One-line review

An indispensable book on editing for the layperson that applies to more than just business editing–the cover does not do the content justice.

What drew me to the book

Jim Taylor, the author of Quick Fixes for Business Writing, was giving a workshop on his eight step editing process through the Editors Association of Canada (EAC). I wasn’t inclined to go until other editors (some with 30 years of experience) raved about previous workshops by Jim Taylor. I reconsidered, but ultimately couldn’t make it but there was mention of a book based on the workshop so I tracked that down at my local library.

My thoughts on the book

I have a confession to make: You know the person who judges a book by its cover? I have to admit that’s me. The cover of Quick Fixes for Business Writing has a very low-budget feel to it that would have put me off without the background that pushed me to check out the book in the first place. It’s also double-spaced (which seems an odd choice to me) and has neither a table of contents nor an index. The content, however, is great. So great that I actually ordered my own copy from the publisher (they only sell direct) for my reference library (that would be the bookcase next to my desk).

So why did I like this book?

It helped me get a handle on one of the toughest problems of editing, which is fixing a piece of writing without imposing your own style and voice onto it. This book’s subtitle is An Eight-Step Editing Process to Find and Correct Common Readability Problems and that’s what makes it valuable: It gives you a system to assess a particular writer’s most pressing editing needs as well as a system for pinpointing what types of things need changing and why. The why is important because as an edit becomes more invasive it becomes more noticeable to the writer (and many writers will question why you are rearranging or changing their words).

This book is written for the layperson, in particular the business manager who has to edit reports or other documents written by subordinates and co-workers. The eight steps move from least invasive (changes least likely to be noticed by an author) to most invasive (rewriting sentences and rearranging paragraphs). It is written in a straightforward and conversational way that guides you through what to do, how to do it and why to do it.

Although the focus of the book is editing business writing, the principles and steps can be adapted to other types of writing. If I’m faced with editing my own writing, I now pull the book off the shelf and start going through the eight steps. Having the steps prevents that paralysis phase of not knowing where to begin–especially with a long piece of writing.

About the book author

Jim Taylor can be found online at his blog.

Find this book online

Quick Fixes for Business Writing: Productive Publications US | Canada

#1: A judge ordered a pharmaceutical executive to write a book. Now that’s punishment!

#2: Not really publishing related, but since I spend a lot of time on Twitter: 10 irrational behaviors on Twitter that’d make you look crazy in real life.

#3: What would you do if someone cut your salary by 23%? I’d probably do what this editorial cartoonist for the Boston Globe did. (It’s this kind of thinking that makes me well-suited to freelance work and not so much to having a boss).

#4: It takes a special sort of person to ponder “Menstrual Cycles in Romance Writing & Reading.”

Enjoy.

Ever wondered what private detectives do? Well I’m toying with the idea with having a main character of mine work as one, so I picked up a copy of Private Eyes: A Writer’s Guide to Private Investigating (Howdunit Series) by Hal Blythe, Charlie Sweet, and John Landreth to see what I could find out.

There are good things and bad about this book. The good thing is that it brings up a lot of issues that I had not considered so it got me thinking about aspects of a private investigator’s life that I would not have thought of on my own. The bad thing is that it doesn’t really address most of the issues in enough detail for the book to be more than a starting point.

One of the bad things is that this book is very, very outdated since it was written in the pre-Internet era. So any chapter dealing with technology or paperwork is more or less useless since surveillance technology has changed and much of the information private investigators would be asked to track down has moved online. It should go without saying that any references to what a P.I. makes are unreliable (which the book itself admits).

There is also little information about the laws governing private investigators in the United States. In part this is because the laws differ from state to state, but some kind of overview or comprehensive comparison would have been helpful.

I have to say that I was a bit taken aback by some of the cases related by the P.I. (John Landreth) in this trio of authors. He relates how he framed one guy by taking him over the border to Canada (for which, as a Canadian, I say thanks but no thanks for the “present” Landreth), drugging him, then firing a gun in the motel room and placing it in the guy’s hand before calling the RCMP so that the guy would be extradited back to the US (To be honest, I’ve forgotten the why of this ploy and have been furiously paging through the book to find it to no avail, but it is in there — the details I’ve related stuck with me because it struck me as a highly unethical ends-justify-the-means type of set up).

Landreth also describes manufacturing evidence in a divorce case by way of staging photographs. All the while, the book relates descriptions of the bad seeds in the industry of which Landreth is not supposed to be an example. Since I am not an expert in the area of investigations, I cannot comment on how much this book reflects the experience of the majority of P.I.s or what the legalities of his actions are. I did find it highly instructive to read the reviews on amazon by several private investigators who were so incensed by the activities related by Landreth that they felt compelled to comment.

The one fact related in the book that I am an expert on was false, which did not leave me with a good feeling since it calls into question the quality of fact checking that the book went through. The book claims that the character Remington Steele was named after a gun. As any fan of the show knows, that is 100% false. The character Remington Steele is named after a typewriter and a football team (this is stated in one of the early shows that I have on DVD).

On the whole, I found this book a useful starting point for my research but that is all it is — a starting point. If you can pick up a cheap used copy, it might be worth your while but I wouldn’t use it as my only reference. I’ll be reading and reviewing the rest of the books in the Howdunit series this summer (curiously enough, in 1998 there was another book released in this series on investigation: Just the Facts, Ma’Am: A Writer’s Guide to Investigators and Investigation Techniques (Howdunit) that I will review “soon”).

Private Eyes is available at online retailers like amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk as well as bricks and mortar stores.

Oh, and if you have some suggestions for similar books for writers, I’d love some leads.

I don’t usually find diet books of particular interest. After all, there are only so many different ways to say lose weight by burning more calories than you take in. The problem is convincing yourself to eat less and exercise more.

The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size by Julia Cameron is a diet book that approaches emotional eating from the perspective of using writing to uncover subconscious motivations for what we do. If you can separate the ideas from the author’s negative attitude towards food, it may be what you need to get you thinking about weight loss in a different way.

The Writing Diet proposes a program that uses writing to uncover the reasons for overeating and/or underexercising. The book is separated into two parts. The first part proposes seven tools for weight loss, some mediated by writing and some not. The second section looks at various situations/issues that arise when trying to lose weight and addresses them specifically.

The thought of writing can be intimidating for some people. Fortunately, the writing proposed in this book doesn’t require a good command of grammar, spelling, or even proper sentence structure. The proposed writing habits are in the form of journalling and inksheds (a type of stream of consciousness writing). The goal is to use inksheds in the morning and journalling whenever you eat anything to raise your own consciousness about why you are overeating or underexercising. If that sounds like a lot of writing to do, it is; but if you can develop the habit it can lead to insights into your own behaviour.

I’ve done the equivalent of Morning Pages (stream-of-consciousness writing done upon waking) in writing workshops and I agree that they can have tremendous value in unearthing what is lurking in the subsconscious. The idea of writing every time I eat or any time I think of eating as proposed by Cameron is too onerous and time consuming for me to adopt on a regular basis. While some may find it useful, it feels like a time suck to me — the same reason I’ve never managed to keep track of calories for long (to be clear, Cameron doesn’t advocate calorie counting but I find it at the same level of time suck as writing every time I eat).

Cameron has some suggestions for sticking with weight loss that don’t involve writing directly. For example she recommends walking (starting with 5 minutes because who doesn’t have 5 minutes). Cameron also proposes planning a culinary date once a week to explore new cuisine or try a new restaurant. While the culinary date sounds interesting, I found some of her other suggestions less appealing.

Cameron borrows from 12-step programs by introducing the concept of a sponsor (called a Body Buddy) to help you stick to new eating habits (and show your food log to). In keeping with the 12-step ethos, Cameron suggests unhealthy eating is on par with alcoholism which explains why throughout the book unhealthy eating is treated as if it were a disease. It is unfortunate that the book is infused with a negativity towards food because it taints the many useful ideas presented for those struggling to lose weight.

In addition to discussing unhealthy eating as a disease, Cameron also talks about snack attacks, food being an enemy, fighting wars and battles with food, and eating legally. She talks about clean eating, downfalls when you don’t eat clean and other language that makes unhealthy eating sound not only like a disease but a sin. There is talk of spirituality, outside power, and religion at various points in the book as well which seems unnecessary and narrows the audience for the book. Long time readers of the blog will know that I do not like religion in my secular topics unless the book is clearly marked and marketed as such (which this book isn’t, although IF I had been aware of Julia Cameron’s other titles I might have expected the spirituality aspect of the book).

Though I found myself picking and choosing parts of the book to use, it has some interesting ideas in spite of the issues I’ve mentioned. If your view of food already coincides with Cameron’s then the negative language may not bother you. Likewise for the talk of spirituality and religion.

If you eat for emotional reasons and think you can develop a daily journalling habit (among other things), then this book might help you gain traction in developing a healthier lifestyle. For myself, I’ve never managed to keep a journal for longer than a week so I haven’t managed to apply this book for very long yet. If I ever do manage to get anywhere with this book, I’ll discuss it in my Read It, Live It, Blog It Reading Challenge posts.

You can find The Writing Diet and other Julia Cameron books at amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.ukas well as other online and bricks and mortar booksellers.

I have been tempted, in the last few weeks, to send copies of Garner’s Modern American Usage to a number of television news anchors and reporters both here in Canada and in the US. I have taken to yelling at the television set (and yes, I know they can’t hear me) every time some reporter or talking head refers to Barack Obama’s win of the US election as “historical.” It’s historic, people. Historic. Not historical. They are not interchangeable adjectives. Historic means “famous or important in history.” Historical just means it happened in the past. All elections, once over, are historical but few are historic.

If it wasn’t for the fact that it’s my television, which I worked long and hard for and can’t afford to replace, the yelling would be followed by the throwing of a few usage guides and dictionaries (in my world they would zip right through the television screen and bonk said reporter or talking head square in the forehead). Alas, I haven’t quite broken with reality enough to think that my fantasy would actually come true.

Fox is a particular offender (don’t judge me, some of my favourite shows are on Fox and occasionally I forget to change the channel and end up listening to news that makes no sense at all until I realize I’m watching the nightly news for the wrong country — I went over a decade without cable so I’m still not used to having American channels). There are offenders at Canadian news anchor desks as well, so don’t think I’m just picking on Americans. Jon Stewart and Rick Mercer, both political satirists and authors, unsurprisingly get the word right.

So what good would a usage guide do? Well, if you’re unfamiliar with them (and many people are), usage guides are a little bit like dictionaries but instead of listing the definitions of words, they list the proper usage of words. A usage guide is the kind of reference book that you pick up when you want to remind yourself of the difference between effect and affect (which trips a lot of people up), the difference between historic and historical (*cough*), or the difference between continuous and continual. There are also entries on when to use which and when to use that.

These guides are also useful to distinguish usage that is wrong as opposed to usage that differs between American, Canadian, and British dialects (there are, of course, more English dialects than that but Garner’s covers these three for the most part). Knowing how usage varies between dialects as well as what is just plain wrong is very important for anyone editing and for anyone writing in this global world of ours.

There are many usage guides out there, but as an all-around general-use guide I find Garner’s most useful. No matter what I’m looking for, 99.9% of the time I find it in Garner’s. I asked a former board member of the Editor’s Association of Canada for a recommendation for a Canadian usage guide and she suggested the Oxford Guide to Canadian English Usage, but I rarely end up using it unless I am looking up something particularly Canadian (I don’t think it makes a difference, but my edition is the first edition rather than the second edition being sold now). Most of the more general usage problems I look up aren’t in the Oxford guide, but are invariably in Garner’s.

If you have a dictionary, you should probably have a usage guide as well, particularly if you write for work or for pleasure. No one may point out your usage mistakes to you, but people notice and it affects their opinion of you (I’m not saying it’s right; I’m just saying that it happens). Everyone is prone to usage mistakes and most of us aren’t aware of the ones we are making (otherwise we wouldn’t make them). You can’t rely on newspapers, magazines, or television to teach proper usage (in fact, Garner’s examples of faulty usage are all drawn from newspapers and magazines).  To get it right, you need a usage guide.

(There’s probably a usage error in this post somewhere … no one’s perfect).

There are a couple books on writing that I make a point of rereading at least once every year. It’s not that I don’t retain the information, but I like to bring it out of whichever neurons it’s been hiding in when I get stuck in my fiction writing (I’m also finding it useful for book reviewing, which is something I hadn’t thought of until I started reviewing books). Usually I do this rereading over the summer, but it didn’t get done this year, which explains why I’m having trouble with my current project, which was supposed to coincide with NaNoWriMo, but I wasn’t prepared in time so I’m shifting it to mid-November to mid-December (or so I tell myself).

In any case, books on writing fiction are useful not only for writers, but for anyone who has to analyze fiction (or survive English 101, which I managed to put off until my thirties). The book that I read before revising drafts is Between the Lines: Mastering the Subtle Elements of Fiction Writing, which I have already reviewed (I will update that sparse review the next time I reread that book). The book that I reread before starting a project (or, ideally when looking for story ideas) is 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias.

As I was rereading it this year, I started thinking that it was a really good book for book reviewers to read (and English majors, I suspect, though I have no first-hand experience with that). People who read a lot develop an intuitive understanding of what makes a good book. It’s like art, “I know it when I see it.” That’s all well and good, but if I tell you it’s a good book or a bad book because that’s how I feel then it doesn’t do you much good in judging whether it’s a book you want to pick up or not.

20 Master Plots is useful because not only does it define what each type of plot is (including plots of mind, or character-focused plots), but it also lists the major phases or elements of each plot. It explains the plot focus (action, character, or situation) and what differentiates similar plots. Each chapter is a separate plot with examples of well-known works that typify each plot as well as advice on how to construct that plot type.

I find 20 Master Plots useful as a writer, but also as a reader. If I find a book unsatisfying and can’t put my finger on why, then I can look up the plot type and see if I can spot which element is missing or poorly executed or what-have-you in that novel. Often I know it intuitively, but need to figure out how to explain myself in a way that readers will find useful.

If you write fiction and need inspiration for a plot or help with the mechanics, this is a useful reference to have. If you analyze stories, you might find 20 Master Plots useful as a plain English guide to various plots and their typical components.

Jessica Page Morrell is an author and writing instructor. In Between the Lines she goes through what makes a story or novel extraordinary.

This is one writing book of mine that is heavily stickied (with Post-It flags). I reread it before I write a first draft of a novel or novella so that I have the concepts in mind, and then I consult it when I write the subsequent drafts to address the inevitable weaknesses in the first draft (also known as The Shitty First Draft).

Morrell’s writing is very readable. She uses examples from classics as well as contemporary bestsellers (Charles Dickens to Michael Crichton) to explain elements that take a work to the next level. This is one of my favourite writing books because it addresses the work as a whole and helps you get insight into how to fix or enhance that first draft (or write a better first draft to begin with).

She explains why as well as how for each of the elements that she covers with examples, tips, tricks, and guidelines. Common pitfalls for each element are also examined. Elements covered include (from the Table of Contents):

• Backstory
• Cliffhangers & Thrusters
• Epilogues
• Epiphanies & Revelations
• Flashbacks
• Foreshadowing
• Imagery & Other Charms
• Pacing
• Prologues
• Sense of Place
• Sensory Surround
• Subplots
• Subtlety
• Suspense
• Tension
• Theme & Premise
• Transitions

Very useful and worth every penny.