editing

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. --Steve Jobs

Would you want to read a book that is typeset in 18-point cyan bolded Comic Sans with all the "important" words (and sentences...and paragraphs) in all capital letters, underlined, and italicized? 

If you say "yes, I would indeed enjoy reading a book formatted that way," then I shall label you a spiteful teller of tall tales. Take that!

If you really want to tick off an editor or an agent and have them immediately toss your hard work into the recycle bin, submit an improperly formatted manuscript. What's an improperly formatted manuscript? Anything that doesn't fit the submission guidelines of the publication or agency to which you're submitting. Always read the submission guidelines before you send a manuscript.

Barring that, an improperly formatted manuscript is anything that doesn't fit within the generally accepted standards of manuscript format. Generically, a standard manuscript should have the following characteristics:

1. one-inch margins all around
2. an easy-to-read typeface, such as 12-point Times New Roman or 12-point Courier New
3. left justification, not full and not center; the words on the right side of the page should form a ragged pattern as you scan down the page
4. a half-inch indent on the first line of each paragraph
5. double-spaced paragraphs, which means that the lines of text on your page are separated by a full blank line that is generated by your word processor's paragraph formatting function (not the Enter key); it also does not mean that you should manually include a blank line between paragraphs
6. your name, the shortened title of the story, and a page number in the upper right corner of every page except the first/title page
7. your name, address, email address, and telephone number in the upper left corner of the first page of the manuscript
8. the approximate number of words in your manuscript (your word processor's word count rounded to the nearest 100) in the upper right corner of the first page of the manuscript

Admittedly, the above guidelines were created before we regularly communicated our thoughts as bits over global network media, so they probably seem dated. Editors stick with them because not everyone's standard of "looks good and is easy to read" is the same. The guidelines ensure that writers do not try to become graphic designers and that the quality of the written work takes center stage in the mind of the agent or editor.

You're a writer, after all. You should be painting pictures with the meanings of your words, not with fonts, italics, bolds, colors, justification, and other word processor magic.

I suppose some editors are failed writers; but so are most writers. --T.S. Elliot

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time and technological progress sure do change things. Twenty years ago, I had to wait until I received a paper statement from my bank to balance my checkbook. Now I can just download transactions any old time I want. Back then, I had to wait until a television show that I missed showed in a rerun unless I had the foresight to record it on my VCR. These days, I might just be able to stream an episode of my favorite show any old time I want.

I also remember submitting short story manuscripts to magazines back in the late 80s and early 90s. Very few publications accepted electronic submissions at that time. And even if they did, you couldn't email them. You had to copy them to a--gasp!--floppy disk and drop them at the post office [cue a toddler asking "Mommy? What's a floppy disk?"]. Worst case, you typed or printed the manuscript and paid the postage to mail it along with a self-addressed stamped envelope to ensure its safe return when the publication rejected it. (Did I say when? I meant if.)

Once your manuscript was loaded onto the postal truck and en route to its destination, you could wait anywhere from six weeks to six months to a full year for a response--if you received a response at all.

The best you could do to mitigate such delays was to cull through the most recent edition of the Novel & Short Story Writers' Market, hoping against hope that you'd find a market that accepted your genre, accepted your word length, accepted stories from your region, happened to be open to submissions at that particular time of year, and promised a reply in less than six weeks.

Thank heavens for progress! These days you can often submit a manuscript to a magazine in a few seconds (any old time you want), just by clicking your email client's Send button, or by filling out a form and uploading the document through a Web browser. After much anticipation, you can expect to receive your response... in six weeks to six months to maybe even a year! If you receive a response at all.

Oh.

I guess some things don't change after all.

What's more, that process of submission and acknowledgement probably won't change much. The slushpiles on the desktops (real or virtual) of agents and editors might decrease a bit as a result of the new popularity of self publishing. Still, they're called "slushpiles" for a reason. They're massive. They're hard to drive through. And they sit there forever, not melting away.

So, here's one writer that you won't typically find complaining about the length of time it takes to get a response on a manuscript submission, even if it's a rejection (and most of them will be). Honestly, I'm happy if someone at a publication I submit to actually takes the time to pick up my submission and read through the whole thing.

Besides, our new culture of immediate gratification wears on me.

It's kind of nice to wait for something for a change.

Love the quote from Gail Lerner:

CBS has landed a highly sought multicamera comedy script by "Will & Grace" alumna Gail Lerner.

The project, tentatively titled "Open Books," has received a pilot commitment from the network. It revolves around book editor June and her circle of friends.

...

"I like the frustrations, the collaborative process," Lerner said of publishing. "Publishing is a lot like sitcoms. Although both are supposedly dying, that only makes people more passionate about creating the next great novel or show."