Losing a loyal client or editor

It happens to all of us eventually: Losing a loyal client or editor to a new position elsewhere. But hey, I'm nothing but an undaunted optimist — in fact, it can be a bit of a Johnny Appleseed opportunity, with new work and opportunities in a new company with an old friend. Developing a strong client relationship, always, always, always, is a freelancer's best business strategy.

More details and thoughts on how to handle a client/editor departure at my newest Freelance-Zone.com post, "Losing a loyal client."

Curing writer's block

Before you get your hopes up that I've conjured up a magic elixir of inspiration, my post "Curing writer's block" at Freelance-Zone actually takes a more cynical view of what gets lumped into writer's block and why curing it really ought to be a non-issue for the professional freelancer.

Read it there, and comment on it there...or here! Sorry for being lazy and stealing from myself, but I've got two meetings and several deadlines before the day runs out.

Who do you write like?

Found this nifty little Tuesday time-waster from fellow writer Nate Hansen:

I Write Like.

Check what famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them to those of the famous writers.

Any text in English will do: your latest blog post, journal entry, Reddit comment, chapter of your unfinished book, etc. For reliable results paste at least a few paragraphs (not tweets).

I produced Kurt Vonnegut on one try, and Douglas Adams on another. Take it, and share your results in the comments!

Writing in your head

On my old web site, I used to have a collection of a dozen or so sayings about the craft of writing. One of them ran to the effect of "If you sit down to write, but don't put anything on the paper, your intention was not to write." I've googled and can't find it, and I'm on my laptop without access to archives, so I can't dig up the original. So it goes.

But the point of it is this: You should never confuse thinking, pondering or musing with writing. And there is value, for me, in thinking without writing. If the definition of an extrovert is a person for whom no thought goes unverbalized, I don't necessarily feel the compulsion as a writer for my every word to exit my fingers into a keyboard or pen.

Sometimes, thinking, and being alone in my thoughts, is exactly what I intended to do.

PR Pro, Part II: 3.5 reasons why I can't show you the story

Last week, I recounted one of the best encounters I've ever had with a public relations professional helping me with a story. (Go here; I'll be here when you get back.)

Today, I want to touch briefly on the reasons why the surprisingly common "Can I see the story before it runs?" request chafes me so terribly:

1. By asking the question, you're subtly implying that I might misconstrue your story, make your company look bad, make your competitor look good, etc., etc. It's much nicer to operate from a position of mutual trust and respect. After all, I'm assuming that you're giving me the straight scoop about your client. (You are, aren't you?)
   
2. Most editorial policies preclude me from showing you anything other than direct quotes. Thus, you're putting me in the awkward position of telling you "no" right after you did me the favor of providing resources for my story. I'm a nice guy, but my allegiance is to the publication that gave me the assignment.
3. Even if I did show the story to you, I wouldn't change anything unless it was factually incorrect. I calls 'em like I sees 'em, and I pride myself on getting things right.

Finally, Reason 3.5 is this: Keep in mind that, if I have a question about whether something is accurate, I will certainly contact you.

Now, in defense of the PR pros who insist on asking the question, I suppose there is the occasional writer, editor or publisher who says, "Sure! I'll send it right over!" (I've even known a couple of ad salespeople who've sent a galley proof clandestinely, which is about the sleaziest thing you can do.)

Using the shotgun method to find those people is your right. At the same time, it's my right to stick to my own guns: Trust me.

Sex, violence and the freelancer

This past weekend, I headed down I-10 to the Tucson Festival of Books, where I staffed the Editorial Freelancers Association booth for a couple of hours each day. During one of my breaks, I attended a workshop titled "Writing Convincing Sex Scenes (the PG Version)." While I'm not currently working on a novel, the title broke through the cacophony of "how to get published" and "you can make a living as a writer" offerings that populated much of the schedule. I figured, why not?

David Fulmer, author of The Blue Door and Chasing the Devil's Tail, among others, taught the session. He was at turns hilarious and insightful about these sensitive topics, which he has taught at the university level. (The course title usually includes violence as well as sex, but it was truncated to fit in the festival program.) In his own books, he uses profanity sparingly, doesn't talk about specific body parts, and cuts the scene "when the clothes hit the floor" so that the reader has to do some of the work.

Obviously, most of us don't spend much time freelancing about sex or violence--at least the circles I travel in! Nevertheless, Fulmer made a number of points that apply to our craft in more general terms:

• You can't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone.
• You can't care about what friends and family think, or you're in the wrong business. 
• As a storyteller, everything you do needs to move the plot forward--if it's gratuitous, dump it. 
• To succeed, you have to blend a writer's creativity with an editor's objectivity.

I'm not sure I've got the guts to write the ultimate steamy scene, nor do I know how many projects I'll get out of the festival, but at the very least I collected a pocketful of business cards and oddball stories. And in the meantime, heaven knows what kind of entertaining Google search word hits it'll drive having "sex" in the headline.

What's in a word: "Backronym"

Backronym is one of those neat words that means exactly what it says: Taking an existing word and retrofitting words to make an acronym from it. (It also happens to be an example of one of my other favorite word/concepts, a portmanteau: two words blended to make a new one with a meaning that combines the two. Lewis Carroll gets the credit for using that word first in Alice in Wonderland.)

Two famous examples of backronyms that come to mind from childhood are Fiat standing for "Fix it again, Tony" or Ford meaning "Found on roadside, dead." The backronym for posh--"port outbound, starboard home"--is falsely believed to derive from the location of wealthy passengers' berths on trips between England and India. More likely, it was derived from slang for money.

Backronym is such a terrific word that I was surprised to see that it's a relatively young one. Wikipedia attributes it (spelled "bacronym") to a Washington Post language contest in 1983.

And if you really, really have too much time on your hands, take a spin on the random Backronym Generator.

The Derek Zoolander Center for People Who Can't Spel Gud

During a recent visit to a hospital to cover a story, I spotted a suggestion box labeled "CHAPLIN REQUESTS." (Yes, I resisted the temptation to ask if they had any mustachioed silent-film stars handy for my amusement while I waited.)

In fact, I didn't say anything. The instant calculation in my head was that 1) it was not misleading as far as its intended purpose, 2) most people won't even realize it's misspelled, and 3) it's kind of funny.

If your brain is wired for language, you can't help but notice spelling and grammar abuse at every turn. Makes you feel superior, eh? The question, then, is whether to say anything when you do--hence the "instant calculation" I performed in my head. For me, the inputs include:

• the seriousness of the error (lethal, misleading or just silly?)
• the location it appears in (high traffic or inconsequential?)
• the cost that it would take to fix it (signage, printed material or website?)
• my relationship with the responsible party (client, vendor or someone who would likely think I was a know-it-all smartaleck?)

My longtime proofreader Bonnie Trenga has a section at her Sentence Sleuth blog for people to add their own "criminal sentences." She secured my business back in the mid-'90s by marking up a magazine that I edited and asking if we could use her services. A risky tactic, but it worked.

Playing grammar referee

As an editor, you break up your fair share of grammar skirmishes and pray no one gets hurt. Yesterday afternoon, one of my creative partners asked me whether "important" or "importantly" was the correct word in this sentence:

More important(ly), can you help us find XXXXX?

I'd long ago been taught that's a ly-free zone, with "importantly" being reserved as an adverb to describe to describe an action; for example, "The judge strode importantly to the bench." With a bit of nagging doubt in my head, I did a bit of research to ensure I wasn't wrong.

As it turns out, it's a bit of a sister-kiss: Either one is acceptable usage according to Merriam-Webster's and other authorities, though my web search indicated a slight lean toward "more important." The reasoning is that it's not modifying a verb, it's modifying the entire phrase that follows it--you could think of it as "[What is] more important, can you help us..."

Alas, as with all grammar minutia, whichever way you write it, a stickler on the other side will read it and think "AHA! You big dummy!"...forgetting that it doesn't mean a darn thing in the ability to convey or understand the message. I am reminded of the big-endian vs. small-endian argument among the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels. Eat your softboiled egg any way you please.

UPDATED: While we're on the subject, Yolander Prinzel of Freelance Writerville alerted me to "Error Proof: How to defend yourself from grammar pedants" from the October 4, 2009, New York Times Magazine. Clever stuff.

Horror story

With Halloween lurking, I believe it's fitting to share the scariest moment in my freelance career. Back in the Early Aughts, I'd been assigned to write a profile of professional golfer Tom Lehman for a now-defunct magazine called 85255 (the ZIP code of a tony North Scottsdale, Ariz., suburb). The interview would take place at Tom's house, and would be simultaneous with the photo shoot--never ideal because of the mayhem, but you take what you get.

The interviews with Tom and his wife went smoothly, and the photos, including a shot of the whole family jumping on their backyard trampoline, were perfect. Energized and excited, I hopped in my car to drive home, and started to play back the interview tape so I could brainstorm the story.

It was empty.

I turned the volume all the way up till it was hissing. Nothing. To my utter and complete horror, I saw that I hadn't flicked the switch back from using it in "phone in" mode from a prior telephone interview. The cassette hadn't recorded a single word.

Heart pounding, I pulled onto the shoulder of the desert road, and frantically scribbled chunks of remembered dialogue and anecdotes on my yellow legal pad while they were still fresh in my head. (Mercifully, I had jotted a few notes during the interview, though not nearly sufficient to write a 1,000-word story.) I sat there for an hour, racking my brain to try to recreate the past hour's conversations.

Amazingly, augmented with a brief call to Tom's wife the next day to clear up some timelines, my scrambled roadside effort was enough. (Had I not discovered my error till a few days later, it would not have been.) Evidence, I suppose, that God looks out for widows, orphans, drunks...and freelancers.

I no longer own that old-school microcassette recorder, though its lessons of doing a sound check and having hard-copy backup are scorched into my brain. My digital recorder, which I wrote about over the summer, offers the peace of mind of a visual level monitor. But until I've completely transcribed an interview, and backed it up in my Time Machine, I have to confess: This experience always haunts me, and always will.

Do you have your own horror story, about a nightmare client, evil assignment or deadly deadline? Enter it into the Freelance Writerville II Scary Freelancing Story Contest (registration required)--in addition to fame and fortune, you could win a $10 gift certificate to Amazon!

SpecialtyBuzz profile is up

A quick thanks and hat tip to Jenn Escalona at The Life and Times of a Freelance Writer for featuring me as her SpecialtyBuzz Q&A of the week. In addition to interviews with various writing style and subject matter experts, Jenn's blog features lots of thought-provoking posts and links--definitely worth adding to your daily feed.

"Free" advice from Wired's Chris Anderson

I don't commonly link to articles I've written, but I'm making an exception for "The Freeconomics of Speakonomics," which appears in the October issue of Speaker magazine. It's a feature about Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, from an interview we did shortly after his best-selling book Free came out.

My reason for posting is twofold:

1. Chris responded to my interview request within two hours of being asked, and within another two hours, his assistant had provided a half dozen times for me to choose from. That kind of response time is incredibly unusual, and should be praised to the skies.
   
2. Even though the story is targeted at professional speakers, there are some parallels and lessons for freelancers. As an entrepreneur, "free" is something that you can't ignore, but you can leverage to your advantage.

Whether you ultimately agree or disagree with Chris's conclusions, Free will challenge your assumptions about pricing and value. His blog, The Long Tail, is one of my regular reads for the same reason.

What is the sound of 10,000 motivational-guru heads exploding?

While editing an article, I needed to research the author's use of the old saying that the Chinese characters for "danger" and "opportunity" combine to form the ideogram "crisis." (I initially thought the writer had the equation mixed up.) As it turns out, this well-worn phrase, which John F. Kennedy popularized and serves as a key tenet for more than a few motivational speaker/self-help empires, is to Far Eastern wisdom as Panda Express is to Asian cuisine:

• How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray. In addition to skewering the misused language, a professor of Chinese language and literature at University of Pennsylvania adds this gem: "Those who purvey [this] doctrine...are engaging in a type of muddled thinking that is a danger to society, for it lulls people into welcoming crises as unstable situations from which they can benefit."
• Is the Chinese word for "crisis" a combination of "danger" and "opportunity"? The money quote? "Native Chinese speakers tend to think the crisis = danger/opportunity connection is complete bullshit."
• Crisis = danger + opportunity: The plot thickens: I particularly like this historical perspective (the usage dates back to Chinese missionaries in the 1930s) and the fact that it cites a 1994 episode of The Simpsons.

Lisa: Look on the bright side, Dad. Did you know that the Chinese use the same word for "crisis" as they do for "opportunity"?
Homer: Yes! Cris-atunity.

I won't tell you how I edited the article, but I'm curious to know what you'd do under the same circumstance. What's your responsibility to the writer of an article containing a little nugget of popular-but-false wisdom?

"Honey, I think I've got writer's block!"

Was doing a web search for the Algonquin Hotel in St-Andrews-by-the-Sea, located about an hour south of us in New Brunswick, Canada, when I was stopped in my tracks by the following promotion at the legendary Algonquin Hotel in New York City:

Writer's Block Rate: Receive 25% off of the best possible rate. When you book through our website, simply by showing a work in progress or a published work upon check-in.

"But, Jake," you say, "A center-city New York hotel is going to be expensive." True, but the bright side is that the $500-plus nightly rate means you'll "save" $125 or more!!! A glance at the history page reveals that it's more than an intriguing marketing pitch--truly, you might be able to pick up some positive writing mojo. (Which, for that kind of dough, you darn well better.):

From its inception, manager (and later owner) Frank Case created a vision for The Algonquin as New York’s center of literary and theatrical life. His enduring fascination with actors and writers led him to extend them credit, in the process luring such luminaries as Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and John Barrymore.

Famed women flocked to the hotel as well, as The Algonquin was unconventional early on in accommodating single women guests. Over the years, these have included Gertrude Stein, Simone de Beauvoir, Helen Hayes, Erica Jones, and Maya Angelou.

Three Nobel laureates visited on a regular basis, including Sinclair Lewis (who offered to buy the hotel), Derek Walcott, and most memorably William Faulkner, who drafted his Nobel Prize acceptance speech at The Algonquin in 1950.

The promotion, if you've got $375 plus tax burning a hole in your pocket, lasts through the end of 2009.

"I sell my soul, but at the highest rates."--Harlan Ellison

Crazy busy today, so I just wanted to pass along this epic rant--accompanied by a NSFW warning!--by legendary sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison: "Pay the Writer." He's got a bit of a reputation as a cranky guy, as you can see from his wiki entry, and it comes through loud and clear.

Nonetheless, what he says is absolutely on point. Writing is a business. Writers deserve to be paid. People who work for nothing are fools. Companies that want something for free should be scorned. (That's my G-rated version.)

Rinse. Repeat.

And did I mention the link is NSFW?

H/T to Liz Craig for the find, and for a darn good rant in her own right.

Minds thinking alike

Direct-mail legend Denny Hatch is right on target with his musing today: "What authors can learn from the great copywriters." He takes several newspaper columnists to task for sloppy prose, with scathing examples.

In his little diatribe, he echoes the technique I described in my Friday post about the best writing advice I'd ever received:

Journalists and authors, please take note of the dictum by freelance direct response copywriter Pat Friesen: “Normally, the best lead paragraph is buried somewhere in the middle of your first draft copy.”

Anyway, it's worth reading the whole thing--Denny says it much better than I could summarize it. While you're at his site, I highly recommend signing up for his free "Business Common Sense" email newsletter, too. I don't always agree with him, particularly when he injects politics, but he always makes me think.