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The Power of No

One of the methods that have allowed me to accomplish all that I have done so far in my career is my emphasis on focus. Given all the opportunities and temptations that crop up in a typical day, it would be easy to spend time and energy on so many different projects and interesting activities that without focus I would make far less progress toward the relatively few goals and priorities that are most important to me.

Fortunately, to help me maintain a steady focus I have cultivated a considerable amount of what I like to call “the power of no.”

Simply put, I am far quicker and better at saying “no” to opportunities and temptations than I am at saying “yes.”

I suppose this trait originally became apparent to me when it came time to buy my first car. There were a lot of good cars to choose from, but I wanted a convertible. Despite the possible alternatives, I found myself saying “no” to every car that wasn’t a convertible. I discovered I would rather have no car than a hardtop. Eventually, I got my convertible, and it helped me feel happy every time I drove it.

It turns out that this penchant for saying “no” is more than just a trick for avoiding what I don’t want. It’s also a powerful tool for focusing on what is most important and for keeping my time and energy reserved for activities and work that lead me in the directions I most want to go.

I have learned through experience that by saying “no” to the vast majority of opportunities and temptations I encounter, I automatically leave room for what’s more important.

This power of “no” greatly simplifies my life and work and delivers good results in many situations.

For example, when people ask me to give a presentation or attend a meeting planned for weeks or months in the future, my schedule for that date and time almost always appears to be clear. That would make it easy, and even tempting, to say “yes” to the offer.

But I have learned that my schedule fills up pretty regularly with work and activities I’m happy to pursue. So now when I encounter offers to do something far in the future I make a simple calculation: if that presentation or meeting were scheduled for today or tomorrow, rather than for sometime further out, and if I would feel it to be less important or less tempting than what I have already scheduled for today or tomorrow, I say “no.”

I can do this because I feel secure that when that date and time finally roll around, I will find myself heavily scheduled with work and activities that I will judge to be more in line with my goals and aspirations and I will regret having agreed to this less important presentation or meeting.

In this way, the power of “no” saves me from making a great many commitments I will later regret.

Similarly, the power of “no” helps me filter out opportunities and temptations that don’t fall into the top tier of things I’d like to do. Basically, I try very hard to say “no” to pretty much every offer that comes my way. The idea is to say “no” unless I feel so excited or so strongly tempted by the opportunity that I just can’t bring myself to avoid it.

The practical result of my default response being “no” is that in most cases I say “yes” only to those opportunities and temptations that are most powerfully aligned with my desires, goals, and plans. The power of “no” is one of the big reasons my days tend to be filled not with run-of-the-mill activities, but with opportunities and activities that I enjoy on many levels.

Saying “no” more often than saying “yes” also simplifies my life in several ways:

1. First, it’s now a habit to say “no,” so I can do it most of the time without having to think very much.

2. Second, by saying “no” unless I’m deeply excited and tempted by the opportunity, I eliminate lots of complications that would be involved in juggling the personal and practical conflicts usually associated with the kind of commitments that don’t really excite me.

For example, I don’t have to go to meetings or make presentations that I’d really rather avoid. I don’t have to disappoint people by making last-minute cancellations because something more exciting has come up. And I don’t have to spend time with people I don’t enjoy simply because I foolishly filled my schedule with second-tier activities.

3. Third, by focusing on those few priorities and goals I really care about, my choices of what to do next are easier to make. There are only a relatively few items on my plate at any one time, all of them mostly important to me. So boring, irrelevant, and unfulfilling commitments are far less of a distraction and a drain on my time than they otherwise would be.

I’m not sure why I started using the power of “no” to keep my powder dry and focus on what I really care about, but over the years I’ve come to recognize I’m not the only one to think this way, and to appreciate this practice as one of my strengths. I’ve helped others to develop this strength, as well, and no one who has ever learned it from me has ever come to regret using the power of “no” to improve their use of time and energy.

Robert Moskowitz is an award-winning independent professional writer who has written and sold millions of words in just about every format over five decades. He instinctively sees the big pictures, breaks each one down into coherent slices, meaningfully prioritizes and sequences those slices, and then executes the tasks inherent in each slice in very productive ways. Put more simply, Robert knows how to succeed as an independent writer, covering all the bases from soliciting assignments to delivering polished work, from pricing jobs to budgeting and managing personal finances, from organizing a conducive office environment to establishing and following sensible guidelines regarding life, work, and productivity. Having done all this, and having paid attention to how he did it, Robert is now in a position to pass along what he knows to others.

Making the Most of “The Calm Before the (Holiday) Storm”

Tuesday, December Post a comment

For many of us, the few weeks from mid-October through late November are a form of calm before the storm. The holidays are coming up fast, and a lot of clients seem to slack off on work requests, creating a false sense of relaxation for some of us and a feeling of “how will I make it financially through the end of the year?” panic for others.

The storm, of course, is the holiday season itself, with all the fun, stress, and frantic activity it demands; there’s also the end of the year, with its requirements for wrapping up record-keeping and preparing for tax season early in the new year. We have to balance family plans and expectations against client demands and deadlines, and all of that against the needs of our businesses, and that isn’t always easy.

Here are a few tips for making the most of downtime if you don’t have a lot of work in hand at the moment.

Get a head start on organizing tax records. If you’re flush, figure out what business-related expenses you can take care of before the end of this year to reduce your tax burden.
Review your recent income and expenses to see where you need to make improvements, and start working on a plan to generate more income in the new year. Plan on a rate increase, identify clients who aren’t worth keeping, look for new markets to explore, etc.
File stuff!
Update your résumé, website, and promotional material.
Write a few blog posts or articles to build up a bank of material to publish over the next few weeks or months, so you have it ready to go when you’re mired in the holiday or end-of-year demands. (This is something I have to do myself!)
Learn a new skill or program that will benefit your writing or editing business.
Look for colleagues to follow online, especially those with blogs you can comment on, to learn something new and build your online presence.
Plan your professional development activities for the new year: organizations to join or rejoin, conferences to attend, etc. This will help you start putting funds aside for such expenses (think of them as investments in your writing or editing business).
Review past published material to see what you can update and resell or repurpose.
Start writing that book!
Do some holiday gift-buying or—if you’re crafty—gift-making.
Consider taking a refreshing few days totally “off”—a spa day, a weekend trip to somewhere fun, a family trip.

If this time of year is when some of your clients do the panicking about packing a lot of last-minute work into November or December, consider yourself at least somewhat lucky—many colleagues would like to be in your position. Do as much holiday planning and purchasing as possible as you go along, and enjoy being well-employed!

Ruth Thaler-Carter has been a full-time freelance writer, editor, proofreader, and desktop publisher for more than 30 years. She has been published locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally in, and does writing, editing, and proofreading for, publications, associations, nonprofits, websites, service firms, and businesses. She sold her first freelance articles when she was still in high school. Renowned as a skilled networker, Ruth is active in about a dozen professional associations, serving as a newsletter editor, webmaster, publication author, speaker/presenter, blogger, program host or planner, and chapter leader. In 2006, Ruth launched the Communication Central “Be a Better Freelancer” annual conference to help aspiring and established freelancers find greater success and connections with colleagues. Ruth is the owner and editor-in-chief of the An American Editor blog and received the Philip M. Stern Award of Washington (DC) Independent Writers for service to freelancers; the Writers and Books Big Pencil Award for teaching adults and contributions to the literary community; EFfie awards for writing, editing, and newsletters; and the APEX award for feature writing. She was also an IABC/DC Communicator of the Year.

Managing Work and Family During the Holidays

Tuesday, December Post a comment

Related to the idea of making the most of any pre-holiday downtime is the companion concern of balancing work and family demands from mid-November through the end of the year. No matter what you celebrate, the holiday season imposes emotional and practical demands that make a lot of people just wish for it to be done and dusted . . . yesterday. But you can enjoy the holidays and still produce the writing and editing work that must be done.

The first step is to check that you know exactly what is due when. Make sure you have some kind of list of current and upcoming deadlines, whether it’s handwritten, in Word, in Excel, in Google Docs (don’t let anyone tell you how to keep track of assignments and deadlines; do and use whatever works for you). I have a combination of a tabbed Word document with assignment specifics, notes on my paper calendar, and a daily to-do list to help me stay focused on what I need to do when (and when I’ve billed and been paid!).

Consider posting your deadlines in your workspace so you can see them easily and get the satisfaction of checking things off as you finish them—and so your family can see when you’ll be too busy to be interrupted or thrown off track.

Take advantage of any slow time to do some work early. If it’s already starting to feel overwhelming, see if some projects can be pushed into January.

Learn to say no. If clients suddenly want you to churn out a ton of new work before the end of the year and you feel overburdened, find tactful ways to push their projects into the new year. If family and friends expect more than you can handle, be equally tactful, but firm, in saying no. It can be hard to do, but saying no is essential to our mental health and ability to manage stress.

If you can’t get out of doing new work, or projects already in hand that can’t be moved, try getting up an hour earlier for a couple days a week to keep yourself on schedule. That’s often easier than staying up later than usual; most of us are more fresh and energetic in the morning than late in the evening after several hours of work and family time. You also might be able to set aside a couple hours on Saturdays and Sundays to keep the work flowing but still enjoy family time.

Make another list to track your holiday or family commitments—travel plans, meal plans, gift planning. Take whatever spare moments you have to get a head start on those activities whenever you can. In fact, doing some early holiday shopping and cooking can be a good break from a heavy work schedule (as long as it doesn’t interfere with those deadlines). Unless you’re like me and love to shop in person out in the real world, do some of your holiday gift-finding and giving online.

If these tasks feel as overwhelming as an overload of work demands, speak up! Kids and partners or spouses, siblings, even parents, can and should pitch in, but if you don’t ask for help, or even tell them what to, that won’t happen. Some of them may have been waiting for years to be more involved in holiday activities, but for whatever reason, haven’t felt as if they could take a more-active role.

Let go of perfection. Remain meticulous in your work, of course, but don’t push yourself into high gear for meals, decorating, gifts, parties, and outings that could be downsized and still be fun. Most of us don’t need more stuff; let relatives and friends know that you don’t want fancy or expensive presents this year. Hire someone to clean the house. Take advantage of prepared foods for some of the holiday feasts; you really don’t have to cook everything from scratch (or do all the cooking yourself). Skip the lengthy annual letter and just do a card with a couple of photos—and send it electronically instead of by regular mail. Consider not traveling out of town and state for the big dates.

Balancing work and family throughout the holidays requires focus and discipline, but also a healthy dose of flexibility. Try not to get so locked into a 9-to-5 (or whatever hours you usually work) schedule that you miss out on holiday-related fun stuff. It’s good for our mental and physical health to play. To relax. To have a life other than work.

Whatever you celebrate, enjoy—and however much work you have to finish, best of luck.

There Is No Shortcut, No Easy Way to Your Best Writing

Tuesday, December Post a comment

I’ve been writing professionally for more years than I usually care to remember, and I am still struggling to fully accept some basic truths that other professionals have been freely sharing every one of those years: There is no shortcut and no easy way forward.

Naturally lazy, and given to an “organized” frame of mind, I have been searching long and hard for a way to write great material in half the time using half the effort—without success. And I still have not given up!

In some ways, I’m like the kid looking relentlessly through the pile of horseshit because I just know it: in there somewhere must be a pony.

But I’m adult enough to realize at some level that my search for a shortcut and an easy way to write great material—totally driven by my intrinsic nature rather than by any rational probability of success—is pointless.

That’s right: In my mind, I understand I’m almost certainly not going to find what I want. So I offer you the same advice I have been getting—and hoping but failing to disprove—for many years. There is no shortcut, and there is no easy way forward.

What this reality boils down to for professional writers is that you must nail your butt to the chair and work. You must log the long hours. You must push through the tedium and the pain and the temptations of other things you could do instead. You must write long. You must write hard. You must write steadily.

Once you are willing to concede that writing professionally is not a walk in the park, you can begin to do the hard work that’s necessary to succeed at writing. As a bonus, you may also begin to see the value of other truths about the plight of the professional writer.

For example, you and your writing are separate. Writing a bad poem or a crappy song or a stupid story or a worthless novel does not make you a bad, or crappy, or stupid, or worthless person. You’re still a wonderful human being, and you must begin to recognize that a far more accurate description of what has happened is this: you have merely made one or more mistakes in your work. You can fix them, or you can leave them as milestones in your wake. Either way, you can and should keep working.

Here’s another important truth about writing professionally: that inner voice calling you bad, or crappy, or stupid, or worthless is just a voice in your head. Sure, it’s a strident, tenacious, negative voice. But it has no more direct connection to “The Truth” than you do, or than those other voices in your head.

Maybe that negative voice got planted during a misfortunate moment in your childhood. Or maybe it took root during a series of mistakes or misadventures you experienced over a period of time. Or maybe somebody intentionally inserted that negative voice into your head for some nefarious reason of their own.

It almost doesn’t matter.

Just don’t pay it any mind, or at least no more than the absolute minimum you can muster.

You might be able to get rid of that negative voice if you come in and lay on a couch five days a week and pour out your heart and soul to some therapist. But there’s probably no way you’ll ever entirely eradicate it.

So it’s more practical just to turn down the volume and credibility on that voice as best you can and get on with your writing.

A deeply spiritual teacher used to talk to me about how he had done so much hard work over such a long period of time to get rid of his ego and be one with the universe, and how whenever he began to suspect he was making some important progress on that journey, his ego would tap him on the shoulder and say “Great job!”

That’s the eternal struggle. That and the search for a short, easy pathway to your best writing.

You will never “win” either struggle.

Which leaves you with the only fruitful course of action if you want to be a professional: don’t get involved in the struggle. Just write. And then write some more. And then keep writing.

Eventually, you will strike your own form of gold. And that, I can assure you, will be its own reward.

Are You Ready To Be a Professional Ghostwriter?

Sunday, November Post a comment

Most people do not understand the multifaceted differences between writing and ghostwriting. Great writers often believe that because they know how to write bestsellers, they can just as easily pull on the mantle of ghostwriter.

While it’s true that ghostwriting can be profoundly rewarding for those who understand its complexities, it can also be frustrating or even disheartening for those who do not. Every experienced or trained professional ghostwriter I know has in common what one (CSULB) Certified Ghostwriter called “The Ultimate Editorial Toolbox,” which includes:

Specific skills
Creative analysis
Industry knowledge
Positioning mindset
Ghostwriting psychology
Business perspective

If you are an aspiring ghostwriter, you must enjoy thought puzzles. You must have the space in your life to take on new perspectives, to release business and writing preconceptions, and to recognize your clients’ truths may well differ from what you deeply believe—which is tough. Uniting integrity with professional impartiality can be extremely daunting.

It can also be extremely rewarding.

Ghostwriting has been the most lucrative avenue for skilled independent writers since late 2009. The call today for professionals with the knowledge base to command $35,000 or more per book is higher than at any other time in history—and still rising.

Take this test to find out if you have what it takes to transition from writer, journalist, editor, or author to professional ghostwriter.

Professional Ghostwriter Self-Assessment

Please select one.

a) In 300 words or less, write a persuasive argument for why the candidate of your choice should have won the 2020 presidential election.

b) In 300 words or less, write a persuasive argument for why the opposing candidate should have won the 2020 presidential election.

Note: Use verifiable facts and sound reasoning only. Do not use rhetoric, opinion, or emotional lures.

Fact: I am writing this on a Saturday.
Rhetoric: Clearly, Saturdays were never meant to be workdays.
Opinion: Saturday is the best day to catch up on errands and chores.
Emotional lure: People who work on Saturdays are dopes.

Please select one.

a) Look at your candidate’s campaign platform. What was its single strongest point? What missing points would have made it more compelling? What points were confusing? What points would have been best left out?

b) Look at the opposing candidate’s campaign platform. What was its single strongest point? What missing points would have made it more compelling? What points were confusing? What points would have been best left out?

c) How do you think the election would have differed if the candidates had followed the concepts you enumerated above?

In 300 words or less, explain why an author’s platform both is and is not important.

In 300 words or less, what is your professional reaction to a presenting manuscript that is overwritten, boring, grammatically unsound, and derivative?

In 300 words or less, explain why you would or would not work with an author whose political, religious, social, economic, racial, or spiritual views are diametrically opposed to your own.

Your Results

If you could not wrap your head around any of the questions, you do not have the space in your life to pursue ghostwriting right now. Keep following your current path. Hopefully, it will lead you to your personal comfort zone.

If you could not see the point or value in getting into an opposing mindset, you will likely be uncomfortable trying to take up a professional ghostwriting career.

If you found the exercise interesting but overwhelming, you may have the stuff to explore professional ghostwriting. The deciding factor is whether you can stomach being a beginner again at this point in your career.

If you felt intriguingly challenged, you probably have what it takes to become a professional ghostwriter, whether by trial-and-error, through personal mentorship, or via Ghostwriting Professional Designation Program.

Claudia Suzanne is a consummate ghostwriter/teacher, understanding what authors need in order to successfully complete their book dream, and she has a finely honed talent for communicating what she knows to her students and clients. Popularly dubbed “The Einstein of Ghostwriting,” Claudia has entertained and informed tens of thousands of writers, editors, journalists, and aspiring authors at countless writer and professional meetings, conferences, radio and BlogTalk radio broadcasts, webinars, and podcasts. Claudia was an invited expert on Penguin’s Author Solutions Expert Video series and a featured entrepreneur in Orange County Business Journal and Norwegian Business Daily. Her signature title, This Business of Books: A Complete Overview of the Industry from Concept through Sales, earned her a 2018 Author of Influence Award from Connected Women of Influence. Her Ghostwriting Professional Designation Program won 2018 Outstanding Non-Credit Program Award University Professional Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) West Region.

How to Write an Apology in 4 Easy Steps

Friday, November Post a comment

It’s going to happen—you’re going to do or say something stupid. And you’re going to apologize.

If you’re in the public eye in any way, it’s critical that when you make a mistake, you also make a heartfelt apology. There are four parts to a proper apology. Here is your guide to writing an apology that is sincere and has a good chance of repairing the damage done.

A couple years ago I sent an invitation to my membership with a sentence that offended more than one person. In the invitation I wrote what I thought was a funny joke:

There will be soft drinks, heavy whores-de-ovaries, and door prizes!

One of my writers wrote to tell me she and others found the joke offensive. I had to retract what I had said in short order.

Part One: Describe it and own it

In this first part of your apology, describe what happened. You don’t have to give all the gory details. But you have to be clear that what happened was real, you wish it hadn’t happened, and you recognize it was wrong.

You may have seen this done badly by politicians, actors, and other public figures.

Avoid phrases like:

I am sorry my comments were taken out of context.
I am sorry if anyone took offense by what I did.
It is unfortunate that so many were offended by what I said.

These sorts of comments are a non-apology. They put the responsibility for the offense on the recipients. You must own whatever it was that you did wrong. Here’s what I wrote in my apology email:

In my last email I used a barnyard joke that I had learned in my youth and gave little thought to. A good friend alerted me to my indiscretion, and to my horror, I realized I’d said something stupid and offensive.

Part Two: State your standards

It’s critical that you let your audience know that what you said or did does not meet your standards for excellence. Remind them what you expect of yourself and others in your organization. Make it clear that your actions did not come up to those high standards.

Agile Writers has always been about inclusiveness and respect. And in this moment I’ve failed you all in that goal. Sadly, as this was sent in a mass email, there is no way to take my mistake back.

Part Three: Apologize

State clearly that you apologize for your actions. Don’t hedge. Don’t blame circumstances (like illness, stress, the weather, etc.).

I hope that you will accept my deepest apologies and disregard my mistake and will still feel welcome to come to our party.

Part Four: Learn from your mistake

Let your audience know that you’re human. You make mistakes. And you will accept this error as a learning opportunity to improve yourself. You want the reader to know you don’t want this to happen again.

My lesson learned is that I still have biases that I have to re-evaluate and overcome. I will endeavor to do better in the future.

Conclusion

You’re human and you have a wide audience. Inevitably you’re going to make a public mistake that you will have to apologize for. Own it, remind everyone of your standards, apologize unequivocally, and learn from your mistake. If you do this, people will remember your apology far longer than your error.

Greg Smith is a writing coach, editor, and publisher. He founded the Agile Writer Workshop in 2011 with the mission of finding a method to help beginning writers complete a first draft in 6 months. The Agile Writer Method is based on the writings of experts in mythology, screenwriting, psychology, and project management. His seminars on the Agile Writer Method have informed and delighted thousands of writers, scholars, and university students. Agile Writer authors have written over 50 first draft novels and 10 published novels. Greg is a developmental editor for novelists and memoirists. He also coaches authors through the self-publishing maze. Greg runs the popular Agile Readers Book Club where new writers can get a beta read from a dozen or more readers.

3 Ways to Raise Your Freelance Rates

Wednesday, October Post a comment

With the end of the year approaching, many freelancers are thinking about raising their rates in 2021. I often see advice that basically amounts to raising your freelance rates 10% (or whatever) each and every year, which is fine as far as it goes. If you underpriced yourself when you were starting out, it might make sense; in some cases, you might be able to double or triple your rates and still get projects. Once you’ve been in the business for some time, however, you probably can’t get away with large, frequent increases.

The key is to find your sweet spot, and that requires a strategic approach to raising your freelance rates.

As you gain experience and expertise, your work is more valuable to clients—and no doubt you’re faster and more efficient. To me, there’s no reason to wait till the end of the year to bump your rates. If you’re so busy you can’t remember the last time you needed to market yourself, raise them now. Maybe you’ve discovered peers who are charging a lot more for similar projects and clients, or perhaps you’ve acquired a new skill or certification. The raise-your-rates alarm should really be screaming if you can’t remember the last time you got turned down for a project based on price.

Suffice it to say, there’s a long list of reasons to consider raising your freelance rates. So how do you do it without creating client pushback?

The Grandfather Clause. This one’s simple: Keep existing clients at their current rate, while quoting new prospects at a 10–20% higher fee. That way, you can test the market, while eliminating the concern about losing loyal clients who’d react poorly to a price hike. (If you’re freelancing for the long haul, of course, you’ll eventually need to raise prices for loyal clients, too—a much easier conversation if you have a strong relationship and deliver results.)

The Stealth Raise. I’ll be honest: I’ve never understood why some freelancers feel obligated to make a big deal about a price increase. The stealth raise works exactly like it sounds: Build in another 10% in every new quote, including new and existing clients. Or if you do estimated ranges, which is my favorite approach, nudge the higher end a bit higher. No one needs to know but you.

The Circumstantial Increase. There’s no reason you shouldn’t raise your fees during busy times or during the holidays. Think of it as a broad application of minor rush fees during a period of high demand (i.e., when you want to carve out some personal time away from the desk).

Note that all three of these are easier to execute if you generally provide project estimates. Indeed, I believe the ability to seamlessly raise rates is one of the best arguments in favor of using estimates whenever you can, rather than an hourly rate or publishing a rate sheet.

Two final thoughts on why there’s no wrong time to consider a fee increase: (1) Pricing serves as a market signal of your value, whether it’s high or low. (2) One of the strangest dynamics in the freelancing world is that, in most cases, higher-paying clients are better clients. That’s a pretty sweet side benefit in addition to the extra income.

Jake Poinier made the leap into freelance writing and editing in 1999 after a decade of positions in the publishing industry, giving him key insights from both sides of the desk. As the founder and owner of Boomvang Creative Group, he has worked with a diverse array of Fortune 500 and small businesses, consumer and trade magazines, and independent authors. Jake is committed to helping freelancers improve their businesses and shares his knowledge and experiences frequently as a speaker at industry conferences, through webinars, and on his blog.

The Case for the CASE Act

Friday, September Post a comment

Many people still don’t realize that copyright does not need to be formally registered with the U.S. Copyright Office to be protected by copyright law. That said, among the benefits to registration is the right to bring forth a suit for infringement, under which the rightsholder may be awarded legal fees and statutory damages.

“This is all well and good,” you think, “for large publishers. But what about me, the independent author? Surely attorney’s fees, time, and energy required to pursue such a claim would prove detrimental to my own bottom line. What then?”

Enter the CASE Act, introduced to the House by Rep. Jeffries and Rep. Marino. This legislation proposes the creation of a sort of copyright small claims tribunal (called the Copyright Claims Board), which would review claims of infringement and pass limited judgement on the cases presented. In essence, this review board would function in much of the same way as a suit brought forward in federal court, but from within the U.S. Copyright Office itself.

What are the benefits? The Copyright Claims Board would hold its hearings with written submissions or electronic hearings, and the claimants would not necessarily need to hire legal counsel to pursue a case (which would save money). Potential damages awarded would also be limited (currently, the bill is written to limit damages to $30,000), whereas federal court judgements have no set limit. Further, a hearing in front of the Copyright Claims Board would be voluntary, so either the plaintiff or the defendant can opt out of this alternative to a traditional copyright hearing in front of a judge.

Among the organizations who have vocally supported the CASE Act are the Copyright Alliance, the Authors Guild, the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), and the Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA).

Some “copyleft” organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have suggested that the creation of the Copyright Claims Board would result in frivolous copyright infringement suits. However, given the opt-in nature of the board, it seems highly unlikely for copyright trolls to come out of the woodwork. Others worry that the CASE Act doesn’t allow for ample appeals or would still benefit large companies more than an individual creator due to the opt-out ability for either party.

The CASE Act easily passed the House with bipartisan support last fall but has been on hold in the Senate due to the lone objection of Oregon Senator Wyden. Wyden’s hold on the bill means that the bill will not come up for a vote on the floor unless other senators force it to come to the floor, which will force Wyden to articulate his objections to the bill, and those supporting the bill to likewise explain their views. Senators Kennedy and Durbin have been spearheading the negotiations with Wyden on the bill, and although progress has been made on both sides (including further limits on damage claims and other clarifying definitions), the bill still remains on hold.

That said, it appears that the CASE Act will come up for a vote in the next few weeks. As an author with your own copyrightable materials to protect, I encourage you to read up on the CASE Act and contact your senators to take action when the bill ultimately comes to the floor.

Links for further reading:

CASE Act legislation (you can subscribe for updates at this link as well)

Opinion: Senate Holds Should Not Be Dead Ends

House Approves Contentious Copyright Bill

Legal note: This article is provided as educational reference material only and does not constitute formal legal advice. You should consult your own legal counsel to determine whether any of this material is appropriate for your needs.

Mary Jo (“MJ”) Courchesne is the owner and principal consultant of Gryphon Publishing Consulting. A publishing veteran with more than 20 years of experience in trade, academic, and direct-response publishing, she has spent nearly two decades specializing in licensing, subsidiary rights, and permissions. MJ is a frequent and polished presenter on licensing and copyright. When it comes to intellectual property, she firmly believes that everyone from authors to publishers to corporations should know their rights. To that end, MJ instructed in the George Washington University’s Masters in Publishing program for 13 years, first for 11 years as adjunct professor for a course titled Editorial Content, Rights, and Permissions and subsequently as lecturer in a course on copyright. She currently serves on the Board of Experts for the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors and is a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association and the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators. MJ has also held memberships with other publishing organizations such as the American Society of Picture Professionals and Washington Publishers.

How to Meet Every Deadline

Wednesday, August Post a comment

As a professional, you make explicit commitments to every client you accept. Chief among these is your commitment to deliver your work-product on time.

You and your client may differ on matters of taste, opinion, values, payment, and more. But there is no room for disagreement as to deadlines. If you promise to deliver your work on the first of the month, delivering it any later than the first of the month is a major violation of your professionalism and your commitment.

With professional deadlines so important, here are some techniques to help you meet every delivery date to which you commit.

Plan Your Work

Some creative work, and some creative people, are not amenable to planning. If the work is too loosely defined, you may not be ready to plan what you’re going to create, how you’re going to create it, or even what tools you’re going to need to complete the project. If you need the Muse to rev up your creative engine, it’s improbable that you can schedule a creative work session for any particular time, such as 10 am next Tuesday.

Nevertheless, you can strive to make some progress toward completing the work, even if that progress is merely to do some preliminary thinking and feeling about where you want the project to go.

As you firm up your thoughts and feelings about the creative goal, you can usually begin to flesh out a more practical plan that specifies the tools you’ll need, the hours you’ll spend, the steps you’ll need to complete the project, the sequence in which you’ll want to complete the steps, and so forth.

Not everyone wants or needs a plan for every creative project, but it’s often a good idea to have one because it helps you focus, recognize your next step toward your goal, and appreciate the work and the steps you’ve already accomplished.

Work Your Plan

Many people say, “If you’re failing to plan, you’re planning to fail.” That’s mostly true, as far as it goes. But if you want to meet your deadlines, it’s equally important to work your plan once you have it. Otherwise, what’s the point of planning?

As I’ve learned from my son, a plan need not be frozen in place. It’s okay to revise your plan in light of new information or new developments. But a willingness to revise a plan when and as needed does not invalidate the importance of having a plan in the first place.

Think of a plan as a roadmap. It gives you the advantage of knowing the lay of the land, where you’ve been, and where you’re heading. It lets you know where you are in relation to your goal, and it helps you identify your next step in making progress toward it. With all of these advantages, the roadmap doesn’t prevent you from taking excursions off the main route, or staying longer at some waypoint that attracts your interest or demands your attention.

In terms of deadlines, your plan helps you recognize how much more work remains in the project you’re trying to complete and helps you calculate how many hours of effort that work is likely to require.

Without a plan, your next deadline can loom up suddenly out of the darkness and slip on past you before you can deal with it effectively.

However, if your plan shows that you have, for example, 100 hours until a deadline, and your plan helps you estimate that you need to put in 50 more hours of work before then, you’d have to be the opposite of a professional to let that deadline slip past you.

Work in Sync with Your Natural Patterns

As I’ve discussed in a previous post, creativity is a flow that almost always exhibits patterns you can follow to generate more and better work.

The basic idea is to recognize and sometimes even anticipate, based on your creative history, the dates and times you’re likely to be doing your best work—and your worst. This can help you select which project to pursue during upcoming periods of prime creativity and which projects you can afford to kick down the road a while longer.

Allow Extra Time in Case of Work Problems and Delays

Let’s go back to that hypothetical from above where you had 100 hours remaining in which to complete 50 hours of creative work. Hypothetically, any professional worthy of the name can meet that deadline.

But in the real world, there are unpredictable variables that can turn those 50 hours of remaining work into 75 hours, and can eat into those 100 hours of available time until there are only 50 hours of actual working time left. In other words, completing a project in time to meet a deadline can be far more difficult than you anticipate.

That’s why a professional interested in meeting deadlines does not schedule work too tightly, with too little room for delays and errors. A novice or amateur may be proud of finishing a project an hour before it’s due. But the prudent, experienced professional plans to finish a day, maybe even a week, in advance of the deadline. This way, when delays crop up—as they very often do—the seasoned professional still has a reasonable possibility of meeting the deadline.

Learn to More Accurately Estimate Your Time Requirements

Much of this discussion on meeting deadlines has involved estimating time requirements. Obviously, if your estimates are overly optimistic, you’ll run the risk of missing some deadlines that you might have met had you estimated more accurately.

For this reason, accurately estimating time requirements for a project’s remaining work is a valuable tool in meeting deadlines.

One of the best ways to learn to more accurately estimate how much time a project will require is to log the time you spend, and later review those logs to learn from your own experiences.

Your time estimates will naturally become more accurate as you gain professional experience. But keeping and reviewing a time log will significantly shorten your learning curve.

The main point here is simple: The ability to set and meet deadlines without stressing yourself to the breaking point is a critically important tool in the professional writer’s toolkit. I’ve seen lots of professionals sharpen their deadline-meeting skills to better match the increasing scope of their projects, and the prestige and importance of their professional challenges. You can do this, too.

Should We Capitalize ‘Black’? Publications Should Be Talking About It

Sunday, June Post a comment

Many publications have decided recently to capitalize the racial identifier Black. This is a perfect time to review this internal style question.

In the wake of nationwide protests over police brutality and racial disparity, prominent publications have adopted capital Black to refer to people of color who trace their roots to Africa. Among them are The Los Angeles Times, NBC News, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Gannett newspaper chain, including USA Today. They join the Boston Globe and Seattle Times, which made the change several months ago.

The descriptive term has traditionally not been capitalized, just as white has been lowercase to refer to lighter-skinned people who trace their roots to Europe. The Chicago Manual of Style points out that “terms such as black and white, when referring to ethnicity, are usually lowercased unless a particular author or publisher prefers otherwise.” In contrast, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association has long called for capitalizing racial designations.

The Associated Press Stylebook goes with lowercase for descriptive terms regarding race. But AP Stylebook editors are gauging the mood. In answers to Ask the Editor queries at apstylebook.com, the editors write: “We continue to discuss the question, as we have been for some time. Some black people believe strongly that the term should be capitalized. Some black people believe strongly that it shouldn’t be capitalized. There also are other considerations, such as how to handle white. In-depth study and discussions continue.”

The argument for uppercase has been that the word identifies a distinctive group of people and should follow the pattern of other racial or ethnic identifiers, such as Asian and Latino. But other racial or ethnic identifiers are based on geographic location or language, which are generally capitalized. The terms black and white are vaguely descriptive and are not based on location or language. Linguistically, the general trend is toward lowercasing words as they become more widely used. To capitalize Black goes against this pattern.

One issue with capitalizing Black is what do we do with White? Some argue that the latter is not as distinctive as a self-identified group, except perhaps among a few racists who are militant in their identity. But leaving white lowercase risks presenting one race as the norm. Writing on March 23 on the website of the Center for the Study of Social Policy, Ann Thuy Nguyen and Maya Pendleton argue that “to not name ‘White’ as a race is, in fact, an anti-Black act which frames Whiteness as both neutral and the standard.”

Looking to precedent

There is a strong precedent for capitalization that can provide us guidance now, a century later. The Spanish and Portuguese word for the color black was adopted in American English as a racial term and was commonly written lowercase. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, writers and activists—including W.E.B. Du Bois—campaigned for Negro to be capitalized. In 1929, Du Bois told the editors of Encyclopedia Britannica that he considered “the use of a small letter for the name of twelve million Americans and two hundred million human beings a personal insult.” There are now 44 million Americans and more than a billion people worldwide who have ancestral ties to Africa.

In grappling with this decision, publications also might look to the New York Times in 1930, which acknowledged it was late to capitalization when it decided to uppercase Negro, joining “many of the leading Southern newspapers as well as most of the Northern in according this recognition.” In a small announcement of the change in the March 7, 1930, New York Times editorial page, the editors wrote: “In our ‘style book,’ ‘Negro’ is now added to the list of words to be capitalized. It is not merely a typographical change; it is an act in recognition of racial self-respect for those who have been for generations in ‘the lower case.’”

In the 1960s, the word Negro began to fall out of favor, to the point of now being considered an offensive throwback. It was spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. in his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, but James Brown helped hasten the reclamation of black when he sang “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” in 1968. Only recently has African American (with or without a hyphen) become a commonly used term, but it has had a mixed reception.

Looking for guidance

News organizations and other publications look to the AP Stylebook and other big style guides for leadership on social, political, and cultural language trends. The AP Stylebook likes to reflect the norm rather than push cultural change, but it has demonstrated an awareness of what writer Karen Yin calls conscious style—favoring words that acknowledge underrepresented communities and avoiding words that disparage or belittle. Yin, creator of the Conscious Style Guide, suggested in 2017 that publications not wait for the big style guides to change because the big style guides will change when they see publications adopting the capital B.

Yin also suggests that Black-focused magazines can show the way.

“If your editorial directive is to call people what they want to be called—including names, pronouns, and labels—then look to Black media outlets like Ebony and Essence for accepted usage and avoid overriding their terminology,” she wrote.

Arguments about linguistic trends and descriptive vs. nominal uses seem petty in the face of the real, often violent inequality in American society. And capitalizing Black now might seem reactionary or an emotional response. But as is usually the case, the right time to engage in the discussion is now.

Mark Allen is an editor, writer, and teacher focused on helping people communicate with clarity and honesty. He has trained hundreds of editors and writers on a variety of topics, including the latest and most important elements in the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style. Mark has led conversations about copyediting and writing at conferences and workshops in Detroit, St. Louis, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland, Columbus, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York City, and York, England. He was the first freelancer elected to the executive board of ACES: The Society for Editing, and Mark currently teaches advanced copyediting for UC San Diego Extension’s copyediting certificate program.

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