We writers tell stories. Some of us tell tales. All told, some tell tall tales.
There seems to be an association throughout European languages between the consonants T and L in that order, and notions of both counting and recounting.
Total is a classical Latin word meaning, perhaps unsurprisingly, a total.
Tell means to count, told and tale both come from early English, and are parts of the same verb.
Tally comes from the Latin word for a yardstick.
Till (meaning cashbox) shares its origin with Toll (meaning fare or tax)
This t-l association is found in proto-indo-european; Old French, Old High German, Old English, Classical Latin, Classical Greek.
It seems to be telling that what novellists do is recount. I think it well worthy of the note of editors that our language equates the communication of a story to the communication of an account or inventory. There might be a cognitive sense of completeness in the delivery of a good story, and the editor might well see himself as an auditor.
Curiously, those two words have very different histories.
Editor is one who issues, puts forth, publishes
Auditor is one who listens (the intended sense of listening to check for completeness was used in this sense even in Roman times.)
2012-06-28
2012-06-27
Sanity
Content editing comes at a range of intensities. The intensity of a content edit shouldn't depend on the editor, but on the needs of the author, his book, and its writing history.
I've edited a couple of books that were a long time in the writing. In one case, all told from the creation of the first chapter to the completing of the final chapter, 15 years of on-off writing. These are the ones that require the most work from the editor, because even when the author's concept of the original story hasn't much changed, the author himself will have changed over the time of writing, and the reader just isn't going to take 15 years to read it. The editor has to try to find a way to make it all into a single, cogent work. My advice to the author is to get an editor to read it and give some general advice on how to prepare it for editing. I call this kind of read-through a pre-edit sanity-check. Why a sanity-check? Because you if you go to a full literary edit too soon, it will cost you a fortune.
I have a couple of authors who produce short fiction that sells reasonably well. When the author has enough experience a given style/genre, and when he has enough experience of producing coherent stories, very little beyond a copy edit may be needed. At this point, he might still want a sanity-check. Why a sanity-check? Because you might still have a story-breaking plot-hole, or one or two minor issues that a second pair of professional eyes will see.
This post is called 'sanity', not 'sanity-check', for a reason, though.
Whereas a good copy editor can take your manuscript and send it back to you near as dammit CMS compliant, beyond copy editing, it can be very hard to judge when editing is finished.
When a writer sends me an extract for a sample edit, I generally edit quite intensively regardless (or indeed ignorant) of the overall quality of the manuscript. I want the writer to have a strong idea of the kind of editing that I will do. But my approach may be different once I have the whole manuscript in front of me; and may evolve further once I have discussed in depth with the writer.
I like to think that after working with me, a writer will have a better sense of his own style and own writing process, and that he will also have a story that is more coherent, clearer, tidier, but which remains resolutely his own story. I always repeat that my aim is to help you make your book as good as you can make it. Along the way we will of course deal with linguistic necessity; I aim to sensitize a writer to his writing habits and techniques, by drawing his attention to what, for want of a better word, we normally call errors.
So far so typical. But there is a reason why I am always going on about how important it is to find the right editor for you: editors don't all work the same way. We don't all have the same education, the same reading and editing history, not even the same ideology - even though most of us refer to the same selection of texts when arbitration is need.
When I read non-fiction, I can positively identify when a professional edit has been done. This is much harder with fiction, because while content editing for non-fiction is all about structure and clarity, content editing for fiction is much more creative. In non-fiction the editor can also make much bigger changes, because changes are justified on the grounds of communication, not of art. Fiction is much more personal. Most of the authors I know are happy with my saying: "this paragraph needs work," happier still if I say "this paragraph needs to be reworked so that the attitude of the character is clearer", but very unhappy if I rework the paragraph for them. How far I chuse to go is much a matter of my feeling for what the author will accept.
Other editors may choose (other editors generally choose, and I only chuse when I'm blogging) to go further or not so far.
So suppose you get your manuscript back from your literary editor; you rework it in accordance with the editor's recommendations, but you still aren't happy with it. This might mean your editor wasn't a good match for you - though there may be all sorts of other reasons. In any case, should you get a sample from another editor? Go for another full content edit by someone else? A literary editor is more like a collaborator than a quality control technician. With each editor you will get a different book. So if you've already tried more than one editor and you still aren't happy with the results, how do you decide when to stop? Go to another editor? In my opinion, that way, madness lies.
Go to another writer, or go to an editor, and ask for a sanity-check. In this case, tell them the whole history of the manuscript before they read it. Make sure they know which version they are reading! Ask them to help you to decide whether you should invest any more time and money in it; whether you should get it copy-edited and publish it, or whether you should go for another full edit.
There are two questions an author should ask himself before hitting the publish button. Number one is: "should I pay for a professional copy-edit?". The answer to this is always yes. Number two is: "should I pay for a professional literary edit?". The answer might well be no.
I've edited a couple of books that were a long time in the writing. In one case, all told from the creation of the first chapter to the completing of the final chapter, 15 years of on-off writing. These are the ones that require the most work from the editor, because even when the author's concept of the original story hasn't much changed, the author himself will have changed over the time of writing, and the reader just isn't going to take 15 years to read it. The editor has to try to find a way to make it all into a single, cogent work. My advice to the author is to get an editor to read it and give some general advice on how to prepare it for editing. I call this kind of read-through a pre-edit sanity-check. Why a sanity-check? Because you if you go to a full literary edit too soon, it will cost you a fortune.
I have a couple of authors who produce short fiction that sells reasonably well. When the author has enough experience a given style/genre, and when he has enough experience of producing coherent stories, very little beyond a copy edit may be needed. At this point, he might still want a sanity-check. Why a sanity-check? Because you might still have a story-breaking plot-hole, or one or two minor issues that a second pair of professional eyes will see.
This post is called 'sanity', not 'sanity-check', for a reason, though.
Whereas a good copy editor can take your manuscript and send it back to you near as dammit CMS compliant, beyond copy editing, it can be very hard to judge when editing is finished.
When a writer sends me an extract for a sample edit, I generally edit quite intensively regardless (or indeed ignorant) of the overall quality of the manuscript. I want the writer to have a strong idea of the kind of editing that I will do. But my approach may be different once I have the whole manuscript in front of me; and may evolve further once I have discussed in depth with the writer.
I like to think that after working with me, a writer will have a better sense of his own style and own writing process, and that he will also have a story that is more coherent, clearer, tidier, but which remains resolutely his own story. I always repeat that my aim is to help you make your book as good as you can make it. Along the way we will of course deal with linguistic necessity; I aim to sensitize a writer to his writing habits and techniques, by drawing his attention to what, for want of a better word, we normally call errors.
So far so typical. But there is a reason why I am always going on about how important it is to find the right editor for you: editors don't all work the same way. We don't all have the same education, the same reading and editing history, not even the same ideology - even though most of us refer to the same selection of texts when arbitration is need.
When I read non-fiction, I can positively identify when a professional edit has been done. This is much harder with fiction, because while content editing for non-fiction is all about structure and clarity, content editing for fiction is much more creative. In non-fiction the editor can also make much bigger changes, because changes are justified on the grounds of communication, not of art. Fiction is much more personal. Most of the authors I know are happy with my saying: "this paragraph needs work," happier still if I say "this paragraph needs to be reworked so that the attitude of the character is clearer", but very unhappy if I rework the paragraph for them. How far I chuse to go is much a matter of my feeling for what the author will accept.
Other editors may choose (other editors generally choose, and I only chuse when I'm blogging) to go further or not so far.
So suppose you get your manuscript back from your literary editor; you rework it in accordance with the editor's recommendations, but you still aren't happy with it. This might mean your editor wasn't a good match for you - though there may be all sorts of other reasons. In any case, should you get a sample from another editor? Go for another full content edit by someone else? A literary editor is more like a collaborator than a quality control technician. With each editor you will get a different book. So if you've already tried more than one editor and you still aren't happy with the results, how do you decide when to stop? Go to another editor? In my opinion, that way, madness lies.
Go to another writer, or go to an editor, and ask for a sanity-check. In this case, tell them the whole history of the manuscript before they read it. Make sure they know which version they are reading! Ask them to help you to decide whether you should invest any more time and money in it; whether you should get it copy-edited and publish it, or whether you should go for another full edit.
There are two questions an author should ask himself before hitting the publish button. Number one is: "should I pay for a professional copy-edit?". The answer to this is always yes. Number two is: "should I pay for a professional literary edit?". The answer might well be no.
2012-06-19
Sword and Phallus: What every fantasy writer needs to know about symbolism
:: Edit 2012-06-20 ::
A reader has indicated to me that the opening paragraph of the post below might easily be interpreted as an attack on feminism, especially to anyone not aware of my antecedence in this matter. Please be assured that my aim is the contrary.
-HWD
:: end of edit::
It has been said that in order to accept feminist theory, you first have to reject it. It's also been suggested that feminism is like whiskey: the first taste you have is repulsive, but for some reason you keep coming back until you grow to love it. I think the latter is frankly daft.
Sigmund Freud introduced the masses to the idea of 'penis envy': that one of the root causes of women's difficulties dealing with men comes from the fundamental desire for, and lack of, a penis. During the rise of feminism in the twentieth century, that idea probably made a certain amount of sense. Certainly more than it does now. Feminist men tend (if they see it in these kinds of terms at all) tend to see the penis as a sort of consolation prize for all the cool bits women have that we don't. In all honesty, I'm none too sure where I stand on the matter. The feminist antidote to the idea of penis envy is penis extension.
Penis extension is the symbolic representation of rivalry among males and of sexual display to females, through display of exaggerated male sexual characteristics, especially when represented through objects whose shape is analogous to the penis. It is an easy accusation to make, since so many tools, devices and structures are basically cylindrical. It is also, therefore, relatively easy to refute by looking at the design specification of (for instance) a skyscraper and discovering that there is no reference in the specification to the size of nearby buildings. If, on the other hand, the client has specified that it must be the tallest one on the skyline, then clearly some sort of mine's-bigger-than-yours is going on. And since money and power are necessary to achieve tall skyscrapers, and also are strong indicators of reproductive attractiveness, showing off your money and power is de facto a sexual display. Even if what you build ends up not resembling a giant penis at all.
This sort of excessive display probably deserves mockery, and mockery seems to be one of the aims of the accusation of penis extension.
Now let's talk a little about fantasy worlds, where there's magic and swords. And let's look at two very specific examples:
This is Prince Adam, holding aloft his magic sword, on the point of saying something rather specific. With He-Man one hardly knows where to begin, so I'm going to limit this to a few obvious details. Adam is wearing a pink wraparound gilet, which vanishes along with his shirt once he is "transformed" into the rather less dressed and even more muscled He-Man. The gilet is clearly a prepuce or foreskin.
Notice also that Adam is accompanied by the weak, trembling and cowardly Cringer. Cringer often hides behind, or even between Adam's powerful legs. When Adam transforms into He-Man, Cringer becomes Battlecat; swells to a much larger size, acquires a bulbous red helmet (with a white beard poking out underneath), and He-Man rides on him.
In short, He-Man is a giant penis who rides on a giant penis.
You're looking at the Deluxe Model Sword of Omens made by toy giants Bandai. This is from the animated series "ThunderCats". This sword starts out small, but when it is needed it grows longer. The toy has a telescopic blade. The real thing is, of course, magical. It is wielded by muscular (and imaginatively named) hero Lion-O.
What I was going to try to argue is that throughout most of human history, men have needed and used tools, and most tools have been sticks of some kind. Objects which are basically phallic. Whenever such tools have also been used as weapons, the man capable of usefully wielding the biggest one was obviously making a show of his breeding fitness, and hence sexual prowess. Big tools = big penis. This is so fundamentally unavoidable that any hand-held device, no matter how innocuous, can be interpreted as phallic if you really want to.
Consequently the writer should be extremely cautious and wary around cases like Lion-O's sword or the whole He-Man thing (shudder). If you find you've written an epic battle where the combatants keep pulling out bigger swords, then, well, I guess you already know what you're doing. I sure hope so.
A reader has indicated to me that the opening paragraph of the post below might easily be interpreted as an attack on feminism, especially to anyone not aware of my antecedence in this matter. Please be assured that my aim is the contrary.
-HWD
:: end of edit::
It has been said that in order to accept feminist theory, you first have to reject it. It's also been suggested that feminism is like whiskey: the first taste you have is repulsive, but for some reason you keep coming back until you grow to love it. I think the latter is frankly daft.
Sigmund Freud introduced the masses to the idea of 'penis envy': that one of the root causes of women's difficulties dealing with men comes from the fundamental desire for, and lack of, a penis. During the rise of feminism in the twentieth century, that idea probably made a certain amount of sense. Certainly more than it does now. Feminist men tend (if they see it in these kinds of terms at all) tend to see the penis as a sort of consolation prize for all the cool bits women have that we don't. In all honesty, I'm none too sure where I stand on the matter. The feminist antidote to the idea of penis envy is penis extension.
Penis extension is the symbolic representation of rivalry among males and of sexual display to females, through display of exaggerated male sexual characteristics, especially when represented through objects whose shape is analogous to the penis. It is an easy accusation to make, since so many tools, devices and structures are basically cylindrical. It is also, therefore, relatively easy to refute by looking at the design specification of (for instance) a skyscraper and discovering that there is no reference in the specification to the size of nearby buildings. If, on the other hand, the client has specified that it must be the tallest one on the skyline, then clearly some sort of mine's-bigger-than-yours is going on. And since money and power are necessary to achieve tall skyscrapers, and also are strong indicators of reproductive attractiveness, showing off your money and power is de facto a sexual display. Even if what you build ends up not resembling a giant penis at all.
This sort of excessive display probably deserves mockery, and mockery seems to be one of the aims of the accusation of penis extension.
Now let's talk a little about fantasy worlds, where there's magic and swords. And let's look at two very specific examples:
This is Prince Adam, holding aloft his magic sword, on the point of saying something rather specific. With He-Man one hardly knows where to begin, so I'm going to limit this to a few obvious details. Adam is wearing a pink wraparound gilet, which vanishes along with his shirt once he is "transformed" into the rather less dressed and even more muscled He-Man. The gilet is clearly a prepuce or foreskin.
Notice also that Adam is accompanied by the weak, trembling and cowardly Cringer. Cringer often hides behind, or even between Adam's powerful legs. When Adam transforms into He-Man, Cringer becomes Battlecat; swells to a much larger size, acquires a bulbous red helmet (with a white beard poking out underneath), and He-Man rides on him.
In short, He-Man is a giant penis who rides on a giant penis.
You're looking at the Deluxe Model Sword of Omens made by toy giants Bandai. This is from the animated series "ThunderCats". This sword starts out small, but when it is needed it grows longer. The toy has a telescopic blade. The real thing is, of course, magical. It is wielded by muscular (and imaginatively named) hero Lion-O.
What I was going to try to argue is that throughout most of human history, men have needed and used tools, and most tools have been sticks of some kind. Objects which are basically phallic. Whenever such tools have also been used as weapons, the man capable of usefully wielding the biggest one was obviously making a show of his breeding fitness, and hence sexual prowess. Big tools = big penis. This is so fundamentally unavoidable that any hand-held device, no matter how innocuous, can be interpreted as phallic if you really want to.
Consequently the writer should be extremely cautious and wary around cases like Lion-O's sword or the whole He-Man thing (shudder). If you find you've written an epic battle where the combatants keep pulling out bigger swords, then, well, I guess you already know what you're doing. I sure hope so.
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