Category: Ramblings

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Daylight Savings… Curse you!

Every six months, the clocks change by an hour. And every six months, I go mental as I try to reconcile the clock changes on my daily and business life.

It might be only an hour, but that's only if you focus on the one time zone. If you are like me, you live your life based on multiple time zone (having an international business), so it's not just one hour that changes. Nope. It's one hour one month as Daylight Savings starts in one time zone, but it's another hour the next month as Daylight Savings ends the next month. And by the end of it, the clocks have moved two hours and you lose total track of everything.

Every six months, I face this two-hour shift, and sometimes the results are me grumpy because I'm up at all godly hours in the morning.

Let me tell you of my crazy when the clocks shifted in New Zealand earlier this month.

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Are we dumbing down language?

Recently, I took a grammar refresher course to help with some aspects of my editing. I took the course because often enough I encounter something in ProWritingAid or in conversations with other editors that I don't understand. The terminology occasionally goes over my head. So, I thought that perhaps a refresher course would help with some of the terminology confusion.

The course certainly did do that, and I was glad I took the course. However, there were a few comments that actually irritated me—and they all revolved around this philosophy that we're dumbing down language.

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Living in a Near-Cashless Society

Conversations within my various editors' groups occasionally turn to ways of accepting payments from clients. You get the conversations about using PayPal and similar services. There are the conversations about payments in cash. You get those hilarious conversations about clients wanting to pay via a royalty share, complete with boasted claims that the royalty share would be worth millions.

But whenever the conversation turns to clients paying by check, the group is often amazed by my response.

As much as checks might be nice for some people, I can never accept payment via check. No bank within New Zealand will allow you to deposit checks anymore. Even cashier's checks are now a thing of the past.

There is normally one person who asks how we pay our bills if checks are no longer accepted, likely assuming that we pay for everything via cash. But my answer to this question tends to shock them even more.

New Zealand has become a near-cashless society. Everything is paid for by way of electronic transactions, most of which occur via internet banking.

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Sample edits are at the editor’s discretion

A few months back, I was approached by a writer to do a developmental edit, which isn't anything out of the ordinary. I am a developmental editor, after all. But there was something in that initial communication that really didn't sit well with me.

Initial communications with a writer tell me what type of client you're likely to be. And this one…

The email dripped with entitlement and superiority, making me question whether this particular writer was even ready to hear criticism about their writing.

It was a random email that seemed to have come out of nowhere with a file attached (an OpenOffice file, no less). There was zero information about the manuscript—no genre, no word counts, no synopsis, no summary. Just negative commentary, saying that they were unable to find my prices on my website for developmental editing (which is odd, because I know for certain that they are there—and in an easy-to-find location too). But there were also the following lines in the email.

"After I receive my sample back, I will wait for a week until I'll let you know if I'm interested or not.

Thank you for your time, and I wish you best of luck!"

So… Zero information about the project and this underlining demand for a sample edit. To top it off, there's the attitude that suggested a person who thinks editors are just waiting around for clients to give them the privilege to edit the writer's work.

Did I mention how those initial communications can tell an editor about the type of client you're likely to be?

Had this particular writer approached things just a little differently, they would have likely gotten more than just my boiler-plate quote and the comment that I don't offer free sample edits.

There are soooo many things wrong with this particular opening communication, the most important of which is the assumption that all editors will provide a free sample edit when a client demands such.

But sample edits are at the editor's discretion. And of those editors who do offer free sample edits, not all of them will edit any old sample you send them.

It's time to get down to the realities of sample edits.

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“Am I wasting my time writing?” the client asked.

Some time ago, a prospective client reached out to me regarding their manuscript that they were still writing; they were approximately a quarter of the way through the first draft. They were seeking quotes for editing (which is hard to give without having a full manuscript to consider), but more specifically, they wanted to know if I thought their story would be good enough to get published. (They actually asked this in their initial contact email.)

Let's ignore the fact that the story wasn't written yet, because any story that isn't written can't be published. I knew what the writer was asking. They wanted to know if I thought their writing style was good enough to be published.

That particular question is incredibly difficult to answer, because there are so many factors involved—and many of those factors are subjective.

So, I evaded the specific question (yes, evaded), and carried on like I do with any other prospective client under normal circumstances. I gave my thoughts about what I saw in the writing sample and proposed a path forward.

For this writer, I suggested that they just write. I would be more than happy to work with them on any story that they wrote (I liked their natural writing voice), but unless they wanted mentoring or coaching, there wasn't much I could do to help them until they had a finished manuscript. I suggested they finish their manuscript, get some feedback from other writers and edit their story to the best of their ability, then come back to me for a manuscript assessment. It was the most cost effective option for them.

But they really wanted the answer to their question, and their persistent email trail would not let it rest. "Do I have enough to make the grade and get this [story] published or am I wasting my time?"

As a writer myself, I understand the motivation behind such a question. We spend so much time pouring our heart and soul into our writing, and we want to know if we have a shot at breaking into this business with the manuscript that we're working on.

But for the first time, I had to push back and challenge a prospective client about their motivations for writing.

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