. Is that writing? I asked.

The puzzled look was now joined by a wrinkled brow and a confused stare. I confessed that I did consider the words to be writing because the words did convey a message, they did have meaning—I could deduce what the writer was trying to say.

A thought leaked from the silent student: “But, it doesn’t make sense!”

True, I admitted—it is not good writing. In that case, I directed his original question back to him: What is writing?

“Words that we can see that make sense,” was the answer I got. I agreed, then repeated his thought with embellishment and emphasis: So, I would say that writing is publishing meaningful words in a meaningful way.

Which leads into what we are going to be studying, I began to conclude. Good, meaningful writing, by my definition, requires learning the elements of basic writing, which I spoke of earlier, plus grammar plus structure (or rhetoric) plus style. Fortunately for both of us, those were studies for another day . . .

A not-so-new but not-well-heard-of Web site has surfaced thanks to a recent article on National Public Radio. The site, FutureMe.org, is intended to enable a person to write an e-mail to himself or herself that will be delivered anytime between a paltry thirty days from now and fifty years into the future. In the past four years, more than 400,000 people have sent messages for a variety of reasons.

Granted, most people address letters to themselves, like a personal time capsule, but a use that would be more pertinent to our areas of interest, is to write letters to others in our lives, letters that will surprise their receivers in the future, just as lost letters and missing postcards have surprised some of us in years gone by. The site does not have a limit yet on the number of letters that can be sent, though abusers who use the site as a simple reminder service are allegedly dealt with . . .

Oh, and in case you’re worried about “moving” (changing e-mail addresses), FutureMe now has a management system that allows updating of addresses—no fair, though, changing or updating those messages! Get started here: FutureMe.org.

As a member of the Association of Personal Historians, I got invited to a preview screening of  The Ultimate Gift  last fall. The movie has now been released and is causing a resurgence in discussions over “ethical wills”  (which are also known as “legacy statements” and “legacy letters”).

Ethical wills are nonbinding letters to the heirs of a deceased that are written in addition to an actual will. They are usually intended to be upbeat and to relay messages to friends and family members who are left behind—often messages that the deceased could not deliver for one reason or another during his or her lifetime or general thoughts that he or she wanted to be sure were passed along one last time. Ethical wills sometimes contain

• explanations for difficult decisions or certain actions
• challenges and hopes for future generations
• valuable life lessons and experiences or memories

The story of The Ultimate Gift, for example, focuses primarily on one man’s lingering hope that his final protege, a “lost” grandson, “deserves” to inherit the family company—and fortune. From the film’s Web site:

When his wealthy grandfather dies, trust fund baby Jason Stevens anticipates a big inheritance. Instead, his grandfather has devised a crash course on life with twelve tasks—or “gifts”—designed to challenge Jason in improbable ways, sending him on a journey of self-discovery and forcing him to determine what is most important in life: money or happiness.

If you are interested in learning about the potential for ethical wills, I suggest you see  The Ultimate Gift  (starring James Garner, Brian Dennehy, Drew Fuller, Bill Cobbs, Lee Merriwether, Alli Hillis, and child star Abigail Breslin).

M.T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party, which won the 2006 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature (presented by the National Book Foundation) last November, is one of the latest books helping to revive the young adult literature genre. After seeming to peak in the 1970s and early ’80s, then stumbling through much of the 1990s with unchallenging and formulaic easy-reading novels that featured teen characters in stereotypical situations, YA literature has been rebounding for the past two or three years. The rebound is being seen both in popularity and in quality.

The adventures of teen wizard Harry Potter are widely credited with increasing the genre’s popularity by focusing attention on YA books and authors over the past decade. But J.K. Rowling’s works did not satisfy the needs or tastes of every reader—the volumes were long and complicated, they had unrealistic settings and plotlines, and the basic subject matter was specifically targeted. Many critics add that the series actually outgrew its original audience of YA readers over the years, anyway. Still, Rowling’s series did usher in a renewed interest in writing quality material and developing intricate and intriquing story lines, scenes, and characters—all attributes that drew the attention of YA readers—and that fact is seldom argued.

As evidence, note that many books on both the adult and children’s New York Times Best Sellers lists are written for, about, or involving young adults and that the American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz Award now takes notice of books for young adults just as the Caldecott and Newbery awards have for other younger readers over the years.

Reporter Cecelia Goodnow, with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer posted this recent article that spotlights additional evidence. She also uncovered and compiled some interesting trends in “teen literature” and this list of best reads for 2007.

Several recordings from the November 2006 National Book Awards sessions in New York City are now available online. The recordings can be downloaded in MP3 format or played through a Web browser (using that method, I would suggest choosing “Play in Popup” so you can continue doing other work while listening).  Among the podcast recordings are five sets of nominated authors reading from their nominated works and the acceptance speeches that the winning authors made after being named at the ceremony.  (My only complaint about this collection is that the sessions are recorded in their entirety, instead of being excerpted by author, but that’s not a big deal as long as you have the time—most sessions are twenty to thirty minutes long.)

The goal of the National Book Awards is to increase the popularity of reading and to enhance awareness of exceptional books written by American authors in four genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature. Lists of nominees and the annual award winners from 1950 to the present are available at the National Book Awards Web site, www.NationalBookAward.org.

Access to the podcasts is through a site hosted by BookExpo America (BEA).  BEA is the largest annual exhibition of materials published in English in the world. The podcasts are produced by the same publishers who bring us the weekly series of author interviews, discussions, and readings known as Authors on Tour (which is sponsored by the Tattered Cover Book Stores in Colorado).