NoJoMo 16 -- Why Did I Even Bring It Up? in The Common Room

Hoops is wondering whether he should restart a writers club here and expressed the opinion that he didn’t want any a**holes

Somebody asked me a question.

It’s my personal opinion that there are few larger a****s than “published authors” Being published is not proof of anything. .

Now, I’ve seen several sides of thes publish thing. I was a reviewer for a text book publisher for several years – as in, I made several hundred dollars a month reviewing text books. Wow. Talk about trash. Text books are the worst. TPTB only know how much confusion has been engendered by computer language text books with erroneous examples - the kind that, if run, would yield only aborts and error messages

After several years, I turned my class lectures into text books and let someone else review mine. Mine had no technical errors (something I had complained about until I ran out of words (imagine!) with which to complain. The texts went moderately well to trade schools. The teachers manuals went better. Schools don’t like adopting texts when the author lacks a Phd but people who teach and instruct at tech schools and businesses will buy anything that tells them how to do their work and not have the students fall asleep in class. My old boss, making sure I knew it wa a compliment, said I considered teaching a performance art. I do.

These were texts and manuals about computer languages, most of which are now as dead as my classical Latin. (Can you decipher APL or RPG (which has not always stood for Role Playing Game). How about IBM PC BASIC? …Long ago.

I’ve left out a lot of stuff, prbably not enough, so let me cover just one more little thing.If you just must see your words in print– all bound and pretty and to do it in your lifetime,, don’t be ashamed to self-publish or hire it done. This used to be called “Vanity” publishing (Well, it was called other things as well.) Particularly if your material is of limited interest to the general public. Publishing houses are not in it to create literature or to aid mankind. They’re in it for the money. If they don’t think your stuff will sell like hotcakes, they won’t publishe it. If they do think it will sell, they will publish and sell it, paying you as little as possible,no matter what kind of drek it is (50 Shades of Gray?)

If, however, you do vanity publish, SPEND THE MONEY TO HIRE A GOOD EDITOR AND PROOFREADER, not to tell you what to write or how to write, but to keep yourself from looking like a total fool. All of us make mistakes - in grammar, in spelling, in consistency. We change tenses and styles . We either let our thoughts get ahead of our hands or stop to think and lose track a little. Our wonderful, versitile brains then fill in the banks when we read, because we know what we intended to say. Hire someone to double check, unless, of course, you don’t want people to read what you say. I would almost guarantee that without editing help, your readers will be too busy thinking ‘Gag a maggot.. Are there no spell checkers?” instead of ” Brilliant story.”

OK. I’m through now. BTW: Don’t be afraid of my criticizing your writing. First, I know what I don’t know and second, I don’t even do that for money any more. I sure won’t do it for free. (… and I expect the same courtesy from you.)

A special aside to Arbi, who asked if I would persue writing, had I a chance to change my earlier decisions:

If newspapers and TV journalism were less a farce, I would have loved to be the fearless force of truth that was the old school reporter. I had some great examples of that and would have loved to do it. ....... Writing itself…I’m a better storyteller than author and I don’t admire the ethics of publishing.

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Last updated November 17, 2014