Hens Lay Eggs
food for thought
Starting the new year with an empty plate
I’ve never been one of those hustling freelancers who is able to fill the sales funnel and load the pipeline with projects weeks or months in advance. In rare cases, I’m able to build a small backlog.
This inability may be due to my admittedly lackluster marketing abilities. Regardless, I’m beginning 2024 with an empty plate and need to fill it with paying projects.
So, why should you hire me?
Comprehensive, holistic editing. The gold standard of editing entails up to eight rounds of editing. I’ve met few independent authors who can afford that. Most not only can’t afford it, they also want to expedite the process and get it done as soon as possible. However, once-and-done editing generally isn’t sufficient. Therefore, I offer substantive editing that is comprehensive and holistic. This means I not only take a bird’s eye view of your manuscript, I also get into the nitty gritty of punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Most clients’ manuscripts go through two rounds of editing: first an intensive, deep round of editing that always results in revisions and a second, lighter round of editing mostly focused on copy errors.
Proofreading. Proofreading is the final step before publication. It puts the final polish on the content and often includes reviewing more than the text. It includes a final check and correction of photo captions, images and image placement, pagination, and page formatting.
Book design. Because I was in charge of newsletter production for past employers, I offer competence where most editors don’t: page layout. There’s more to book design than filling pages with words. The page’s appearance directly affects the reader’s experience. From font choices to margins to columns and more, I have expertise applicable to both books and newsletters.
Ghostwriting. I’m an author and my books generally receive positive reviews. I’ve written professionally for business since 1990. As writing is not a static skill, I continually learn and adapt to contemporary trends and preferences. However, if you week a well-told story or engaging article, let’s talk.
So, why would you not hire me?
You want APA, MLA, or other style and/or refernecing convention. I am also proficient with the Associated Press Styleguide and the Chicago Manual of Style. If you want APA, MLA, or some other style, then I’m not your editor.
You write horror or scholarly works. Since horror gives me nightmares, I’ll be happy to recommend your manuscript to a colleague who enjoys that genre. And I’ll be candid: academic referencing details escape me.
You have a rushed deadline. Proper, thorough editing, proofreading, writing, and book design take time. Sometimes, I can accommodate a fast deadline and quickly deliver a project. That depends upon my workload at any given time, the scope of work your project needs, and the size of the project. I don’t do “machine editing,” so your 50,000-word manuscript won’t be delivered in less than a week.
You want the cheapest service. There’s a saying that there’s cheap, fast, and good: pick two. You can’t have all three. Low-bid vendors often promise all three and deliver poor quality work. For rates consistent with what professionals in my service area charge and commensurat with the quality expected, consult the Editorial Freelancers Association. My rates are in line with these rates.
High Quality Work, Professional Service
That’s what I deliver: high quality work and professional service. It might not be as expensive or take as long as you fear.
There’s no way that I can think of to guarantee the ROI of professional editing and book design, because you can’t measure sales lost. However, your readers expect and deserve the quality of their books and newsletters and articles to be comparable to that produced by the big publishers. I can help you with that.
If you have a manuscript, magazine, newsletter, or other project needing ghoswriting, editing, proofreading, or page design services, contact me at henhousepublishing@gmail.com. Let’s talk.
‘Twas the day after Christmas …
No, I’m not going to spoof the iconic poem by Clement Clarke Moore.
Actually, you may count yourself lucky that I remembered this week’s blog post at all.
You see, Christmas is a bittersweet time for me. The last time I saw my elder son was at Christmas. He visited for the holiday. He accompanied us to Christmas Mass. He left before New Year’s Day. And, about three weeks later, he died.
I miss him terribly.
I cannot help but recall the last time I saw him.
So, the Christmas season all the way through January are tough for me.
Regardless, I hope you were able to enjoy the holiday and its attendant festivities. And, if you have the inclination, say a prayer for those who grieve over the holidays.
Be real: Don’t let your story crash and burn
Authenticity is a popular word and concept in marketing, whether you’re trying to build rapport with a potential employer or with potential clients. Authenticity also refers to being real which translates into versimilitude.
I write about realism in fiction a lot, because all too often inexperienced authors write for themselves and forget about their readers.
That said, every author should, first and foremost, write for himself or herself. As I put it: Write the story you want to read. However, that pertains mostly to the first draft. In the following drafts during the editing and revision process, you turn your manuscript into something that other people want to read.
To make even the most absurd, illogical, strange, incredible, impossible story appeal to readers, you must introduce realism. Facts and truth (which are not necessarily the same) add that verisimilitude that earns the reader’s trust.
Here’s a case in point.
In a writing forum, a writer posted about his story which takes place on a dark planet. He specified the planet does not orbit a sun and light is provided by distant stars. I immediately responded with questions, because … science.
A planet that receives no sunlight has no life. There can be no photosynethesis, which plants need. There can be no heat, which a sun provides. There are no seasons. There is no way to measure time. Any moons orbiting the planet will not be seen, because moons do not emit light; they reflect it.
In short, there are a lot of issues with that author’s premise that need to be resolved in a realistic manner before readers will entrust that author to take them further into a world of fantastic impossibility.
On a smaller scale, I encounter the lapse of realism frequently in historical fiction. These lapses usually concern horses, language, manners, dress, and other elements that could easily be resolved with a bit of research. For instance, trousers seldom had zippers before the late 1800s; ladies didn’t wear panties until the 1920s and didn’t wear drawers until the mid-1800s. When is comes to pre-industrial travel, a carriage and team of horses didn’t get from London to Gretna Green in a few hours or within a day or two; that journey along the Great North Road took about nine days in good weather and with decent road conditions.
If you write fiction, then it’s still important to do your research. That research need not be terribly deep or extensive, but it should establish veracity and the conviction that you know what you’re writing about. It’s only when you have secured the reader’s trust with those elements of realism that the reader will follow you into the fantastic.
Even in science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal fiction where the reader comes to the story ready to trust the author, verisimilitude is crucial. A lack of realism disappoints the reader and causes the story to crash and burn.
That’s a good way to lose a reader.
In addition to doing your research to ensure verisimilitude, another way to ensure realism in your stories is to hire an editor. Realism is not something editing software can detect. Editing software is helpful for identifying grammar errors and even in tightening overwritten prose, but it cannot detect plot holes, inconsistencies, time lapses, disjointed connections, or verisimilitude.
Are you writing a story? By all means, use editing software to help you refine your work, then hire a competent editor to make it better yet and tackle what software cannot. Hen House Publishing does all that and more.
Author
Hard boiled, scrambled, over easy, and sunny side up: eggs are the musings of Holly Bargo, the pseudonym for the author.
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Karen (Holly)
Blog Swaps
Looking for a place to swap blogs? Holly Bargo at Hen House Publishing is happy to reciprocate Blog Swaps in 2019.
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