U So Need Editing

Out of the Mouth of...

2011-10-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

Me to Chloe (7) and Matty (10) upon returning home this morning with a Band-aid on my left arm: "I just got my T.B. test."

Matty: "Was it a plasma screen?"

Me: "Wha--?"

Matty: "...A plasma screen TV?"

Me: "Oh! Noooo! A 'T.B.' Test. It's for a disease that can lead to heavy fluid in your lungs. I needed to do it so I could volunteer in the garden at your elementary school."

Chloe: "Remember that time I got a caesar?"

Me: "You mean, a seizure."

Chloe: "It was a little caesar."

Matty: "Did they hand out pizzas in the emergency room?"

(You can't script this.)

REQUIEM FOR A DIRECT MAIL GURU

2011-10-04T15:43:00.000-07:00

REQUIEM FOR A DIRECT MAIL GURU

by Edward It on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 7:36am

You've no doubt heard by now that the unequivocal 'King of Infomercials,' Don Lapre, took his own life in a
Federal prison over the weekend. In the late 80s, early 90s, I used to entertain people with my impression
of the baby-faced Lapre hawking the idea that anyone could make millions selling products (basically
repurposing printed collateral) through classified ads. His pitch: "Why would anyone -- I mean ANYONE --
ever work for ANYBODY ELSE AGAIN?"

Lapre's infomercials were frequently populated with images of luxury cars, exotic islands, sprawling
mansions with designer kitchens, yachts, and other trappings of wealth luring in unsuspecting viewers -- many of whom were probably camped out on their collective couches at 3 in the afternoon wondering where their lives were going (I was working from home, so thanks for leaving me off that list!).
Curiously, those same images continue to cover three-quarters of Lapre's web site (donlapre.com)
only now, the last quarter contains snapshots of Lapre with, I'm guessing, his teen daughter and
some younger child, a boy, who may or may not be a son, though possibly the offspring of a close
friend or even Lapre's nephew. Near the bottom of the page, there appears a photograph of a letter his daughter wrote him while Lapre was alive. It suggests another side of Lapre, a caring father, as seen through the eyes
of a girl who didn't care about get rich quick schemes, and the 'Step 1, 2, 3' methods to ensure their success.
The entire one-page site is fronted by what sounds like an apology or maybe an excuse or validation.

There's an over-obvious moral to this story, something that transcends the caveat, "You can't take it with you." That almost seems blunt by comparison to the personal pain this man must have been feeling, I suspect, well before the 46 count indictment and accusations of defrauding more than 200,000 people were handed down, after he amassed an estimated $52 million fortune.

Who will inherit all the trappings of success Lapre built on not so much a Webster's dictionary's worth of classifieds, but the recipes for how to use them to make millions is yet to be seen. I'm sure he had an insurance policy in place for his daughter and maybe even that little boy he referred to on his site as "My best buddy." The Hollywood movie is just around the corner. It will be interesting to see if that other institution that puts wealth (and with it power) on an idolic pedestal will do justice to his story. Or to the people he defrauded. Whatever the outcome and anticipated artistic reinterpretations, it strikes me odd that, in the end, Lapre, so to speak, lived out his point:

Why WOULD anybody ever work for ANYBODY ELSE AGAIN?

(c) 2011 CREDIT THE EDIT, LLC http://www.credittheedit.com/

A revisit to the UPS Store...

2011-03-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

     Sometime last week, I walked into the UPS Store to pick up my latest batch of mail. The cheery young girl who works behind the desk gave me the latest update on everything strange and shipping (you'll recall that the last time we connected, she was a bit taken aback by my observation that, according to a Do's and Don't's poster affixed to the area of her counter near the register, you apparently cannot ship $50,000 hamsters. Who knew?).

     Today, she was recounting the incident involving the man who had dropped off a "small strange package" a few days prior.

     "I asked him if it contained anything live. He assured me, 'No,' then he paid for it, and hurried out. I noticed that the flaps were not taped down very well; there were gaps..."

     "As if to allow something to breathe?" I proposed.

     "Yes! Exactly. So I shook it a little and heard something scratching inside..."

    "Oh no," I responded, prepared for the best of the worst. "And so you opened it?"

     "Yes! And guess what was inside..."

     "A small zebra in need of a manicure?"

     "Nope. About twelve small tortoises."

     "Um," I offered, "perhaps they were Box turtles."

Also overheard at the Petaluma, California Starbuck's

2011-03-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

Some late 40-something female energetically barking into her cell phone, while seated near the picture window:

"Hello. Yesterday, I ordered fish oil tablets....yes...yes, that's right. So I opened them and they're like -- horse tablets. Yes, horse tablets. I can't possibly swallow them. They're too big. Will you take them back? You will? Oh good!"

I'm thinking that perhaps they were seahorse extract.

Overheard at the Petaluma, California Starbuck's

2011-03-26T11:23:00.000-07:00

First man (wearing skullcap and dressed all in black): So what are your goals in life?

Second man (wearing thick glasses and looking a little geeky, while sitting on the edge of his seat in wild anticipation): Wow. I'd like to be a motivational speaker. But I have to get my own act together first.

DEVELOP MENTAL

2011-01-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

Trying to Get My Head Around Why I'm a Developmental Editor and Not a Copy Editor...

Who vs. Whom? Was vs. Were? Passive vs. Active? We were the ones who slept through most of that alien nomenclature in high school. But we sure knew how to spin a tale. We were, in fact, the future developmental editors.

Why would you call in one of these people? Seriously, wouldn't you feel more secure knowing your Ts are dotted and your eyes are crossed without ever having to look back? Copy editors will see to that. And what they miss, surely a professional Proofreader will catch during one of those romps through your text that redefines the boundaries of 'anal retentive.' (Imagine a male Proofreader with an Oedipal Complex. Yikes! He'd never get the opportunity to possess his mother; he'd be too hung up on which possessive to select...for himself. Now that's something to reflexive on.)

To be sure, the future developmentals were the kids who played hooky. Only we didn't go out back behind the gym to thin out a pack of Camels. When the coast was clearer than the waters of a Frostian stream, we ducked out to...the picture show. Somewhere in between popcorn and ending credits, we found ourselves captivated by structure, characters, dialog, setting, tension, and tone, and a whole lot of other stuff that somehow made grammar, usage, syntax, spelling, and punctuation pale in comparison. Trying to identify pages 30, 60 and 90 of the script, as it played out on the screen, (because everyone knows ‘If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage’) gave us as much thrill as the moment Count Dracula flew through the window as a gliding gerbil and landed as a creepy man who looked terrific in a tux, and then leaned in to the fruitful neck of a young maiden about to give an unscheduled donation. Even our hero, Bela Lugosi, hated grammar. What was it that he said while playing the vampire in 1933? Oh yes, "It's the little things that drive a man crazy." No wonder he bailed out of 5th grade sentence diagramming and put his talents toward a future in flying phlebotomy. Smart man. And we understood him.

Haunting, you say? Perhaps you're referring to our alter ego, the ghostwriter. Inside of every developmental editor there's a writer waiting to be excerpted. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree...and the quill doesn't drift too far from the inkwell either. Yes, while we’re working the stories of others, taking them to the level of submission-ready, we're all basically closeted aspiring authors waiting for our agents to make that timely call, the call that will deliver us six-figure advances and give us something to do creatively in addition to delving into and enhancing the characters, settings, and storylines of our clients. But until then, we also secretly know that we have the best job in the world. True. Consider: In one day, this developmental editor is on a Whitehall, a small single mast sailboat, with three brothers on San Francisco Bay, in 1908. We're watching Roosevelt's Great White Fleet enter the Gate after circumnavigating the globe on a goodwill mission to show off American muscle. And we’re having the summer adventure of a lifetime. An hour later, I'm a wide-eyed midwestern girl landing in Maui with the man of my dreams and about to encounter -- and try to make sense of and likewise escape from -- the honeymoon from hell. (Turns out he's nuts.) Two hours later, I'm enjoying the rubber wall motif in the West Wing of an East Bay mental ward. I'm bipolar and this is my memoir. And by 5 p.m., I'm snowed in at a log cabin in upstate New York with 11 other stockbrokers. Only one of them wants to sell our lives short. He's the killer. And by 8 o'clock that night, I'm a mom online with a club of virtual moms. We've been friends practically since the dawn of the Net, and now, for the first time in a decade, one of us wants to bring in a new member. Sounds intriguing. Time for a change. (You can say that again.) Too bad 'Pat' later turns out to be a guy.

This is the domain of the developmental editor. Our lives are fiction and nonfiction and feature and sometimes query. Of course, every true developmental editor knows there’s really no such thing as ‘fiction.’ At some point, every novel is rooted in fact. Even science fiction, to work, must adhere to certain laws of the universe. And those are probably the only rules we live by. We prefer dramas to commas.

2010-12-04T17:17:00.000-08:00

Walk into the Petaluma UPS Store, actually, probably almost any UPS Store, anywhere. Look down onto the recessed counter, the portion near the cash register where you slide your packages across to the stranger who will take your prized possessions and shepherd them to someone else, somewhere else.

What do you see?

I'll tell you what I saw and which necessitated my calling across the room to "Gabrielle" earlier this week. "Um, excuse me, can you explain this? Do you really get customers who ship $50,000 hamsters?"

What do you do with that? she must have been thinking. I would have been thinking as much. Not exactly your standard customer request, such as: "Do you do Next Day?" (Yes.) "Is there a packing charge if I buy the box?" (Yes, but you don't pay by the styrofoam peanuts.) "Can I ship nuclear warheads, if they're disarmed?" (No.)

So she comes out from the end of the packing area, comes up to me from the other side of the counter, and looks down toward where I'm pointing. There, glued down to the surface, is a mosaic of all manner of inanimate objects (fireworks, petrochemicals, aerosols) and animalia (Scottish Terriers, Tarantulas, and yes, hamsters; actually, the hamster was standing on the Terrier's head) that you cannot ship. And below the clip art assemblage? A line of text reading: "No unusual pets or objects over $50,001."

The UPS worker assured me she hadn't noticed the warning before. A case of hiding in plain sight, no doubt. I mean, considering how many parcels, stuffed envelopes, and large cartons she accepts over that surface.

On the way out, I turned to her and said, "By the way, if anyone reports finding a $50,000 hamster, call me. It's mine."

Pardon me, I've gotta take an I.P....

2010-06-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

In her recent blog posting in which she weighs the pros and cons of willful disregard of copyright laws as presented in Fox's Glee ('Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of the Glee Club'), author and guest blogger Christina Mulligan concludes:

"Defenders of modern copyright law will argue Congress has struck “the right balance” between copyright holders’ interests and the public good. They’ll suggest the current law is an appropriate compromise among interest groups. But by claiming the law strikes “the right balance,” what they’re really saying is that the Glee kids deserve to be on the losing side of a lawsuit. Does that sound like the right balance to you?"

I'm sorry. Ed is not convinced. While it seems harsh to hold high school students, whose intent may only be to honor the creative genius of their cultural icons by adapting it, up to a lesser standard than the adult sector of the species, it strikes me as tantamount to suggesting that some laws apply to some more than others. Isn't that why we have Driver's Ed and a lengthy Permit Process?

As Ed noted in a recent rebuttal posted first at Brazen Careerist when one poster asked, "I tend to think that intellectual property and copyright laws have gone too far in this country, and are doomed to die in an internet age, eventually. But does that mean we should flaunt them until they are changed?":

Ed: Well, if we flaunt intellectual property laws, then we are unconsciously or consciously suggesting that they are not on par with any other body of law. And I see this as a dangerous precedent. If tomorrow, simply because we're running late to the office, we decide to ignore STOP signs and red lights, the argument that in an age when motorists are willfully ignoring the ban on cell phone use while driving anyway seems hardly a defense for not bringing our vehicles to a full stop. The day we tap into the equivalent of 'moral relevance' as applied to law, is the day we might as well hang out the Anarchy flag and just do whatever the hell we all please. I.P. laws are at the foundation of protections for the core of our creative commerce. To ignore them is to cheapen the creative process itself. It's tantamount to saying: "Well, that's a great idea, but I would have come up with it anyway." Wrong. I, and presumably anyone in this forum, probably wouldn't have come up with Monet's 'Water Lillies,' Bach's 'Preludium in E,' or Dr. Robert Jarvik's artificial heart. If we could, then society wouldn't hold these achievements up to such high esteem. In short, every idea would become relatively equivalent. Might as well dump the Tonys, Oscars, Peabody's and the Olympics. Imagine that. Sound extreme? Not in a world where creative idea generation goes unprotected. The result: creativity is stripped of financial incentive. It becomes creativity for creativity's sake. Try buying a quart of milk or paying your rent by walking into your local grocery store or your landlord's office with a new song you wrote or poem. Without I.P. protection, creativity dies on the vine. My two cents. Oh, and I hereby wave my rights. Feel free to distribute at will.

I invite comment. Ed It.

Ed's Quote of the Week...

2010-05-16T17:06:00.000-07:00

"In the future, everyone will be dead for 15 minutes."
-- Edward It

Well, at least he never told a lie...

2010-04-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press reports today that the Father of Our Country, G. Washington himself, is more than a bit past due on his library fines. To excerpt:

George Washington racks up late fees at NY library

NEW YORK – If George Washington were alive today, he might face a hefty overdue library fine.

New York City's oldest library says one of its ledgers shows that the president has racked up 220 years' worth of late fees on two books he borrowed, but never returned.

One of the books was the "Law of Nations," which deals with international relations. The other was a volume of debates from Britain's House of Commons.

Both books were due on Nov. 2, 1789.

New York Society Library head librarian Mark Bartlett says the institution isn't seeking payment of the fines, but would love to get the books back.

The ledger also lists books being taken out by other founding fathers, including Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and John Jay.

The entry on Washington simply lists the borrower as "president."

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So I invite you, Ed's readers, and anyone else who cares to comment on the largest fine you have ever wracked up at a public library, or with the IRS, or the DMV or with that loan shark you once approached to finance your latest self-published book. Charge away....

Out of the Mouth of Raves...

2010-03-31T10:42:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, Chloe, my 6-year-old stepdaughter-in-training, embraced the anthology of Dick and Jane stories her mother bought for her on my recommendation. "Worked for me when I was her age," I suggested. (Up until reading Dick and Jane, little Chloe would struggle, word by word, with other children's books intended for her age.)

After returning home from the book store, I couldn't believe at how voraciously Chloe read each page and how proud she was at her newly discovered reading abilities. All was well, until, about halfway through the 145 page collection, she turns to me and says:

"There are too many Dicks in this book."

DROPPING THE BOMB ON FACTS RADIATES GREAT SALES

2010-03-02T12:03:00.000-08:00

BOOM! That's the sound of the cash registers at Amazon.com crashing to the floor as sales ring up for Charles Pellegrino's "Last Train from Hiroshima," a historical look at the dropping of the atomic bomb based largely on the interview of one source, Joseph Fuoco, who claimed to have flown on the mission as a last-minute replacement for flight engineer James R. Corliss and further claimed that a few soldiers loading the bomb onto the Enola Gay died from radiation leaks. (Both claims have since been debunked.)

If you've been following the torrent of "bad press" which has dogged the book's release since the Associated Press first put the publisher to the firestorm last month and led Henry Holt and Company to halt production (and soon after led Barnes and Noble to pull the book from their shelves), then you know that not checking your facts, especially when writing about such a, if you'll pardon the pun, stratospherically profiled event can have apocalyptic repercussions. Or can it?

Today we learn that the debunking of the book has apparently made its sales increase.

This strikes me as a curious phenomenon and seems to fly in the face of common sense like so much fallout your dog might swallow while sticking his head out of a car driving through the boulevards of a post-nuked city.

I will withhold my opinions here pending reading and considering your own. But I imagine that you, too, might conclude that this outcome could only happen in an era of instant, unedited, point-and-click journalism and general apathy where pillars of sports, finance, and politics, and celebrities in general fall from grace as quickly as Little Boy and Fat Man sped to their pre-assigned targets only to be placated by our ubiquitous forgiveness for anyone who or any institution that (publishing now joining the ranks) makes a major intentional or unintentional faux pas.

Write away folks. But do it quick. You never know when the next bomb might drop.

e.i.

2009-05-18T10:02:00.000-07:00

Hey, did you know there's a cold caller in the auto aftermarket biz known as "Dr. Phone"?

I can see how complicated it might become were he ever to be hired by the pharmaceutical industry to call on the physician market. An update on Abbot and Costello:

Admin: Doctor, it's Doctor Phone.

Physician: Who?

Admin: Doctor...Phone.

Physician: I know I've got a call. But who is it?

Admin: Doctor Phone.

Physician: Yeah, I got that. But who is it?

Admin: Phone. Doctor Phone.

Physician: Third base!

Today's contemplation...

2009-05-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the truth is stranger than nonfiction.

30 Seconds on Your Life Story

2009-05-04T09:43:00.001-07:00

This section is reserved for all those waitresses, waiters, and others in the service industry who have eagerly responded to the request:

"Tell me 30-seconds on your life story..."

It's simply amazing just how many intriguing stories are out there.

-----------------------------------------
From the hostess at Flipper's Gourmet Burgers, Petaluma, CA

"The other day, my four year old daughter, Kaylie, leans over the fence to talk to her friend. I listened in.

"Will you marry me?" she said to the little boy next door. He thought about it, then responded,

"Yes. People in Petaluma should be married."

Now she's picking out dresses.

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Thoughts That Plague Me

2009-04-22T17:29:00.000-07:00

In AA they give you a chip.

In SA they give you a chip.

In Narcotics Anonymous, I hear they give you a chip as well.

So in Gamblers Anonymous, do they give you... a chip?
And, wouldn't that be, um, counterintuitive?

Things Seen Off the Beach

2009-04-22T17:25:00.000-07:00

Billboard for DOS EQUIS beer on PCH between Wilmington and Long Beach, CA:

You only live once.
Make sure it's enough.

The Peet's Beat

2009-04-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

2 Feb. 2008, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Santa Monica

I’m at a Peet’s in L.A., surrounded by sitcom and dramatic series writers, and I’m wondering why there haven’t been assassination attempts on the Ground Hog. Wouldn’t that change the prevailing weather outlook? And shouldn’t Los Angelenos, who take sunny days for granted, produce the sleeper cell to do the job?

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2 Feb 2008

More from the Montana Avenue ladies who sip their lattes in the corner...
Things to do with your Blackberry while sipping a cold cappuccino:

Read that a carrot looks like a human eye when sliced…

Figs increase mobility of male sperm…

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2 Feb 2008
OMG! The Beverly Hills library has an ATM! Just how expensive are those fines?

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5 Feb 2008, Redondo Beach, Peet’s Coffee & Tea
Two 60-something men wearing ball caps and windbreakers stand in line. One says to the other:

“I heard the weather report. They said there’s a ‘chance of rain.’"
I look outside. The sun’s out.
If you think about it, there’s always a chance of rain.”

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6 Feb 2008, Yellow road sign in Los Angeles:

Traffic Calming Info
(213) 977-6464

I won't ask. But 'Like Prozac for your Porsche' comes to mind.

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8 Feb 2009, Peet’s, Petaluma

Mimi, a barrista, coined the term “Transformational Whining” Mimi is Buddhist and has an 11 year old son. She should know.
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23 March 2009, Peet’s, Redondo Beach

Just bought a Vegan Chocolate Chip cookie.
How can a cookie be vegan if it never had any meat in it to begin with? Or had it?

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23 March 2009, Peet’s, Redondo Beach, later that afternoon

A dapper man in faded jeans, a black jacket, white open shirt exposing a grey T-shirt and carrying a briefcase and paperback asks me if he can borrow the free chair perpendicular to me at my table. “Please feel free,” I offer him.

“Thank you.”

Seconds later, he becomes aware of the late afternoon sun pouring through the storefront window. He smiles apologetically as he turns to me and says, “I didn’t realize there’d be sun. I’ll have to move to another end of the room.” I point to the pull down shades, two of three I’ve already pulled down for the same reason. “Oh, thank you!” he says, “I’m indebted to you twice.” He takes his seat. And then, his closed Apple laptop on the faux marble bar before him, he blesses himself with the sign of the cross. He then plugs in the laptop.

Man, that’s someone who has little faith in Macs.

-----------------------
28 March 2009, Java Man, Hermosa Beach

While sitting at a wooden table with my laptop and Princess phone to my left,
A late 30-something/early 40-something gent in shorts, Doc Martens, a black
ski cap and a gotee, strikes up a convo with me about my Princess phone and
MagicJack which connects it to the net. I pick up half way through:

SkiCap: …it’s like my cell phone. I have a $20 variety I got at 7-Eleven. You can walk here and there, better reception than my Blackberry. No bells and whistles but it makes calls. It’s like a car. I could drive a Jaguar, but if I’m driving a Jaguar it better be because they’re filming me. With a Gran Torino, I can have five girls in there, (he then swings his right leg forward in a kicking motion), boom! Get out! And L.A. freeways are moving at 4 miles per hour anyway.

2009-04-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

TOP 10 SIGNS THAT YOU NEED AN EDITOR
By Edward It

1. THERE'S A METHOD TO HIS PUNCTUATION
Just because he showed up on the scene more than 400 years before you did and has a few more Tony's to his credit, Shakespeare has nothing on you. So you decide to update the Graveyard scene in your revisionist one-act entitled, "Hamlet and Eggs" by painting the young, indecisive Prince as a modern day victim of A.D.D., perpetually fondling the joy sick on his PS2, and imbibing on one too many lattés. Only in the midst of thinking through the racing thoughts that are surely plaguing your main character's mind like so many accidentally disturbed hives of bees or not to bees, you forget the risks of misplaced punctuation. Naturally, you don't catch it until your lead executes the scene on opening night (which will double as your closing night). Looking upon the quiet skull at an arm's length, young Prince Hamlet laments: "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him. Well, Horatio....tennis?" He tosses the old bone over his shoulder as he and his companion stroll off stage eager to exeunt to the nearest watering hole, laden with the knowledge that their careers are all but finished. As for how your star handled your scene, what else could an accomplished actor do? The madness to his Method acting dictates that he had to make your lines work after all, and every playwright knows that if it's on the page, it's probably gonna show up on the stage in one form or another. Your editor, seated behind you, slips you his Playbill with a note hastily scribbled across it: "Psst. Methinks the period takes a comma. The second comma is...out. And Bill would never have said, 'Well.'"

2. MODIFIERS BE WITH YOU
Remember that teenage joke, the bastion of so many zit-adorned males who loved to torment their female peers with: "Hey Judy (Sue, Emily, etc.), you're pretty...ugly." Ouch. But now that you're 15 years older, more mature, and no one can play connect the dots with your face, you wouldn't dare stoop so low. Besides, Judy has gone through a minor makeover herself – she’s now CEO of the defense contractor for which you're interviewing to land the job of Director of Marketing, and she's sitting on the other side of her Lake Erie-sized mahogany desk training her (Wow! When did she get so beautiful?) brown eyes on your résumé like a Stealth Bomber sniffing out a sand bunker under a roof spray painted with six-foot block letters announcing "Gone to Maui. Wish you were here." As her eyes move over every well-crafted paragraph of your illustrious work history, Judy alternates between smiles, smirks, and uh-huh's. She pauses and looks up. Your nails dig deeper into the leather, brass-studded arms of that genuine Louie XIV hot seat in her office, although you're feeling a lot more like Anne Boleyn before Henry the VIII. Your future prospective employer speaks: "So, tell me about your time with Tasty Queen. What encompassed the role of, what was it again?" She glances down at the 20-pound, gray linen page hot off the presses from Kinko’s, "Oh yes... 'Post-Consumer Viscous Waste Eradication Supervisor.’" Feeling like a cow moving under the conveyor belt utility lights of a patty processing plant, you attempt to explain the fine art of transporting used fryer grease once a week from the kitchen to the environmental containment unit out back or what some might less affectionately write off as 'the dumpster.' Your editor? He would have suggested you jump off the ladder of abstraction somewhere around the rung labeled:
Chef Apprentice.

3. DON’T STALK WHEN YOU TALK. WATCH THOSE NON SEQUITURS / TRANSITIONAL SENTENCES
Your uncle’s funeral was touching. You had no idea one man could be so loved by so many. At a healthy and vibrant 105 years old, Uncle Luigi probably had a few detractors along the way, but from all the wet faces during the viewing, you sure wouldn't know it today. Too bad he didn't see that milk truck last Thursday as he stepped off the curb to pick up a cigarette butt during his daily -- and final -- morning jaunt around the block. As several hundred guests exit the funeral parlor, you express your sincerest condolences to your aunt. Aware that she soon will be very much alone, you invite her out for a late afternoon aperitif to toast one more round to "dear Uncle Luigi." She is moved by your overture. "That’s lovely," she says, "where shall we go?" You think out loud. "Well, there's Sam's Cock and Crow on Main, but that place is usually dead this time of day." Gripped by a sudden sense of horror, you mobilize to dig out of a looming hole widening beneath you with every forthcoming utterance. Your timing is almost…deadpan. Grinning sheepishly, you redirect: "I mean, it's really quiet there, not much life in the joint...(ouch) um, and I once was stiffed on my Bloody Mary by the bartender (ouch again). I was dying to pay my tab and split. I mean--" Forget it: you're buried. Some people simply don't know how to transition. Then again, some people play in traffic. If writing is, as some experts suggest, really an extension of human language, then before your next utterance, talk to your editor. She'll take a look at your word use, your sentences and your paragraphs, especially those that conclude chapters and sub-chapters in your manuscript or thesis, and recommend the most effective approaches for preserving continuity of thought without, if you will, leaving your prose hemorrhaging.

4. I STINK THEREFORE I AM
Is that a lump in your throat or are you just choking on what your characters should say next? Dialogue. From the moment we proudly voice our first "mama" or "dada," most human beings are instinctively gifted to gab. Although we sometimes later put our respective feet in our mouths, one foot per person, talking with other people is generally the least of our worries. We part our lips and make a statement. We're asked a question, we respond. So why, at times, does it seem easier to break the ice with a first date than to make characters open up and talk from your pages? If your story’s characters are leaving you speechless, you need an editor. S/he will help you and your characters find your voice and theirs. Let's say, for example, your novel stars a dapper but odiferously challenged skunk that happens to possess the introspection of Descartes. After studying the skunk’s profile and the context within which the character speaks, your editor might suggest that this attribution: "Geez, why duzz everybody diss me at parties?" is not as effective (for this particular character) as this one: "Just because I'm special doesn't mean I deserve to be treated like I don't exist."

5. MY LIFE IS FALLING APART. SO ARE MY SENTENCES.
Someone famous once said, "I write like I speak." Good advice. He must have tuned in to how people talk. Because most people, contrary to what you learned in grammar school, speak in sentence fragments. They're a mainstay of great literature (novels, screenplays, speeches, dramatic works, poetry, billboard ad copy, etc.). They're less acceptable when deployed within written communications that require more formal, precise, unequivocal text such as, for example, your Masters thesis, a legal brief, a technical guide, or even the standard corporate memorandum. Of course, many successful CEOs have a rep for sidelining formality and speaking like they do behind closed doors, i.e., in plain terms. A good editor will feel out your text, embrace it, juggle it, consume it, and regurgitate it in a way that truly captures what you wanted to say and as it should be said. If called for, an editor will not hesitate to use sentence fragments. Nor should you. Just make sure you use ‘em at the right time and use ‘em well. Just because Hemmingway was alleged to use fragments with reckless abandon, don’t assume you can start living off a six pack cooling in a cold brook in the middle of a burned out European countryside or take out a charging rhino at 30 yards. Sentence fragments -- like drinking and rhino bagging -- should be handled with care.

6. PARENTHETICALLY SPEAKING (NOT THAT IT MATTERS)
Well, actually, it does (and more often than you would think). Are you a writer who is hell-bent on inserting asides and commentary within your sentences but too afraid that if you take your thinking outside the parenthesis your prose is preordained to lose impact? Or maybe you have managed to break that habit, sneak outside the presumed constraints of those twin sideways smilies, and go the other direction: using quotation marks to punch up the impact of a word or phrase or italics like you were writing on shaky ground (a 7.0 on the Richter, for example). Your editor might ask you to "Take two Valium and call me after the next draft" or, for the more pragmatic within our profession, he or she likely will suggest you go on a quotation mark, parentheses and/or italics diet. (Hey, it's all about "will power," as they say.)

7. WHAT ARE YOU, HYPER-ACTIVE OR JUST PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE?
It used to be that many writers, particularly newbies, couldn't seem to pull their prose out of the passive voice. Then someone suggested they pick up a copy of Professor Strunk's Elements of Style and, next thing you know, they're looking at the passive voice like a vampire who inadvertently encounters garlic while vegetable shopping at the local Farmer's Market. In these uncertain times where speed of expression seems mandatory, (according to some predictions, World War III could break out next week, or a six mile wide, near-Earth object could change course at any moment), the active voice seems to be popping up in literary works ad nauseum. To be sure, most editors, myself included, will choose the active over the passive 99 percent of the time. But there's an inherent beauty in the passive voice that, used at the right moments, can give pause to your prose so that even if you don't survive Armageddon, future archeologists uncovering your manuscript will conclude, "If this writer were alive today, we might thank him for his reflective insights that he expressed with such care. He must have been quite a talented writer." Then again, they might just assume you had found a good editor.

8. WHY BURY THE LEAD WHEN CREMATION IS CHEAPER?
It's the cardinal sin of journalism, but to watch most local TV newscasts, somewhere between the lead story and the weather, you'd get the impression that many reporters, anchors, news writers, and news directors could use a remedial writing sabbatical...at the Vatican. Indeed, there are times when you want to break the news slowly like, for example, when you're 17 and you're forced to walk five miles home after mistaking the family car's accelerator for the brake, or perhaps you're a pediatrician (or play one on TV) and you have to disclose to the nail biting dad-to-be in the waiting room that, "You know, there just may have been something to that bright light over your house that you say you encountered nine months ago. You see, your wife just gave birth to a three-headed amphibian." But anyone who has ever edited the cover page of a supermarket tabloid or the Wall Street Journal will tell you to "GET TO THE POINT," and in most cases, so will your editor. By the way, did I get to the point?

9. BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF SURVIVAL
Lights are out and it's 20 minutes into the previews at the local multiplex. The theatre is packed. The THX reminds you that it's never too early to set up a layaway plan for micro hearing aids. Buttered popcorn? You're soaking in it. While the rest of the crowd is hypnotized by a potpourri of flashes, booms and VH-1 style rapid-fire cuts firing off before their mesmerized pupils, you suddenly smell smoke. Taking a quick sip of your Pepsi, you stand up, clear your throat and, assuming your best rendition of Dudley Do-right while trying to be respectful to the culture around you, you proceed to describe the anticipated conflagration on the immediate horizon: "There's a dark and pungent gaseous substances emanating from the ventilator 25 meters due north of the woman donning the retro beehive hair style in the third row two seats in from the stage left aisle. I have certain reason to fear for our collective lives." As you clear your throat one more time and take a cursory view of the field of heads ignoring you from around the room, your editor stands up and yells, "FIRE!"

10.

There is no point 10. My editor killed it.

Edward It (but you can call him 'Ed') is a professional editor of more than two decades. He is president of Northern California based
CREDIT THE EDIT (www.credittheedit.com). Ed is always on the prowl for a (don't say 'darn' when you can say) damn good piece of copy.

Eating in Hermosa

2009-04-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

If you get off the Broadway Local somewhere around SoHo, skip up the cement stairs mosaically adorned with old chewing gum and, once you're tossed out onto the street you head for any local South Manhattan pizzeria, you might do a double take curbside wondering what the hell happened to the seal skin covered surfer dudes and tan babes slam dunking volleyballs on the beach. Hey, by the way, where is the beach? You can only embrace this bit of ecstatic confusion if you've recently had the incredible delight of dining at Pedone's, a not so little taste of old New York less than 3,000 miles away from the Big Apple's contribution to world culture other than lives expressed in cut time and cabs doubling as asphalt rollercoasters. Like most NY ex-patriots, I didn't have much time when I stopped by this checker tablecloth hamlet between Pier and 14th on Hermosa Avenue on a Sunday night in April, so when the hostess asked me what I would like, I figured that the best way to test a pizza place and skip through a menu packed with traditional Italian favorites like Eggplant Parmesan, Chicken Marsala, and Spaghetti & Marinara, would be to order, that's right, two slices of plain pizza. Even if he'd had a bad day, The Godfather himself would be smiling. And so was I... in between bites, of course. This was a blessed union, the perfect marriage of slightly chewy thin crust and wholesome cheese that, as I compose this, continues to lure me back to the old country, even if the old country is 13 miles long and was purchased for a handful of beads in a deal that would have made Donald Trump proud. Then again, Trump probably would've said the Europeans paid too much. So the next time some 20 inch cardboard box protecting a cardboard disk "fresh" out of the oven from one of those mass pizza plants confronts you with: "You've tried all the rest, now try the best!" tell that little chef imprinted in red outline on the outside: "Forgettaboutit! I'm going to Pedone's. I'm gettin' me a real pizza."