“I’ve heard horror stories about editors,” an author told me recently at the start of a project. Another said to me, “I was really expecting the worst during editing.” Horror stories? The worst? Really? What is going on in the publishing world that has authors dreading editors and their fiendish red pencils? I know a lot of editors, and I don’t think we’re a horrible lot. Yet editors do offer up similar lamentations about working with authors: “I need to start charging a stupidity fee” or “Why won’t they just accept that I’m right.” If you’re on either side of this editorial war, I recommend you read on for some rules of engagement:

1. The No Asshole Rule: Editors, authors aren’t trying to push every one of your buttons, and authors, editors aren’t trying to remove all of the personality from your writing. So let’s keep the snide remarks, the thinly veiled judgments, and the condescension out of the editorial process. And if you feel yourself writing a note, memo, or email in anger or frustration, wait a while and reread it before you send it on. Oh, and read The No-Asshole Rule.

2. The Be Reasonable Rule: Yes, there are rules of grammar. And yes, there are guidelines for style. But the guidelines are just that: guidelines. They are not the Ten Commandments. Nobody will go to Hell for breaking them. And as much as I believe in the Chicago Manual of Style, think about how many ambiguous guidelines it offers up or how many changes they make from one edition to the next. So, editors, to quote my favorite style guide, “when a writer expresses a strong preference for a style that’s reasonable and harmless, there isn’t much point in fighting over it, especially if he has already prepared the manuscript consistently with that style.” And authors, give your editors a break and don’t ask them to break too many “rules.” There’s a pretty good reason for most of them, and we editors like our rules.

3. The Mutual Respect Rule: Editing should be a collaborative process based on mutual respect. The editor should respect the author’s expertise and passion. The author should respect the editor’s expertise and passion. Let’s establish two assumptions on which to base the editor-author relationship: (1) Everybody is doing their best to create a manuscript that is as good as it can be. (2) Nobody is infallible.

And remember, without authors, there would be no editors, and without editors, we’d be reading books with typos, dangling modifiers, poorly executed plot arcs . . .

Is it disloyal to admit that I admire, sympathize with, even like AP style? It’s true that Chicago will always be my first love. And 80 percent of the AP Stylebook is just alphabetized terms in loose chapters. To those of us with wandering eyes and a shaky grasp of the alphabet, that’s just cruel. Sure, it’s straightforward, but if I want to know about commas, it’s pretty well guaranteed I’ll get stuck reading about colloquialisms, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and commodities before I discover I’m to look up the entry under punctuation. Where, of course, I’ll find Purim, Pulitzer Prizes, and a direction to the punctuation chapter. Well, why didn’t you just send me there in the first place? (On the other hand, ask me about Lithuanian independence!)

But AP is great for the applications it’s designed for—fitting a lot of information in not a lot of space, and making sure pretty much anyone will understand. It’s not a collection of literary tradition and best practices like Chicago. It’s a living manual to getting everything right and getting it to press, quickly. No copyeditor with a deadline breathing down her neck gets tempted into reading about colloquialisms when she’s looking for commodities. It’s fast and it’s practical.

A lot of AP guidelines are elegant, too, like the rules for numbers. Numbers always mean a compromise between consistency and common sense, so there are a lot of exceptions in any guide. But the AP’s basic concepts can be stated in three sentences: Spell out a single digit (one, eight, 10). Use figures for measurements, scores, and years (6 feet, a 5-year-old girl, 1986, a 3-6 decision). And don’t be an idiot (a thousand times thank you, a quarter mile, fourscore and seven years ago). See? Easy!

It almost makes up for that ridiculousness about plurals.*

*A good writer would leave it there. A grammar geek would say “Apostrophe only for proper nouns ending in S? For appearance’ sake? You’ve gotta be freakin’ kidding me.” I guess we know which I am today.

When I first found out that I was expected to write a piece for the Big Bad Book Blog, I was stumped. As I sat staring at the blinking cursor on my computer screen I realized I could use this to my advantage. I decided to write about writer’s block. We’ve all had it dozens of times: the feeling of blank impossibility in the face of a writing project.

Writer’s block is generally defined as a temporary condition that prevents a writer from finishing–or beginning–a piece of work. It’s a phenomenon that almost every writer (of any genre) has experienced, and when it hits, it often seems insurmountable, as if the writer will never again be able to access his or her creativity and move the work where it needs to go. Luckily, there are some things you can do to overcome it.

1) Free Write

One of the best ways to get your creative juices moving again is to write–about anything. It doesn’t even have to be good. Just sit down, pen in hand, and let the ideas flow. A great way to do this is by using “free association.” Psychologists sometimes use this exercise with their patients to determine the subconscious cause of a problem. It can be similarly used by writers to understand the basis of their writer’s block or just to generate ideas.

2) Writer’s Exercises

We all know how important it is for athletes to warm up before a competition. Writers need to do the same, especially when the right words just aren’t coming. There are many sources for writer’s exercises; you can buy a book or “toolkit” meant to help writers overcome writer’s block in creative and fun ways. Some of these include:

• The Writer’s Toolbox: Creative Games and Exercises for Inspiring the “Write” Side of Your Brain by Jamie Cat Callan
• The Write Brain Workbook: 366 Ways to Liberate Your Writing by Bonnie Neubauer
• Creative Block: Over 500 Ideas to Ignite Your Imagination by Lou Harry

Or, you can browse websites offering exercises and advice. Some great sites are:

• Writing Resource Directory – offers links to writing exercises, writing forums, and samples of flash fiction, a format well-suited to jump-starting creativity
• Quotes for Writers – a huge compilation of quotes from literary heroes that will make you eager to put pen to paper (or, more likely, finger to keyboard). Sample: “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” –Gloria Steinem
• Get Writing – This site from the BBC offers some great resources, among them writing minicourses and a word cut-up tool

3) Get Out and Do Something
The easiest thing to do when you’re out of ideas and frustrated is to step away from what you’re working on and do something else. You’ll be surprised what taking a walk or going to the park or local coffee shop will do for your writing. You might see an interaction between people in a crowded place that sparks an idea. Or you might, during a moment of quiet contemplation, think of just what’s missing in your writing. Whatever you choose to do, it’s important to distance yourself from your work if you’re having trouble moving it where you want it to go.
Don’t forget that writer’s block is a temporary problem. It might go away after the first few exercises you try or before you round the block for the second time during a walk. Or it might stick around through hours of free association and dozens of visits to the coffee shop. But if you keep trying, you’re sure to have a breakthrough and get your writing back where it needs to be.

Forget all that business about checking a publisher’s submission guidelines before you send your manuscript in. The most important consideration when you’re preparing to take a project to the next level is whether your work itself is ready, fully conceptualized and mature. Who cares about typeface and font size if the content is half-baked? There’s no setting for “masterpiece” on my egg timer, but these guidelines will help you know when to call it done.

1. First of all, how long is it? If your manuscript is ninety-seven pages double-spaced, you’re not done yet. If it’s a thousand pages single-spaced, you likewise have some work before you. Most trade books have between 160 and 400 pages, but the right number of page depends on the genre you’re trying to enter and the purpose of your book. Do a little “market research” at the bookstore and figure out where you stand—you don’t have to match the other guys, but they are your competition. If your book is too fat or too thin, it will suffer.

2. Have you covered everything relevant? Here’s a test: When you tell people what you’re writing about and explain the concept to them, do they ask questions you don’t cover in the book? If so, you will probably want to add treatment of these common points before sending your manuscript out into the world. There’s no excuse for neglecting aspects of your topic readers want to hear about.

3. Of course, asking what readers want to hear about raises another question: who are your readers? Who is the target audience for your book? If you don’t know, you need to. Make sure that your focus isn’t too narrow or too wide. For instance, for a business book, “everyone with a job” is too broad an audience; “CEOs of Fortune 500 companies” is too narrow. Once you know who your audience is, list out what they want—and read through the manuscript to make sure you’re giving it to them.

4. Is your book really about something—something you can explain? This is the time to make sure you can describe in thirty seconds why your book is different from all the rest, practically helpful, and, of course, a must-read literary tour de force. Seriously, if you can’t say what it’s about and what it can do for the reader in thirty seconds or in the first page of the introduction, you probably need to refine your focus.

5. Have you gotten a second opinion? Don’t ask your mother. Instead, make your most tactless friend read through it, then nag her incessantly until she tells you she quit reading on page 34. Go to page 32 and figure out how to keep her reading. Repeat this process until you have no friends or someone finishes the book and likes it. If you already have no friends, a real live member of your target audience would be even better. You don’t have to take any advice you get, but you do have to listen and seriously consider it.

6. Is it neatly typed and formatted with minimal errors? I know I told you to forget the technicalities, but if you’ve made it this far, you’re ready to send it in. Congratulations!

Writers: Put away that inkwell and feather for a while and get hip to podcasts. We’ve already shown you the elements of a superb podcast; now we’ve prepared a list of podcast resources to a) strengthen your knowledge of the book industry and the writerly craft on an ongoing basis and b) give you ideas to cop for your own syndicated series. We hope as you explore them you’ll get a feel for the wide range of uses these little audio phenomena can be put to, and—if you’re one of those obsessed, reclusive, technologically clueless writer types—pick up some valuable new-media skills.

For your listening pleasure, a handpicked selection of writing/publishing podcasts:

Fiction

• AmericanWriters.com offers full podcasts on fiction writing (”The Shadow in the Hero,” “How to Open Your Story”) and quick, morsel-sized audio tips.
• Write Where You Belong: The Creative Writing Podcast is therapy for members of the writing community experiencing creative problems. Let Steve Yudewitz walk you through overcoming writer’s block and deciding if it’s time to throw in the towel on your writing career.
• Attendance at the Odyssey Writing Workshop will not only cost you tuition, but will require you to get dressed to hear the lectures. So, in lieu of paying a fee, brushing your teeth, and putting on pants, opt instead for the free monthly podcast, which offers advice from top fantasy, sci-fi, and horror writers.
• At FictionRight, husband-and-wife team Alan and Rebecca Lickiss cover fiction technique, interview fellow authors, and provide writing exercises.

Business

• 800-CEO-READ, supplier of business titles to corporations and other organizations, hosts a series of interviews, updated monthly, with their top authors.
• From HarperCollins Canada, Foreword Thinking is a podcast on business and motivational titles. Host Mitch Joel picks the greatest entrepreneurial brains in the book business.

Children’s

• Recorded over the faint, comforting din of an Ottawa coffee shop, Just One More Book features satisfyingly specialized discussions on “the children’s books we love and why we love them.” Break out the apple juice and sippy cup for the full effect.
• Childrensbookradio.com interviews kiddie lit authors who talk about what it takes to make a good read for the kids.
• Book Voyages gives listeners an elementary school library media specialist’s take on the children’s book market.

Miscellaneous

• When it comes to verb agreement, comma placement, misplaced modifiers, and a host of other common punctuational and syntactical trip-ups, the prolific Grammar Girl’s got you covered. Her “Quick & Dirty Tips” entertain and inform.
• The uselessness of most of the information at A Way With Words doesn’t mean it isn’t fascinating and addictive. Renegade word lovers Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett explore etymology and the origins of strange phrases, among other linguistic trivia. The Collective Noun Contest is a highlight.
• The Writing Show supplies wide-ranging audio resources to authors from a different guest each week, from analysis of self-publishing contracts to strategies for writing historical fiction to developing and packaging scripts for Hollywood.
• Didn’t make BookExpo this year? BookExpoCast.com has many of the highlight events and panel available via (you guessed it) podcast. Archives extend back to the 2006 expo.

In reaction to the floweriness of Romanticism, Ezra Pound aimed for clarity and precision in language use in the Imagism movement in poetry he helped originate in 1912. His intention is spelled out clearly in the first tenet of the Imagist manifesto: “To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly exact, nor the merely decorative word.”

We speakers of English have liberated our language somewhat from its prescriptive rules of usage, freeing it up so that it is more malleable and organic. As a result, though, we have become sloppy in our verbal and written communication. Occasionally this sloppiness results in the complete misuse of a word. For instance, how many times have you heard nonplussed erroneously used to express “showing no care or concern”? More often, however, sloppiness shows in a failure to see the nuance in the definitions of words, as in the case with disinterested, which means “impartial; free of bias” and uninterested, which means “indifference, lacking interest.” (I was guilty of using these two words interchangeably until I read William Safire’s cleverly titled New York Times article “Incorrections.”)

A personal pet peeve of mine is the use of notorious when famous is meant. Though notorious is listed in Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary as a synonym of famous, and though both words are partially defined as “being popularly known,” notorious has a dark aspect to it, implying malevolence and ill will. Ingid Bergman is famous. Typhoid Mary is notorious. Writing a best-selling novel will make you famous. Knocking off your editor if your book is not a bestseller may make you notorious. If Hitchcock’s film Notorious had been called Famous, the title wouldn’t have remotely alluded to the suspense-fueled psychological-thriller nature of the film. And do you think the songs of Notorious B.I.G. would have gotten as much play if he had called himself Famous B.I.G.?

If you spend time reading the “Synonym” sections that follow the definitions of some words in Webster’s, you will begin to get a feel for some of the subtle distinctions of the English language. For instance, misfortune is not mischance is not adversity is not mishap. And apt is not likely is not liable is not liable. Though the difference is often slight, it’s necessary to know the fine distinctions among words to liberate you from the current compression of language. Otherwise, you’re trying to communicate through puddles of muddy abstractions.

We’ve all had moments, often when talking to a parent, when a story veers off course and we have to suffer through a longwinded tale about the latest find at a yard sale, the pie Aunt Margie made, or an amazing new way to make money just by forwarding an email. (Sorry, Mom!) The story isn’t relevant, illuminating, or engaging, so the listener checks out. Well, the same thing happens when an author makes readers wade through pointless, unimaginative, clichéd examples in the course of trying to learn something from a book. Many writers fail to realize that the elements that make an example or case study good are the same elements that make a story good.

Using examples in most works of nonfiction is a great way to illustrate a point, particularly when those examples follow the rules of good storytelling. Here are a few guidelines to help you offer your readers a chance to be informed, engaged, and maybe entertained.

1. Avoid Adding Fluff: If you aren’t revealing something informative or interesting about your topic, why include an example at all? There’s nothing worse than an irrelevant example that’s thrown in because the author knows she needs examples and this is the best she could do. It’s loosely tied to the subject, but readers quickly lose interest when they realize it’s the written equivalent of dryer lint. Examples are only worth including if they enhance your reader’s understanding of the topic or present a unique perspective on how to apply the information in the real world. If they’re amusing, interesting, and engaging, all the better, but they must at least be relevant.

2. Try to Give Everybody Something: Think about your intended audience. While there may be a single unifying characteristic (interest in the love life of Albert Einstein, for example), there is also incredible variety in terms of interests, life experiences, basic demographics, and how much they care about what you’re saying. Use your examples to reach that broad and varied audience, not to exclude or annoy readers. A key benefit of using examples is improving how readers relate to the information. So make sure your examples are engaging by including a variety of situations, characters, backgrounds, and perspectives.

3. Don’t Overdo It: Yes, examples are great and can really enhance a reader’s experience. And it’s important to include a variety of examples to make sure that you aren’t speaking to one potential reader. But if every other paragraph in your book is an example, readers will start skimming, no matter how good the examples. Readers bought your book because they want to learn something, so the majority of the content needs to be original thought and ideas on the subject. Examples should be supplemental, not the core of the content (unless your book is just a collection of case studies).

4. Be Original: There are some very funny stories out there about successes or failures and the strange things people do, but if you ever saw the story in a mass email, your probably shouldn’t include it in your book, even if you’ve confirmed that it’s true (unless your book is a collection of urban myths). If you’ve heard the story a few times and you can’t remember exactly where, everybody else has probably heard it too. If the story has been covered repeatedly by every major newspaper and magazine, you may want to come up with a better option. The best examples and case studies are those that have people talking at cocktail parties–naming your book as the source. When it comes to examples, tried and true is not the safest route.

Follow these rules, and you’ll be one step closer to an informative, engaging book that will have people talking.

According to Global Language Monitor, the average native English speaker has a vocabulary of 14,000 words, a bleak number considering the English language lacks just 5,742 neologisms before it reaches the million-word mark. With so many options, it seems we would have a name for each nuance of our existence, each peculiar food combination, every shading of emotion, each time we seek extreme social withdrawal through isolation and confinement due to various personal social factors in our life (the Japanese term hikikomori).

If you’ve studied a foreign language, you probably remember how once you got beyond banal phrases like “I live in a house,” “I eat vegetables,” and “It is windy today,” the language began to unfold. You began to get glimpses into another culture without stepping on a plane. The more vocabulary you learned, the more insight you had into a different way of looking at the world. Perhaps you even came across a framework to help interpret and pinpoint your own view of the world and your place in it (the German term Weltanschauung).

As our world expands, its languages grow, continuously adopting new concepts and phrases. English has borrowed and appropriated a slew of words that slipped into the vernacular faster than you can say “attaccabottone” (Italian for someone who buttonholes, or traps you in a corner while they blather on and on). For example, who among us hasn’t used the term macho to describe a chauvinist, unsubtle alpha male (and in doing so reversed the Spanish sense of the word with the more positive connotations “courageous” and “valorous”)? And what soul-searching, angsty teen (an English term adopted by cultures around the world) hasn’t privately declared himself a nihilist, a concept first introduced to English speakers in a translation of Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. And we all experience a bit of Schadenfreude (German, gratification obtained from the troubles of others) when some self-righteous, hypocritical politician finally gets his comeuppance.

Mining foreign languages for their untranslatable words can not only help advance global understanding, it can also help you learn a bit about yourself, as I did when I listed a few of my favorites.

• Tatemae (Japanese): Public facade. What is expected by society and required according to one’s position and circumstances. This may or may not match one’s honne (see below).
• Honne (Japanese): A person’s true feelings and desires. These may be contrary to what is expected by society or what is required according to one’s position and circumstances. In Japan people often keep their honnes hidden from others, even family members and friends.
• Cynefin (Welsh): Attraction to a familiar place or habitat.
• Fernweh (German): The desire for new adventures in faraway, unknown places.
• Weltschmerz (German): The sorrow, disillusionment, and discontent experienced by someone who understands that the physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind.
• Enfant terrible (French): One who defies conventional, orthodox behavior, work, or thought.
• Cutre (Spanish): Anything that doesn’t match your standards or taste (not necessarily bad or tacky, just different from what you find appealing).
• Poshlost (Russian): Vulgarity, triteness, commonplace. Vladimir Nabokov in a 1967 Paris Review interview defined this term as “corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic and dishonest pseudo-literature, these are obvious examples.”

Anytime you’re writing nonfiction, it’s nice if you know a lot more about your topic than your audience does. That isn’t usually a problem—most of us write what we know. But how do you know your audience will get the point? And how do you avoid explaining too much and losing their attention? There’s a fine line between clarity and condescension—but you need to know where it is.

The best way to be sure that you haven’t over- or underexplained your topic is to find a couple of members of your target audience and have them read the part of your work in question. After they’ve read it, ask them a few questions—how long did it take? Did they ever lose interest or get lost? Is there any part that needs more explanation? Ask them to explain the concept back to you, then rework the piece to correct any problems.

This method is almost foolproof. But unfortunately, often a deadline doesn’t allow for focus groups and three rounds of revisions. When that’s the case, you still need to make sure your point is clear. Read the piece over yourself and imagine you have the same level of knowledge as your audience. Look at these specific areas:

Are there passages with heavy use of buzzwords or specialized vocabulary? Try to break up or rephrase them. Even readers familiar with the material can get lost in too much specialized language, and one misunderstanding on what the particular word of the moment means can unravel your entire argument for that reader.

Take a sample paragraph completely out of context and read through it. Does it still make sense? Is it clear why this information is being presented? If not, revise it, and do a few more spot-checks on other paragraphs. Readers who get lost need to be able to find firm ground to stand on soon after to help them work out what they don’t understand, and an argument that depends on immediate knowledge of pages and pages of information isn’t going to get your point across.

If the argument is complicated, try to keep your prose simple. There’s no reason to complicate it more with involved language. If you’re making a particularly crucial point, rephrase it or give an example of what you mean in the sentence immediately following to reinforce it.

To avoid sounding condescending, don’t define words or terms more than once. Give the explanation, then reinforce the meaning by using the word in context soon after and using synonyms in the surrounding text if you haven’t used it for a while. Repeat your key principles, but keep your reader engaged by using different words or making the key point a sort of “punchline” at the end of an example. The idea is to present the same information with enough variation that a reader who got it the first time won’t be bored, but a reader who didn’t has another chance to catch on. As a test, read the piece yourself. Do you find yourself skipping over certain passages? Condense them.

Finally, there’s really no substitute for a fresh pair of eyes. If you can’t get a member of your audience or a real live editor, ask someone you trust to tell you the truth. (This should not be Microsoft Word’s spellcheck function.) Don’t get upset if your pages come back covered in suggestions. You don’t have to take them all—you just have to think about them. Your reader stopped to tell you she had a problem. In the interests of clarity and respect for your audience, you owe your piece a second look.

You’ve spent hours beautifying your manuscript, preparing it for submission to your publisher or agent—or getting it ready to wow potential publishers and agents. Then you get a note from your editor that everything you’ve done to make it interesting and attractive is killing the editorial and production process. Oops. You cry yourself to sleep on your inspired manuscript pages.

Manuscript preparation is a strange little detail in the publishing world. It’s the bane of authors, editors, and production artists alike. Today the majority of writers are working on computers, not typewriters. They’re working in sophisticated word processing programs, not simple-format software with few options. And as wonderful as these advances are, they’ve caused a bit of confusion and consternation, particularly for the editors and production artists who work with the manuscript down the line. So if you want your manuscript to be publisher-friendly or if you want your submission to be taken seriously, here are a few tips.

If you are already working with a particular publisher, go to that publisher’s website and check out the specific guidelines for final manuscript submission. This will help keep the process smooth right from the beginning and will make sure that all of the editors and designers you’ll be working with don’t resent you.

If you don’t have a publisher yet, use the following guidelines:

• When choosing a font, use 12-point Times or Times New Roman for all of the text, including excerpts, block quotes, etcetera. You may use another font, or a larger or stylized font for headings, but keep the rest of the text simple. It may be boring, but it’s a standard that most publishers use. It helps them convert the manuscript page length into an estimate for the length of the final book.
• Set your line spacing to double-space for the entire manuscript.
• Don’t use extra space of blank lines between paragraphs.
• To mark the beginning of a new paragraph, just indent the first line. You can either use a tab or use the paragraph settings to maintain a first-line indentation. Do not use spaces instead of a tab.
• Use 1 inch margins on all sides of the page.
• Don’t use double spaces between sentences. A single space is the industry standard.
• If you have titled chapters (not just Chapter 1, Chapter 2), include a table of contents at the beginning of the manuscript.
• Keep all other styling simple. Do not set the elements of the manuscript (headings, chapter openings, etc.) the way you think they should appear in the final book pages. Your book will be designed by a professional designer, and the design work you spent hours creating in the manuscript will be tossed by the wayside.
• When creating tables, use the table creation tool in the word processing program you’re using.
• Insert comments in brackets ([ ]) between paragraphs regarding placement of images, graphs, tables, charts, and any other artwork.
  

For more detailed manuscript guidelines, you can always refer to the ever-enlightening Chicago Manual of Style.