The Final Touch

I just sub­scribed to Writer’s Digest’s YouTube chan­nel and hap­pened to dis­cover this very use­ful video. From a lit­er­ary agent’s expe­ri­enced point of view, it gives sev­eral great nuggets of infor­ma­tion about story-telling, plot, struc­ture, what works, and what doesn’t — all in just under 5 min­utes. Check it out:

photo © 2008 Codice Inter­net | more info (via: Wylio)

A few days ago, I was try­ing to do some­thing with an Excel spread­sheet. Now, mind you, I know only the most basic basics about Microsoft Excel, but I do keep my Con­tacts List fairly well orga­nized in that pro­gram. Well, in the process, I “hid” a cou­ple of columns (inten­tion­ally), but then I could not for the life of me “unhide” them! I clicked on “Hide/Unhide” and on “Columns” and… in the words of one of the ani­mated char­ac­ters from Veg­gi­eTales videos, “noth­ing, zilch, nada!”

I wasted prob­a­bly a good half hour and tons of energy on it before it dawned on me that I could Read the rest of this entry »

photo © 2009 Cory Doc­torow | more info (via: Wylio)
Found this post through Writer’s Digest at a Guide to Lit­er­ary Agents blog. Go there for the full arti­cle by Guest Writer, Lit­er­ary Agent Mol­lie Glick:

7 THINGS AGENTS WANT TO SEE IN A QUERY

1. An enter­tain­ing but polite and pro­fes­sional tone
2. Mul­ti­ple forms of con­tact infor­ma­tion
3. Proof that you have researched and hand-picked an agent. (If you’ve got a con­nec­tion, were referred by a client or met the agent at a con­fer­ence, make sure to point that out early in your let­ter.)
4. Espe­cially for non­fic­tion: An author bio that demon­strates your plat­form and why you’re the right author for this project
5. A quick, catchy hook or “ele­va­tor pitch”
6. Mak­ing a case for the book’s built-in audi­ence
7. Espe­cially for non­fic­tion: Show­ing why your exper­tise and media con­tacts make you the best author for your project

9 THINGS AGENTS DON’T WANT TO SEE IN A QUERY

1. Ask­ing what the agent can do for you, rather than demon­strat­ing what you can do for him/her
2. Ask­ing for a phone call or in per­son meet­ing before the agent has requested one
3. Query­ing for mul­ti­ple projects at the same time
4. List­ing per­sonal infor­ma­tion unre­lated to your book
5. Giv­ing ref­er­ences from peo­ple out­side the pub­lish­ing indus­try (such as say­ing your writ­ers group, your con­gre­gants, or your mother’s next door neighbor’s cock­erspaniel loved your book)
6. Com­par­ing your book to a commonly-quoted best­seller
7. Mak­ing broad claims that you can’t back up
8. A pitch for an incom­plete nov­els. (It’s OK to query with an unfin­ished non­fic­tion project, as long as you’ve writ­ten a pro­posal, but nov­els should be fin­ished before you start con­tact­ing agents.)
9. Overly famil­iar, aggres­sive, or incor­rect salutations

Recently I learned about a tool called Robo­Form* — and when I find some­thing really use­ful, I want to share the news!

At first, I assumed it was too good to be true or, worse, that it might actu­ally com­pro­mise my secu­rity online. But then I heard about it again, from a source I trust greatly and who has years of online expe­ri­ence (shout-out to Sab­rina Gib­son!), so I decided to look into it fur­ther. I gave the free ver­sion a try and fell in love! Seri­ously! I am SO DELIGHTED to have this new tool in place that when I reached the free-version limit (10 pass­words, I think), I imme­di­ately upgraded to the Pro ver­sion (under $25) for my 40+ pass­words!

Robo­Form stores all your inter­net user­names and pass­words so you don’t have to fig­ure out a sys­tem for remem­ber­ing them all. Fur­ther­more, nowa­days there is such a threat of iden­tity theft and hack­ers get­ting into our inter­net accounts (two friends of mine have recently been phished on Face­book), that I was glad to know Robo­Form helps pre­vent that, too, with its optional random-password gen­er­a­tion, which gen­er­ates a unique, strong pass­word for each site that calls for one. Robo­Form stores them all for you so you only need to remem­ber one, to enter the Robo­Form pro­gram and access all your oth­ers. You can view, copy, or change your pass­words at any time under the “Edit” option on the menu, but as far as any­one else is con­cerned — any­one who doesn’t have your Robo­Form pass­word — the pass­words are secured with military-level encryption.

One other thing: Robo­Form can also auto-fill forms for you, if you find your­self at a lot of dif­fer­ent web­sites that require the com­ple­tion of long forms with per­sonal data. You sup­ply the infor­ma­tion in an ini­tial set-up, and then click an icon when­ever you need a form filled. (I do make sure to read over the form just to make sure it all got filled out cor­rectly, and because some­times I might want to change the email address I’m sup­ply­ing or such, but it’s a help­ful resource nonetheless.)

In short, I think Robo­Form is one of the most use­ful resources I’ve ever encoun­tered for online work (and play!). At the very least, why not click here to learn more?

* http://​cmp​.ly/5

Remem­ber the tra­di­tional way of doing pro­fes­sional net­work­ing? Spend a few hours in the car or plane to meet up with oth­ers in your field or related fields. Make con­tact with a few folks, maybe exchang­ing busi­ness cards — many of which would end up at the bot­tom of a purse or pocket, or in a pile on the desk at home. Hope­fully you’d chance to meet up with a few peo­ple who could really be an asset to you and for whom you could rec­i­p­ro­cate; you would leave sev­eral well-intended offers of “Let’s keep in touch” behind and, once back at your home office, maybe you fol­lowed up — or they did — and… maybe not. Either way, a lot of time and energy (and prob­a­bly money) had been spent for min­i­mal return on your investment.

I would encour­age you to try out LinkedIn, espe­cially if you have need for pro­fes­sional con­nec­tions. A quick way to get to the site is to fol­low this link to my pro­file and surf around from there:  http://​www​.linkedin​.com/​i​n​/​f​i​n​a​l​t​o​u​c​h​p​r​o​o​f​r​e​a​d​i​n​g​e​d​i​ting.

I’m get­ting really excited for June 27! That’s the day I’m attend­ing an all-day work­shop called “Edi­to­r­ial Boot Camp” in Min­neapo­lis, led by two women with years of pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence in the copy­edit­ing field. Not only will they cover some aspects of proof­read­ing and copy­edit­ing, but they’ll also help par­tic­i­pants look at var­i­ous prac­tices for mak­ing the most of one’s own edi­to­r­ial busi­ness. I’ve been “learn­ing on the job” so far, as far as run­ning my own busi­ness goes, so I’m eager to gain some time-tested insights from Laura Poole and Car­olyn Has­sett, who have a com­bined 30+ years of editorial-business expe­ri­ence. I’ve already been get­ting to know Laura a bit via email and can sin­cerely rec­om­mend her, and this work­shop, to any of you who might have an interest.

Here is some info that comes directly from Laura and Carolyn:

Come to this unique, inten­sive pro­gram designed for those want­ing to break into the pub­lish­ing field as a copy edi­tor or proof­reader – and also for those who sim­ply want to boost their skills.

Sun­day, June 27, 2010 | 9am-6pm
Mall of Amer­ica (North Shore Room) | Min­neapo­lis, MN
Cost: $450/person (includes mate­ri­als)

Reg­is­tra­tion is now active, and we have room for 25 atten­dees; reg­is­ter now to reserve your space! (Scroll down the page a bit; their July work­shop is listed first, then the June 27 one.)

This will be a jam-packed full-day, hands-on train­ing. Here’s what we’ll cover (and more!):

• Overview of the Pub­lish­ing Process
  Style and Ref­er­ence Guides | MS Word Opti­miza­tion, Cus­tomiza­tion, Plug-ins, and Shortcuts

• Copy­edit­ing
  Spelling | Punc­tu­a­tion | Gram­mar | Style | Fact Check­ing | Queries | Author Voice
  Copy­righted Mate­r­ial | Style Sheets | Online Tools | Topic Specialties

• Proof­read­ing
  Stage of Proofs | Mark­ing | Mate­ri­als | Style and Spec Sheets | Steps | Tools | Spe­cialty Work | PDF Proofing

• Work Prac­tices
  Tips and Tricks | Time Man­age­ment | Com­mu­ni­ca­tion | Deal­ing with Problems

• Busi­ness Prac­tices
  Get­ting and Keep­ing Clients | Resumes | Sam­ple Edits | Rates and Billing | Follow-Up Options | Net­work­ing | Pro­fes­sion­al­ism | Deadlines

I had seen Laura’s infor­ma­tion on LinkedIn for a sim­i­lar work­shop she was host­ing in North Car­olina in March. I wrote and lamented that I couldn’t make it to some­thing that far away but to let me know if she was ever going to be in Min­nesota. Lo and behold!, a cou­ple months later, she emailed to say they would be in Min­neapo­lis! I know I have some Min­nesota friends who just might be inter­ested in this, so please do check it out if you are one of them!

If this work­shop isn’t some­thing specif­i­cally for you, I hope you’ll still be inter­ested to check back in here in late June to hear about what I expe­ri­enced and read my follow-up thoughts.