Janna is fond of replying to the question — “Do you want the bad news first or the good news first?” — by saying “There is no bad or good, you have to deal with it all.”
That’s an incredibly mature way of dealing with life.
I am not quite so mature.
I always prefer the Bad News first because that is obviously the most conditional and powerful cudgel the teller of the news hopes use to influence your behavior: Get the chit out of the way so you can enjoy the cream.
Is a writer an author or just a fixer?
Is it possible words can go wrong?
Or is only the one who fixes words against each other to blame if context and meaning are skewed in understanding?
How can we possibly begin to comprehend each other in the language of a common tongue if words can have different meanings based on position in a sentence and the character of the fixer?
Do words ever have a proper ending? Or do they just eternally float in space waiting for new interpretations, inspirations and analysis by boring minds?
Today is the sixth anniversary of the crowning of the Ground Zero Death Pit where the World Trade Center used to stand.
I have written about that life-changing, world-modifying, event every year since the attack and I have come to gruesomely realize there are some dark pits that no words can ever begin to fill.
Publishers and agents hate it when authors share the specifics of our contracts with each other and that is precisely why we can, and must, share all the details of our deals.
I like Deal Memos because they’re just as binding as a real contract and they can save a lot of time and heartache.
If time is of the essence — and the tar pit of approvals is bearing down on you and a project that needs to completed fast — use a Deal Memo to trick out the most important details that both parties have agreed to, and you can make it binding via email and with replies of agreement.
Deal Memos can codify and express and protect both sides until a formal paper contract can be drawn — and quartered! — for official signatures and all the unnecessary and punishing boilerplate.
Turning down work can be a good thing if the price and terms aren’t right.
You, as an author, must know your value in the marketplace even if those around you — like agents and friends and publishers and managers — do not.
If you get a dollar a word for writing an article, do not allow yourself to be lowballed at a dime a word.
You know your bottom line. You know your ability. Trust the faith in yourself. Demand the wages and royalties and stipends you deserve.
To back down from the needs of the self is to damage the needs and wants of others who hope to walk along down the path of success with you.
Saying “No” to a bad deal can mean a “Yes” to own well-being.
Authors should never write as “Work For Hire” because it demeans their aesthetic and demands they are nothing more than ordinary laborers with no investment in the future profitability of the project.
It is hard to persuade new writers away from the “Work For Hire” carrot because the initial, solitary, payment can be more immediately enticing than lower upfront money against a future royalty percentage.
If you get royalties you are in partnership with your publisher. If you are “Work For Hire” you’re used up when you’re done writing.
Publishers live to exploit that hungry author desire for fast money now — and in the process of the “Work For Hire” hiring — the author not only loses a potential profit bonanza, but also sells out their self-respect, self-worth, and fellow authors.
It isn’t enough to just have an idea because everyone has an idea every day.
Our challenge as authors and artists and poets and pedants is to form the idea and bend it into something new — preferably with the force of reason and against the recognition of other ideas — to make something holdable from the whole.
An idea that stretches is a thought that lives in multiple dimensions and when we brand that creative process into something others find appealing, we have reached the nadir of suffering and we are on our way to the pinnacles.
I am convinced all candidates for public office should be given a timed, public, writing test so we can witness in live time the real logic of their mental process and reasoning.
Do we appreciate their arguments and rationale?
A writing test confirms or disproves if the candidate is true, educated, and appropriately emotionally expressive.
A writing test gives us the best educated insight into the confirmed person beyond the fluff and the handlers and those who “shape the message.”
You cannot hide from your words or the consequences of your thoughts.
We just finished writing the Google Apps Administrator Guide for Thomson Publishing and we are now Daring David Pogue. We have composed the following missive to the master Mac author:
Dear David Pogue:
We are daring you — actually, DOUBLE SECRET daring you (and when “we” say dare we mean “I’ but there is more power in the collective imagination) — to ignore us.
We are coming at you — hard and heavy in all your safe places and in The New York Times Square tower — by writing two new Apple books for Thomson/Cengage Publishing due to hit international bookshelves soon:
Picture Yourself Learning Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
and
Picture Yourself Learning Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
We are hungry. We are dedicated. We are fast. We will outlive you!
Thank you.
Sincerely,
David W. Boles (aka “The WordPunk“) Boles Books Writing and Publishing http://BolesBooks.com
NOTE: We have yet to actually send that note directly to Mr. Pogue for we are in fear of appearing ungrateful and inappropriate in the light of our ongoing love of his previously hard-won books on the Mac OS and Apple.
P.S.: We also mention here and now we are writing another new book for Thomson called Picture Yourself Learning American Sign Language, Level 1 and it includes a Bonus DVD for learning the signs and phrases. Janna M. Sweenie is once again our co-author after our raging success writing Hand Jive: American Sign Language for Real Life together.
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