In case you haven’t heard, it’s a challenging time to be in the word business.

People often ask if I’m an editor and a writer. James Rainey gives a thorough rundown of why I stick with editing (although you could increasingly apply his column to editing as well these days) in his Los Angeles Times column “Freelance Writing’s Unfortunate New Model.” That bit at the beginning about Livestrong.com paying $30 per article refers to Demand Studios, which provides the content for Lance Armstrong’s charity site. Sort of appropriate, since writing or copyediting at Demand’s rates means you’ll probably need plenty of charity yourself.

Michael Kinsley, bless his heart, leads the charge for brevity and a halt to burying the important stuff beneath piles of “those you’ll-never-guess-what-this-is-about, faux-mystery narrative leads about Martha Lewis, a 57-year-old retired nurse, who was sitting in her living room one day last month watching Oprah when the FedEx delivery man rang her doorbell with an innocent-looking envelope … and so on.” Call me old school, but I’m with Kinsley: I want the first paragraph of a news story to tell me the ol’ who, what, when, where, why, and how. Leave the fluffy junk for later.

David Carr recaps his decade in New York media, touching on its former highlights and current lowlights, and predicts a positive, albeit probably very different-looking future. His recall of the defunct media-news site Inside.com—remember that chunky black logo?—brings us back to the heady days when we all had loads of jobs and money and car service and free lunch and stuff. Those days were pretty awesome, I admit, but these days, I wouldn’t trade my backyard hens and our house in this little town for all the free beauty loot on the giveaway table. (Okay, well, I wouldn’t exactly refuse a little Jo Malone Orange Blossom perfume if it landed on my desk, but still…)

So, is it all gloom and doom? For editorial folks who refuse to change and learn new skills, then yeah, probably. The key to success in any profession, especially during times of upheaval, is to stay nimble, learn as much as you can about as many different things as you can, and don’t be afraid to try anything new that comes your way (provided you can still pay the bills), because you won’t know if Door #2 is hiding an aging burro or a Caribbean cruise unless you tell Monte Hall to open it up.

ALSO OPEN BETWEEN EASTER AND CHRISTMAS

The run benefited the Rockingham County Literacy Project, which helps adults learn to read, earn their GED, or speak English—all at no cost to the student. Before the race, I hung out with Jean and Joyce from RCLP and liked them immediately. For a while I didn’t even know they were with the Literacy Project; I just thought they were the cheerful and funny 5K organizers. But then I mentioned that I had been a teacher in my past career life, and they both leaned in with serious intent. “Oooooh! You should be a tutor!” they exclaimed.

So I became a tutor.

I attended a four-week training session and earned my first diploma in 20 years. Our class photo was in the paper! I was so proud! Now I meet with a student twice a week, and it’s more fun than I could have imagined. The “aha!” moment with an adult learner is actually more gratifying than with my former preschool students. I mean, kids learn new stuff every day, but how often as adults does that light flash in our brain: “Oh, NOW I get it!” That’s pretty cool.

In Rockingham County, approximately 20,000 adults either can’t read or have only very basic reading skills. When you consider that our total population is only 92,000, that’s a lot of our friends and neighbors. By learning to read, or passing the GED, or speaking English, their worlds open up tremendously, as do their opportunities.

Please consider helping either by making a donation via the RCLP website or by becoming a volunteer tutor yourself. Or both! Unlike giving to those giant charities with celebrity endorsers, when you give locally, you see the immediate positive impact your money and time makes on the community.

Rockingham County Literacy Project:
Make a donation
Become a volunteer tutor

WFMY News 2 visited the Literacy Project office recently and spoke with one of the students:

“AP Stylebook is my bible,
helps me stop the suit for libel.
But nothing can ensure my survival now.”

With increasing frequency, clients are asking editors if they’ll edit in OpenOffice, which is a fantastic cross-platform (and free!) productivity suite that can easily replace Word and Excel in the average user’s software arsenal. “But can I track changes, like in Word? I’ve looked all over and can’t find how to track changes or how to insert comments,” is the query from editors that I hear most often about OpenOffice. The answer? Yes, you can track changes, but you have to alter your vocabulary a bit.

In the screengrab above, you’ll see that you turn on the tracking function under the Edit menu dropdown. Hover over Changes and select Record (you’re essentially recording your changes, right?). Note that “Accept or Reject” is an option there as well; that’s where the client will, well, accept or reject your changes.

Want to insert a comment about the manuscript for your client? In OpenOffice, you insert a note, which you’ll find under the Insert menu:

Easy, right? You could also ask your OpenOffice–using client to save the doc as a Word file, which you could then edit as usual and send back as a Word doc. OpenOffice can open Words docs with ease, although I do find it’s better to edit in OpenOffice if that’s what my client prefers. After all, the easier I can make the editing process for my clients, the happier we all are in the end. And a happy client is a returning client.

Did you spot the typo? I’ll give you a hint: Staphylococcus. Who says news orgs needs us pesky copy editors? Spell-check works just fine!

SIGN BROKEN
MESSAGE INSIDE

Well played, Methodists. You win this round.

Religious content in general is high on my list of favorite genres to edit. Writers of bulletins, sermons, church newsletters, and religious fiction and nonfiction books always demonstrate a real love of the English language. Unlike some other types of content I edit, religious content never makes me feel like the writer didn’t really want to be writing. On the contrary, it’s always obvious that the religious writer, regardless of denomination, actually enjoyed putting together fluid prepositional phrases and the like, often with a certain subtle poetry—and sometimes a surprising level of humor. Even to the nonreligious editor, this type of writing can be a joy to experience.

You know what that’s like? That’s like Britney Spears releasing a much-hyped new CD on November 17, but not releasing the songs on iTunes until December 26 in order to “maximize CD sales.” That would be stupid, right? Book people have clearly learned nothing from the iPod/iTunes phenomenon—or maybe they think they can actually buck the trend. Or both.

Content is content, no matter the format, and if book publishing’s business model is still so dependent on one format to deliver that content at one specific price, then the poor saps still working in publishing house cubicles better grab some life preservers now.

On the flipside, Tina Brown embraces the ebook model as one of many ways to diversify the business model. Ebooks first, dead-tree editions later. If you need to a guide to the future, now you know who to follow.

Does James Patterson employ a roster of ghostwriters? He must—and if he doesn’t already, he might want to post an ad on Mediabistro, because he just inked a 17-book deal through 2012 with Hachette. That averages to just under six books a year! If he and his team need a copy editor during this hectic schedule, I’m happy to clear a spot in my schedule.