Andy Unedited
Exploring Books, Life, and Writing
Propped up on a desk in the front row of the room, thirty-something Mr. James Ryan sat silently surveying my high school English class. I was a junior on the first day of school. The first minute of class. We quieted down waiting to see what he would say. Would he introduce himself? Tell us …
For many, the work of editors can seem mysterious, if not a bit intimidating. As writers we know they hold the power to get us published, but we have little idea how the process works. One doorway into this mystery is the four phases of editing. All four phases can be handled by a single …
I clearly remember my second day as an editor forty-five years ago. The first day was mostly orientation. But the second day an author came in to discuss a contracted manuscript with Jim Sire, my boss. I sat in watching and listening as they discussed the editing Jim had done. That morning and afternoon, the …
One of the best writing strategies is to write a lot of bad stuff. Yes, the more bad stuff we write, the better. If that sounds counterintuitive, it is. Here’s how it works. One reason Beethoven and Picasso produced so many great works was that they produced a lot of ordinary, unknown works. We might …
Do I get letters? Yes. I get letters. Dear Mr. Editor Person: Often I read words or phrases that make my grammatical hair stand on end, my syntactical stomach churn, and my semantical head bow in grief. Someone uses “impact” as if it were a verb or “ask” as if it were a noun, and …
The great pianist Vladimir Horowitz practiced the scales every day, even in his eighties. He wanted to continually master his craft so that he would be “be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.” The same is true for us. Here are two skills you can master. Don’t worry about …
Benjamin Dreyer is the Stephen Colbert of grammar, style, and punctuation—informative while always being cheerfully acerbic. When he tells us in Dreyer’s English to never use actually, it is “because, seriously, it serves no purpose I can think of except to irritate.” When offering examples, Dreyer also gives us cause to smile. Honorary titles should …
When people hand me a proposal or manuscript for a non-fiction book and ask me for a publishing opinion, we’ll talk about a number of issues. But I have one chief diagnostic question. Almost anything and everything an author has to say flows from the answer to this question. It tells writers what kind of …
What will publishing be like in fifty years? Will we be reading books from our brain implants? Will people still love print books but be printing and binding them in their home or office? Will reading increase because people will have more time as they travel in self-piloted personal drones?
Bill was thinking about a mid-life career switch and wondered if publishing might be the right thing for him. He knew conventional wisdom says that you should move into expanding industries. But since he likes books and ideas, editing came to mind. So we talked.